virtualbox.org

Ok, let's all do this through the GUI. First, open the VM settings and go to USB settings. Then click on the + icon to add a filter. You can make it very specific for your iPod, or you can loosen the rules a bit and only have Manufacturer and Name.

After you set the rule, remove the iPod from the system, boot the VM, and plug it in AFTER the Guest OS has fully booted.

Different error, but still no joy.
Shut down the VM.
Set up a USB filter for the iPod consisting of Manufacturer="Apple" and Product="iPod".
Unplugged iPod.
Started VM.
Logged in, started iTunes, waited for HD activity to quiesce.
Plugged in iPod, no reaction from VirtualBox or the VM.
Right-clicked the USB dropdown and selected the iPod from the list of attached devices, and got this error: (Before it was a VERR_READ_ERROR.)

I've looked through a bunch of bugtracker cases covering several cases of specific USB hardware failure, and the most anyone seems to be able to say is "try the newer version, it'll be fixed there." The thing here is that it *was* working for me with an older version, and now it's not.

At this point, I'm going to rip out the VirtualBox install by the roots and try installing the oldest version for Lucid.
Any better ideas?
Any suggestions on how to make sure everything is ripped out (except for the virtual disk, I'll need to keep that)?

Well I don't think I would go that route but it's your system.

I do have a few questions though.

1) do any USB device work?
2) are you absolutely sure your login name is *still* in the vboxusers group?
3) have you verified that your login name is in the vboxusers group?

You can also post a few things for us to look at.

• the results of id in a terminal.
  the guests log file (as an attachment)
  From the hosts terminal type VBoxManage showvminfo <VM Name> --details and post here. Replace <VM Name> with the actual name of the VM. Use " " if the name has a space in it.

and /etc/udev/rules.d/10-vboxdrv.rules

Perryg, thanks for your reply.
1. Yes. As I stated in my original writeup, the USB printer hooks up just fine to the VM.
2. Yes. "grep vboxuser /etc/group" turns up my userid.
3. Yes. "groups" from a command prompt includes vboxusers.
I'm open to suggestions, but it's looking like I've hit diminishing returns here.

I'm gonna rip everything out and do as clean a reinstall as I can of 3.1_3.1.8-61349~Ubuntu~lucid_amd64, which is the earliest version available for Lucid. Wish me luck.

See you on the other side.

To the surprise of exactly no-one, my un- and re-install didn't work. Not with the old version, not with the current version.
Reading up a bit on Ubuntu, it appears that the Lucid release introduced some wonkiness with the udev subsystem.
Any idea if a udev rule for the explicit iPod device in question might help?

No, it will more more than likely cause more problems. Back when I ran Ubuntu, I never had any issues with USB. I've used Ubuntu since Feisty (7.04) and I can't really remember what year I started using VB, but it was 1.5.x. With each VB and Ubuntu release, there was no issue at all. All the way to Natty, I was able to put my iPhone 3Gs to a VM.

I was having a similar issue and fixed it by disabling USB 2.0 in the USB section of the VBox UI.

For me, this turned out to be a permissions issue with a device node in the Linux host file system.

In my case (using a USB JTAG programmer in the guest OS, Win XP Pro SP3), chmod'ing the perms on /dev/usb/hiddev0 immediately solved the problem.

Hope that helps someone.

Thank you to all those involved in the development of this amazing software.

cheers, asbokid