iPhone 3Gs won't attach

[BVE]

So I bought an iPhone. Finally.
And to make my life a bit easier, I decide to install a virtual XP for iTunes, So I have full control / access to the phone.

And then the fighting started...

System 1:
Ubuntu 8.04
VirtualBox 3.0.6 and 3.1.2
XP SP3 with iTunes 9

System 2:
Ubuntu 9.04
VirtualBox 3.1.2
XP SP3 with iTunes 9

Basically I tried everything on system 1, but hoped it might be Ubuntu. So I copied everything to the newer Ubuntu system. No luck.

What happens is, that when I hook up the iPhone I first get greeted by the auto-mounter for Ubuntu: it wants me to use F-Spot photo manager. I tell it to go away and go into the Windows VM. I can see the iPhone, it gets recognised as it should. But when I try to mount it I get a VirtualBox error #70057:

Failed to attach the USB Device Apple Inc. iPhone [0001] to the virtual machine WindowsXP.
USB Device 'Apple Inc. iPhone' with UUID (.....) is busy with a previous request. Please try again later.

So I guess this means the automounting gets in the way? Turning of HAL didn't work on system 1 and I'm fairly sure the same goes for system 2.

I tried adding it to fstab on system 1, but no dice. Since I'm getting the exact same error on system 2, I don't feel this is the problem. Also, the solutions found online are mainly about VirtualBox 1.6/2/older and mostly for the 2G/3G iPhone.

Anybody have an idea on this? thanks!

[BVE]

ok, this just in: if I plug in the iPhone PRIOR to starting XP all together, it works...
Better yet: I rebooted with the iPhone plugged in. After the reboot, I finally had an icon on my desktop, so finally it has been properly mounted on the host OS.

[revmarkp]

So is this working OK for you? is 3.1.x critical? I'm only getting 3.0.8 load up on my Ubuntu 9.10. (as of 12/1/10)

[BVE]

I'm still not entirely sure what the problem is. At home this problem sometimes arises. At work everything is fine, but I have to manually attach the iPhone to the VM (through the menu > usb devices > iphone) and that will generate an error from ubuntu. It does work though.

It all works, but not 100% flawless...

(And I'm not sure if the version is important, I just happen to have that running)