Set up USB for Virtualbox

Question

I'm using Ubuntu Maverick and Virtual Box 3+ and I installed Window 7 Ultimate Editon. The problem is that it doesn't detect USB drives on Window 7 but USB peripherals (mouse + keybord) are working.

I followed this instruction, but I can't find the user group vboxusers. How can I continue? I would also like to upgrade to the latest version without any risk (without losing my virtual hard disk drive).

Answer 1

USB in different versions of Virtual Box

For use of USB in Virtual Box 3.x you need a PUEL-version. From Virtual Box 4.x USB 1.0 is supported in the OSE version installed from software center. For USB 2.0 we need to install an extension pack free for download from Oracle. This will make our Virtual Box a PUEL-Version (see this question on details on how to install Virtual Box from the Oracle repository).

Become a "vboxuser"

To be able to get access to an attached USB device we need to be in the vboxusers group. This can be done from Users and Groups after having installed the gnome-system-tools or from the command line by

sudo usermod -aG vboxusers <username> 

We need a reboot for group membership to take effect.

Activate USB support in Virtual Box Manager

We need to activate the virtual USB driver in our guest OS. In the USB settings from Virtual Box Manager tick "Enable USB Controller" For enabling the USB 2.0 driver also tick "Enable USB 2.0 (EHCI) Controller".

Select host USB device for access from the guest

To grant access to USB devices we need to select a device to disable in the host and to enable in the guest (this is a precaution to avoid simultaneous access from host and guest). This can be done from the panel Devices menu or by right mouse click in the bottom panel of the Virtual Box Manager on the USB icon:

Tick the device you need in the guest, untick it if you need it in the host. The selected device will immediately be accessible from the guest. A Windows guest may need additional drivers:

Use USB filters for permanent access in the guest

By defining USB filters we can define USB devices that will automatically be presented to the guest when booting the guest OS.

Click on the green + symbol on the right to add a known device.

Note, that some devices may lead to a boot failure of the guest. We can not use these devices for filters.

Read more on USB support in the Virtual Box User Manual.

Answer 2

• Install gnome-system-tools b/c The old Users and Groups GUI is not available by default on 11.10

sudo apt-get install gnome-system-tools

• After the installation finished Open user and groups from launcher

• Select your username click on Manage Groups and select vboxusers and click add.

• logout/login to be able to use usb in vertualbox.

Answer 3

The vboxusers will be in the /etc/group file. You edit it with something like nano .

sudo nano /etc/group

Add your user to the vboxusers line, or create one if necessary.

As Takkat has pointed out, to get full USB device support, you'll need to install the full (not the OSE) version of Virtualbox.

The ppa I have for the "official" virtualbox is here:

/etc/apt/sources.list.d/virtualbox-offical-source.list:  
deb http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian maverick contrib #VirtualBox Offical Source