USB not working (with PUEL)

[draeath]

I can't seem to use USB with a Windows XP guest. My host is Debian Lenny, and I'm using vbox 2.2.4 PEUL.
I am in the vboxusers group, and have been rebooted since that was added.
Guest additions are installed, and USB/USB2.0 is enabled in the machine. I have not set any filters.

However, if I go to the Devices -> USB Devices menu, everything is grayed-out and unselectable.

Am I missing something here?

[Perryg]

Try setting a filter in the guest settings. Only reason to leave it blank is when VBox is on a Windows Host.

[MikeW]

This seems to be a popular problem today

Make sure that the USB drivers are installed on your Guest system!

I just spent a day troubleshooting this!

Mike

[draeath]

Found the problem.

Debian Lenny sets up /proc/bus/usb and /dev/bus/usb as root:root without write permissions.

So, I needed to dig and find this:
/etc/init.d/mountkernfs.sh

I edited that file. The line in question (line 75) as supplied by Debian:

Code: Select all

domount usbfs usbdevfs /proc/bus/usb usbfs -onodev,noexec,nosuid

This needed to be changed to:

Code: Select all

domount usbfs usbdevfs /proc/bus/usb usbfs -onodev,noexec,nosuid,devmode=0664,devgid=46

Group ID 46 is "plugdev" for my system, and it makes sense to me to have that group given write permissions to the USB devices, since that group allows one to mount and use removable (usually USB) media. devmode=0664 just adds +w to the owner and group - which is required in addition to just changing the group itself.

I needed to reboot to activate this, since it's not a normal init script.

I would guess that Ubuntu will require a similar modification, having been based on Debian.

This is quite annoying, to have to do this.

[luquino]

Ubuntu does not have this problem, I have ubuntu 9.04 with guest Xp. Vb 2.2 and now 3.0.
I can use all my usb devices on XP, no matter if they are moounted or not in Ubuntu. If they are mounted on Ubuntu and I want to use with XP VB automatically umount on Ubuntu and mount on XP. When I umont from XP the devices are automatically remounted on Ubuntu.
If the device is not mounted on Ubuntu Xp can mount it without problem.
Honestly I have to say that sometimes some user on Ubuntu forum has a problem with USB devices, but it is not always. It is very rare.

[luquino]

A fresh install of Ubuntu 9.10 and VirtualBox 3.06 (from VBox repos) presented to me the problem with USB.

I solved the problem just adding this line to /etc/fstab

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none /proc/bus/usb usbfs devgid=46,devmode=664 0 0