virtualbox.org

I am using Mac OS X (10.7.3) with Virtualbox 4.1.12, and a Cisco wirelss USB G adapter. My guest OS is Backtrack 5. I am trying to get the guest OS see the wireless USB G adapter. So far the device shows up in the USB list, but when I select the device I get an error message stating "USB device is busy with a previous request." In the guest OS I issue the command "lsusb" and my wireless USB device is not listed. If anyone has dealt with this issue or a similar issue please let me know how you resolved this issue.

USB device "busy with a previous request" is well documented, I suggest you Google for that.

Why you do need the guest to have direct access to the wireless adapter? Why not let the host manage its own hardware and let the guest just use NAT networking? Or bridged?

Well googling "busy with a previous request" didn't yield too many results. The best piece of information I found was to disable USB 2.0 support in the BIOS, but since I am on a Mac that's not really an option.

Here is what I get when googling "busy with a previous request"

https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&out ... s_l=&pbx=1

And to answer your other question. I want to get a wireless card working in backtrack so I can use the pen testing tools that are heavily supported with wireless cards. The virtual NIC does no good when trying to use the wireless tools in backtrack.

I suspect you first need to release it from the Mac before it will be available to the guest.
Seems to be what everyone else says to do anyway.

Perryg wrote:I suspect you first need to release it from the Mac before it will be available to the guest.
Seems to be what everyone else says to do anyway.

How would I go about releasing the device from the Mac?

well looking at "dmesg" it appears the device isn't even loading in OS X, or there is no kernel extension being loaded for the device, so I don't see why virtualbox would have any problems connecting to the device, other than that OS X needs to some how load the device so virtualbox can recognize it.

I don't know since I don't use a Mac, figured you would since you are a Mac user. Something about tossing it in the trash or the likes. But don't trust that as I said I don't use Mac.

You can find things easy here if you create a search followed with site:virtualbox.org.

Example:
<your keyword search> site:virtualbox.org

Well the device seems to be showing up in virtualbox now (yay) To be specific the device was the WUSB54GC Linksys/Cisco USB wireless device. I installed the drivers for Mac OS X found here http://www.ralinktech.com/en/04_support ... hp?sn=5005

Thanks for everybody who helped.

As I understand the problem, the solution you proposed is good as workaround but not the fix.

I think this general problem in Virtualbox VM for Mac OSX Lion, however somehow seems like nobody is interested in fixing it. Grabbing a USB device by guest works fine in VMWare fusion as well as in Parallels, so its not an issue of host OS, but rather the application (VirtualBox).

Hope someone will read it and act on it as I (and many others) don't want to switch to Parallels nor Fusion as the VB does have one property which neither of them has; the performance.

ipatch wrote:Well googling "busy with a previous request" didn't yield too many results. The best piece of information I found was to disable USB 2.0 support in the BIOS, but since I am on a Mac that's not really an option.

I assumed you would search where the advice is relevant, e.g. this site.

Search with terms "USB site:forums.virtualbox.org".