VirtualBox 3.2 on PCLinuxOS 2010

[alanbcohen]

Frank,
Thank you for your response. I admit my perspective of forum response time is colored by the forums where I am most active. As to helping others here, I am a recent joiner of this forum because I have not had either the background in this technology or previous problems with the application. When I first posted in this thread, it was to find out whether to wait for a PCLOS-oriented version, or to try the .run installer. I didn't try the .run installer until later. I'm heading to the office in the next minutes, so it won't be until tomorrow to try your suggestions.
Alan

[jsmith]

The download statistics show that only a few users actually downloaded the PCLinuxOS package and we cannot provide packages for every Linux distribution, there has to be a break somewhere

I find that hard to believe as I am active on the PCLinuxOS forum and I would estimate 90% of members used the PCLinuxOS 2007 version from the VBox download site.

Plus, you say there has to be a break somewhere, but its not as though we are asking for a NEW addition to be added - the PCLinuxOS version WAS there but was TAKEN AWAY which is a very poor show indeed. To re-emphasize this was a not NEW download being asked for but a continuation of one that had been there for ages.

How many users/downloads would be needed for the download to be re-instated? As I am pretty sure enough "business" could be drummed up to make it very worthwhile for Oracle to be kind enough to help "existing" users out.

[frank]

Plus, you say there has to be a break somewhere, but its not as though we are asking for a NEW addition to be added - the PCLinuxOS version WAS there but was TAKEN AWAY which is a very poor show indeed. To re-emphasize this was a not NEW download being asked for but a continuation of one that had been there for ages.

Maintaining such a build still takes effort to keep the build jail up-to-date and to test the installation. And again, the .run package should work on PCLinuxOS as well.

[alanbcohen]

Now that I've had a chance to send some time with 3.2.2 using the .run installer on PCLOS2010 KDE4.4.4, I can tell you that:
- yes, it installs, but
- it was necessary to add myself to the virtualboxusers group
- it was necessary to chmod the components subdirectory
- USB still doesn't work
Lots of aggravation and I'm still not getting what I used to have with an earlier release.
So, there seem to be a fair number of flaws with the .run installer that were properly addressed with the PCLOS RPM.

Can you point me to some specific documentation on how to get USB working; the manual, and FAQ do not seem to address the problem? I can't print, or connect with external drives.
This isn't some complicated network installation, this is one single Linux laptop host (2 gigs installed and recognized, 1.6 ghz processor, 80 gig hd) and two non-concurrent guest VM's (one another Linux, the other Windows XP from a licensed ISO). I need USB connectivity on at least the WindowsXP VM to support my employer's applications.

[frank]

Adding yourself to the vboxusers group was necessary with the old PCLinuxOS package as well. If the .run package doesn't work for you then this is either a bug in the package which must be fixed or some problem at your host. Note that we have many users of the .run package, for instance all Gentoo users and all ArchLinux users.

In one of my earlier comments in this thread I already wrote where to start to investigate so please post the information I requested.

[alanbcohen]

The devices are appearing when I execute the command:

[root@localhost ~]# VBoxManage list usbhost
Oracle VM VirtualBox Command Line Management Interface Version 3.2.2
(C) 2005-2010 Oracle Corporation
All rights reserved.

Host USB Devices:

UUID: 2cc5bfb1-0221-42c8-8a7d-d61d3d441b6b
VendorId: 0x03f0 (03F0)
ProductId: 0x6611 (6611)
Revision: 1.0 (0100)
Manufacturer: HP
Product: Photosmart C4380 series
SerialNumber: CN77CC71FS0509
Address: /proc/bus/usb/001/003
Current State: Busy

UUID: 577680bc-7653-49c9-b020-871592f20f54
VendorId: 0x046d (046D)
ProductId: 0xc408 (C408)
Revision: 20.0 (2000)
Manufacturer: Logitech
Product: USB Trackball
Address: /proc/bus/usb/001/005
Current State: Busy

UUID: 41262092-ffb2-4674-8cf1-1c97ced987f0
VendorId: 0x0830 (0830)
ProductId: 0x0061 (0061)
Revision: 1.0 (0100)
Manufacturer: Palm, Inc.
Product: Palm Handheld
Address: /proc/bus/usb/005/002
Current State: Busy

UUID: 336f0308-fb6c-496a-8549-8fceab7a1e12
VendorId: 0x0b38 (0B38)
ProductId: 0x0010 (0010)
Revision: 1.2 (0102)
Address: /proc/bus/usb/001/004
Current State: Busy

Note that these devices are also being used by the host. Although, when I executed the command, all three of the devices and hub where sitting unused.

[frank]

Ok. Can you post the permissions of the files under /proc? Please go through the list you posted and post the output of /bin/ls -l FILE for every of these files. Thanks.

[alanbcohen]

The Palm device was unplugged during the day and assigned to a new address; the last line is for the new address:

[root@localhost ~]# /bin/ls -l /proc/bus/usb/001/003
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root usb 142 2010-06-06 10:05 /proc/bus/usb/001/003
[root@localhost ~]# /bin/ls -l /proc/bus/usb/001/005
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root usb 52 2010-06-06 10:05 /proc/bus/usb/001/005
[root@localhost ~]# /bin/ls -l /proc/bus/usb/005/002
/bin/ls: cannot access /proc/bus/usb/005/002: No such file or directory
[root@localhost ~]# /bin/ls -l /proc/bus/usb/001/004
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root usb 77 2010-06-06 10:05 /proc/bus/usb/001/004
[root@localhost ~]# /bin/ls -l /proc/bus/usb/005/003
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root usb 64 2010-06-07 17:56 /proc/bus/usb/005/003

[frank]

Ok. Is the current user member of the group usb? That is, what is the output of groups?

[Texstar]

Since Oracle has dropped the rpm package for PCLinuxOS, please try our getvirtualbox package now in the PCLinuxOS repository. This program will wget the VirtualBox-3.2.4-62467-Linux_x86.run package from their server, install it and add users to the proper groups for usb support. Menu Entry will be under More Applications -> Emulators. Please reboot your host for usb support to become active. Hope this helps.

Texstar
PCLinuxOS

[Texstar]

The download statistics show that only a few users actually downloaded the PCLinuxOS package and we cannot provide packages for every Linux distribution, there has to be a break somewhere

I find that hard to believe as I am active on the PCLinuxOS forum and I would estimate 90% of members used the PCLinuxOS 2007 version from the VBox download site.

Plus, you say there has to be a break somewhere, but its not as though we are asking for a NEW addition to be added - the PCLinuxOS version WAS there but was TAKEN AWAY which is a very poor show indeed. To re-emphasize this was a not NEW download being asked for but a continuation of one that had been there for ages.

How many users/downloads would be needed for the download to be re-instated? As I am pretty sure enough "business" could be drummed up to make it very worthwhile for Oracle to be kind enough to help "existing" users out.

Maybe they will track the wget downloads as that will be our getvirtualbox script being ran by our users and re-instate a proper rpm package for PCLinuxOS.

Texstar
PCLinuxOS- ranked 5 out of 500+ distributions on distrowatch.com

[jsmith]

Maybe they will track the wget downloads as that will be our getvirtualbox script being ran by our users and re-instate a proper rpm package for PCLinuxOS.

Lets hope to Tex.

It would bring a lot of kudos back to the Oracle / Virtualbox group if they did do so, and good news like that is worth its weight in gold in an open source environment that we ALL use.

Fingers crossed.