virtualbox.org

I just completed a fresh installation of Ubuntu (host) and VirtualBox, and was unable to access any of the USB devices on my guest systems. A bit of troubleshooting lead me to discover that the user which installed virtualbox wasn't automatically added to the vboxusers group during the installation.

I was able to manually fix this with the command:

sudo usermod -a -G vboxusers $myUserName

Just wanted to make note of it here in case anyone else encounters this problem, as well as to enable the dev team to look into correcting the issue within the installer.

Host: Ubuntu 18.04 LTS
VirtualBox: 5.2.10_Ubuntu r121806

685o9xn wrote:5.2.10_Ubuntu r121806

It looks like you're using the distro's fork version of VirtualBox. You can either ask in their forums for help, or completely remove/uninstall/delete/purge their version and install the official version from the Downloads section of VirtualBox.

But even if you install the official VirtualBox version, that "problem" that you're describing is still going to be there. Because what in your eyes seems like a problem, in the developer's eyes (and the majority of the users) it's something that makes sense. Mainly from a security point of view, which Linux users are a little bit more sensitive about.

685o9xn wrote:the user which installed virtualbox wasn't automatically added to the vboxusers group during the installation

And who exactly installed VirtualBox? The user that started the installer? No, no, no... 'root' did. Do you remember putting your 'sudo' password? And it's not a good idea to have 'root' to a 'vboxusers' group, because you should never, ever run VirtualBox as root, only as a normal, simple user. Again security.

So, you have to add yourself and/or other users that use the computer to the 'vboxusers' group. Not that difficult of a task, methinks. The procedure is actually described in the manual, so it shouldn't require any troubleshooting at all from your part, simply following instructions. See ch. 2. Installation details » 2.3. Installing on Linux hosts » 2.3.4 The vboxusers group:

2.3.4 The vboxusers group wrote:The Linux installers create the system user group vboxusers during installation. Any system user who is going to use USB devices from VirtualBox guests must be a member of that group. A user can be made a member of the group vboxusers through the GUI user/group management or at the command line with

• sudo usermod -a -G vboxusers username