USB Device Sharing Fails
Posted: 4. Aug 2011, 19:08
Hi all -
I bought a USB Ethernet adapter hoping to share it with a virtual machine on my OS X host. My reason for doing this is pen-testing sensitive equipment. I'd like to be sure that the OS X host doesn't chat on the network during the test.
I'm using this adapter: http://www.amazon.com/Plugable-Gigabit- ... 153&sr=8-2. It is an ASIX AX88178.
When I plug the adapter in OS X, the OS X driver captures it, meaning that it can't be shared to a VM. So I remove the driver is kextunload, with verbosity on to ensure that it is unloaded. I also check with kextstat to be sure that the kernel driver is no longer loaded.
I then go to my virtual machine and go to the menu option USB -> ASIX AX88178 to share the device with the VM...and nothing happens. The VM never sees the device. The VM is Backtrack5. Running 'lsusb' shows nothing new, dmesg shows no USB connect message. If I go to the USB menu a second time, there is no check mark next to the ASIX device. If I click on the "USB" menu again, no USB devices are displayed.
I am running Snow Leopard as the host OS, fully updated BackTrack 5 as the guest OS, and I'm using the latest stable VirtualBox (Vbox says no updates needed, though the 'About' information only shows that it's GUI release r0). Sharing all manner of other devices works just fine, by the way...just not this adapter. I'm half-curious if the adapter is doing something weird or non-USB-compliant, but wonder how I would find out?
Thanks for any help/bug fixes
.
Reid
I bought a USB Ethernet adapter hoping to share it with a virtual machine on my OS X host. My reason for doing this is pen-testing sensitive equipment. I'd like to be sure that the OS X host doesn't chat on the network during the test.
I'm using this adapter: http://www.amazon.com/Plugable-Gigabit- ... 153&sr=8-2. It is an ASIX AX88178.
When I plug the adapter in OS X, the OS X driver captures it, meaning that it can't be shared to a VM. So I remove the driver is kextunload, with verbosity on to ensure that it is unloaded. I also check with kextstat to be sure that the kernel driver is no longer loaded.
I then go to my virtual machine and go to the menu option USB -> ASIX AX88178 to share the device with the VM...and nothing happens. The VM never sees the device. The VM is Backtrack5. Running 'lsusb' shows nothing new, dmesg shows no USB connect message. If I go to the USB menu a second time, there is no check mark next to the ASIX device. If I click on the "USB" menu again, no USB devices are displayed.
I am running Snow Leopard as the host OS, fully updated BackTrack 5 as the guest OS, and I'm using the latest stable VirtualBox (Vbox says no updates needed, though the 'About' information only shows that it's GUI release r0). Sharing all manner of other devices works just fine, by the way...just not this adapter. I'm half-curious if the adapter is doing something weird or non-USB-compliant, but wonder how I would find out?
Thanks for any help/bug fixes
.Reid