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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

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.

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

jbrose wrote:Any other steps I may have missed?

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

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.

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.