onboard USB port viewable but greyed out on OSX

[jbrose]

I am on an iMac with OSX 10.6.8 and have installed Virtualbox 4.1.2 with Ubuntu 11.0.4

I am attempting to access a flash drive via one of the onboard USB ports on my iMac from within Ubuntu

I have ...

loaded VBox extensions using the same version number as my VBox installation
added my user ID in Ubuntu to the user group "vboxsf"
restarted Vbox

I do not seem to be able to access my connected USB drive from Ubuntu within VBox. Although if I remove the flash drive I get a "The disk was not ejected properly. If possible etc." message in a pop up dialog box.

When I plug the USB back in I see flashing green light on the USB icon in lower right corner. But when I right click on the icon I see the device in the list but it is "greyed" and not active for right clicking on it.

Any suggestions?

Thanks

[rpmurray]

Have you tried creating a filter for the USB device? Usually when you insert a USB device on OS X the host will grab it before the guest can. Creating a filter will allow the guest to wrest control from the host.

[jbrose]

I have gone into the "Oracle VM VirtualBox Manager" and on the running Ubuntu 11.0.4 VM in the "Details" view clicked on "USB" and added a filter for the USB Flash drive I have plugged into my OSX USB port. It is "JetFlash Mass Storage Device" [0100]" and done a restart of the Ubuntu VM.

However, once I right-click on the USB icon in my Ubuntu window I am still getting the list with the "JetFlash etc." in grey and apparently unaccessible from my VM.

Any other steps I may have missed?

Thanks for your efforts

[rpmurray]

Any other steps I may have missed?

Have you read the USB Support section in the User Manual starting at page 52?

[jbrose]

My USB port is working. Apparently after I set the filter yesterday and restarted there is some latency before the port access takes affect. It must have been several minutes.

Thanks for your help.

[jbrose]

Regarding page 52 of the User Manual, it says "On a Windows host, you will need to unplug and reconnect a USB device to use it after creating a filter for it." It seems you also need to do that on OSX box running Ubuntu 11.0.4 in VirtualBox in order for the USB drive to be active.