USB data storage devices not being seen webcam & tuner OK

[VE4PER]

Can someone point me in the right direction pls?

I have Mint16Petra host with WinXP pro guest. VirtualBox "Devices" shows USB TV Tuner and a USB webcam as available. The USB filter window shows USB 2.0 checked as enabled. There is a blank filter added; but the guest does not recognize any data storage devices like thumb drives, ADS Technologies external USB hard drive adapter or any smartphones as phones or as just data card storage devices. They all are actie and mounted in the host when plugged in but do not gat recognized by the guest as an available device.

The tv tuner and webcam are recognized by both the guest and host.

perplexing to say the least, especially when the enable USB 2.0 checkbox was available to me to check as enabled.

[socratis]

They all are actie and mounted in the host when plugged in but do not gat recognized by the guest as an available device.

Maybe you should unmount them from the host? Here are part of the (typical) steps that I post when someone has USB issues.
Follow the steps below. If there is a failure, please state which step failed:

1. Create a USB filter in your guest settings while the device is plugged in the host. Delete all values except VendorID and ProductID.
2. Unplug the device.
3. Start your guest (the one that you applied the filter to). Let it start completely. Log in if you have to.
4. Plug your device. The filter should capture it and pass control to your guest.
5. If the device shows up in your host and is not captured by the filter, either the filter is incorrect, or there might be a problem with your filter installation.
6. If the device shows up, but as unavailable, "eject" it from your host, but leave it plugged in. It should show up as available.
7. Try your favorite search engine. It can work miracles most of the time.

[Flaggmann]

Likewise I too had similar troubles. To follow others' advice you might first open a terminal window and do lsusb with all your devices connected. This will give you the product ID and vendor ID that the VB "Machine" prefs ask for in the USB filter window. To interpret the numbers and use them in the filter:

"Device are mainly identified using a pair of hexadecimal numbers, like 04b3:3108.
The 4 first hexadecimal digits are the Vendor ID (04b3 = IBM).
The 4 last hexadecimal digits are the Device ID (3108 = ThinkPad 800dpi Optical Travel Mouse). " via Debian's wiki website link (noobie here won't allow me to post a link)

Also to ensure your local machine is up to date with the latest USB device info also run sudo update-usbids in a terminal window as well.

I created a new filter with just the VendorID and DeviceID fields filled in for each device I wanted to use, however using this method did not work for me. For some reason it recognizes to use USB 1.1 and 2.0 OK, makes USB webcams and the CD/DVD drive available for use but does not allow winXP guest on linux host to use USB storage drives; with or without filters (single new blank one or custom new ones for each device)

Perhaps if you find a solution that works you can post a reply back here on what you did.

[VE4PER]

I have followed the steps in the post above to no success. I have purged the Vbox install completely and reinstalled it with the extensions as well as the guest additions; NO LUCK

I have unmounted the USB devices from the host and restarted VBox Guest from scratch and still no luck. Did it once with individually identified device filters; no USB filters and one empty new USB filter and still no luck.
The VBOX manual CH 3.10 suggests the following caution:

"1. Be careful with USB devices that are currently in use on the host! For example, if
you allow your guest to connect to your USB hard disk that is currently mounted
on the host, when the guest is activated, it will be disconnected from the host
without a proper shutdown. This may cause data loss."

This would suggest that the user should not have to safely remove items in order for the VBOX to recognize and grab them. (good practice to protect data on devices but not req'd for vbox to see the devices)

The TV Tuner card and web cam are both USB and both get recognized and available for selection from the menu or the small icons in the bottom right corner.
It is not recognizing DATA STORAGE DEVICES on the USB controllers for some reason.

The host recognizes, mounts and opens a file manager to view the contents of each device as soon as they are plugged in; not a hardware issue. There are icons on the desktop for these mounted devices; I unmount/safely remove them and then start the guest and still it does not process these devices to make them available.

The install package for VBox was from the oracle site directly as was the extensions file, (latest versions for both). I checked to see if there were any config files in the VBOX folder in the linux host /home/userid folder and found none; it was the same when I checked the Program Files folder for VBOX on the C drive of the guest. Both NO LUCK.

lsusb in a terminal in the host returns details on ALL devices connected.
updating the list of devices as suggested by commend in Flaggmann's post also works as does command to list the entire list of device from within host PC.
Running ~ $ VBoxManage list usbhost
Host USB Devices:
<none>
~ $
as seen here returns nothing; which is what VBOX is offering up to use.

a few more procedures useful in setting up the filters I found might bo of use to others;


as noted in earlier posts in this thread using lsusb can provide vendor and product ID's but it might also be useful to use the options for lsusb to obtain info for filters as well;
Usage: lsusb [options]...
List USB devices
-v, --verbose
Increase verbosity (show descriptors)
-s [[bus]:][devnum]
Show only devices with specified device and/or
bus numbers (in decimal)
-d vendor:[product]
Show only devices with the specified vendor and
product ID numbers (in hexadecimal)
-D device
Selects which device lsusb will examine
-t, --tree
Dump the physical USB device hierarchy as a tree
-V, --version
Show version of program
-h, --help
Show usage and help

open terminal; cd /proc/scsi/usb-storage ; ls ; should result in numbers of connected devices ; do a cat /proc/scsi/usb-storage/## where ## = the numbers showing as existing in the folder. do it once for each device number you see and each will return the "device serial number" which might be needed in case of using duplicate mfrs and drives.

Using a combination of both of these can provide almost all fields required in the VirtBox Settings USB filters

As for googling/search the results are all the same steps that I have already attempted without success.

Linux Mint 16 Petra 64bit host and Win XP Pro 32 bit guest VirtBox vers 4.3.10r93012 my userid (linux) is member of vboxusers group)
Any gurus with any further suggestions? Thanks


UPDATE attempted to install inet USB stick and s/w installed OK but devices still not showing up as active and useable. thumb drives and inet stick not activated but USB camera/video devices are for guest; host sees, connects and identifies all.

anyone with greater knowledge got a fix for this? Thanks

[VE4PER]

I have installed Oracle VirtualBox (Oracle VirtualBox Vers. 4.3.12 r93733) , from built in synaptic repos, on (ubuntu 12.04, mint 16 & 17, debian 7.5) including guest options package as well as extensions addition to allow use of USB 2.0. I have created a filter for each device that shows up on the host's lsusb listing plus 1 extra blank filter for any other devices that aren't now attached. I have also added my userID to the vboxusers group. Current Hosts are Mint 17 & ubuntu 12.04 LTS and guest is Win XP pro SP 3. Acer Aspire 2GB RAM 64 bit

Virtual box settings shows usb-wireless kybd-mouse, smartphone, ATI USB 600 TV tuner card, generic webcam, all are recognized as devices, however the TV tuner card is listed as a webcam rather than a tuner card and thus is not recognized by catalyst media software installed in the guest. The smartphone is recognized when using it in the desktop/link update mode, however if it is configured as a storage device on using it's added SD card it is not recognized.

No thumb drive storage devices are recognized at all. The bidirectional copy/paste and drag n drop do not appear to work properly either. One can get files back and forth to a thumb drive but have to set up a shared folder from inside the guest that is a shared folder on the host, then go to the host and copy the files from that shared folder to a thumb drive etc.
I have reviewed the Virtual Box manual and followed instructions on "USB Troubleshooting" ; unfortunately s/w OS is newer and does not have the usbfs/ fstab options available to try and fix the problem.

Are there any developers here with any other ideas? I am using one machine with ubuntu 12.04 and one with Mint 17 as host. Win XP Pro SP3 is guest on both.

I have noticed in the google research that this appears to have been a problem for a while without a fix. Any help would be appreciated.

[VE4PER]

Can someone point me in the right direction pls?

I have Mint16Petra host with WinXP pro guest. VirtualBox "Devices" shows USB TV Tuner and a USB webcam as available. The USB filter window shows USB 2.0 checked as enabled. There is a blank filter added; but the guest does not recognize any data storage devices like thumb drives, ADS Technologies external USB hard drive adapter or any smartphones as phones or as just data card storage devices. They all are actie and mounted in the host when plugged in but do not gat recognized by the guest as an available device.

The tv tuner and webcam are recognized by both the guest and host.

perplexing to say the least, especially when the enable USB 2.0 checkbox was available to me to check as enabled.

UPDATE : Jul 26 , 2014 1417 cdt

It appears that the problem identified here in this thread is also affecting the linux OS program "USBviewer". This progam and others associated with it do not see the usb devices either as they return an error

Code: Select all

Can not open the file /sys/kernel/debug/usb/devices
 Verify that you have USB compiled into your kernel, 
 have the USB core modules loaded, and have the 
 usbdevfs filesystem mounted. 

It appears that mint 17, debian 7.5 and ubuntu LTS OS's default install has changed the way usbfs is being handled. The devices are detected and mounted but the locations and kernel modules have changed from previous versions and virtual box and usbviewer have not been updated to take that into account. Web search research suggests a possible solution to recompile kernels to include older usbfs and usbdevfs mounting modules and capabilities to correct the problem.

it appears virtbox and usbviewer are looking for /proc/bus/usb locations to use which of course do not exist and the system does not allow root to create them normally.
If anybody can point me to a simple non-video tutorial to recompile a kernel ( have never done one) I would appreciate it so I don't mess something else up in the process; thanks

[loukingjr]

This forum only supports the official builds of VirtualBox from VirtualBox.org. So any issue you may be having because of using a Linux distos version will most likely not be addressed. Your best bet is to uninstall the guest additions from the repos and install the correct ones.

You also need the extension pack installed to have USB support.

[VE4PER]

when I launch virtbox the info shows it is virtualbox.org just obtained via OS package manager rather than souce also guest add ons and extensions are both installed so USB2.0 enabled

[Perryg]

when I launch virtbox the info shows it is virtualbox.org just obtained via OS package manager rather than souce also guest add ons and extensions are both installed so USB2.0 enabled

Post a guests log file ( as an attachment ) or read the beginning of the log. If you see OSE it is the distros version.