virtualbox.org

I've been using the PUEL version of VB for the past couple of months on Ubuntu 9.04 without any problems. The guest OS on VB is Win XP.

Since the VB upgrade (3.06 r52128) which occured through Ubuntu's update manager yesterday, all my USB ports are "greyed" out.

I even reverted to a previous snapshot which didn't help.

Any suggestions ?

Run dpkg -l virtualbox* in a terminal of the host and post the results here.

Herewith the output.

thug@xxxxxxx-nb:~$ dpkg -l virtualbox*
Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
| Status=Not/Inst/Cfg-files/Unpacked/Failed-cfg/Half-inst/trig-aWait/Trig-pend
|/ Err?=(none)/Hold/Reinst-required/X=both-problems (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
||/ Name Version Description
+++-==============-==============-============================================
un virtualbox <none> (no description available)
ii virtualbox-3.0 3.0.6-52128_Ub Sun VirtualBox
pn virtualbox-ose <none> (no description available)
pn virtualbox-ose <none> (no description available)
pn virtualbox-ose <none> (no description available)
pn virtualbox-ose <none> (no description available)
pn virtualbox-ose <none> (no description available)
un virtualbox-sou <none> (no description available)

It appears that you may be using the OSE version now.
Did you set VirtualBox to update via the repo list in Ubuntu?

That's what it looks like to me as well judging from that output.

I downloaded the updates through Synaptic.

Guess, I'll have to re-install the PUEL version.

I had the same experience as The Thug: installed 3.0.6 on Jaunty AMD-64 after successfully using the previous version since it came out. After installation no USB in the Win XP guest.

I installed from the link offered by Virtual Box itself and downloaded virtualbox-3.0_3.0.6-52128_Ubuntu_jaunty_amd64.deb directly from the Virtual Box site with my browser (not apt-get). The MD5 sum of the deb is 902726b4ec63c12c41b6a54f2e40468a matching what is on the vbox site. I have similar output from dpkg -l. Note that lines beginning with "un" and virtualbox-ose mean ose is not installed.

Before finding this thread I had discovered that the USB subsystem was reporting failure as follows. Open the VirtualBox application and select a stopped virtual machine. On the Details tab click on the USB label; the following message pops up:

Could not access USB on the host system, because neither the USB file system (usbfs) nor the DBus and hal services are currently available. If you wish to use host USB devices inside guest systems, you must correct this and restart VirtualBox.
The USB Proxy Service could not be started, because neither the USB file system (usbfs) nor the hardware information service (hal) is available.

and in the details box it says:

Result Code:
VBOX_E_HOST_ERROR (0x00BB0008)
Component:
Host
Interface:
IHost {a13b5556-5c0b-4f80-9df6-6f804f3336a1}
Callee:
IMachine {540dcfda-3df2-49c6-88fa-033a28c2ff85}

I then found this page: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/VirtualBox/USB and followed the "For Jaunty" steps to mount usbfs. After closing and restarting VirtualBox, USB was working again.

Hypothesis: something has gone wrong with VirtualBox's ability to use the Jaunty hal/DBus interfaces to identify and access USB devices in the 3.0.6 release.

I downloaded the .deb file directly from VB's site this morning, re-installed and then re-installed guest additions. Still no access to "USB" ports.

Will try what chauser suggested.

After trying what chauser suggested, I have my USB ports now available.