I recently doownloaded and installed the latest RHEL5 rpm from the VirtualBox web site. While it generally works very well, I have been unable to get USB access to work on the guest.
This seems to be a very common problem. Many references to it turn up in a web search, but I have not found a solution that works on CentOS 5. I got no response on the vbox-users mailing list either. Can anyone here help?
Among the things I tried were various /sys and /proc/bus/usb related fstab and rc.sysinit changes. Drew a total blank on this one ...
Lars Hecking wrote:
I recently doownloaded and installed the latest RHEL5 rpm from the VirtualBox web site. While it generally works very well, I have been unable to get USB access to work on the guest.
This seems to be a very common problem. Many references to it turn up in a web search, but I have not found a solution that works on CentOS 5. I got no response on the vbox-users mailing list either. Can anyone here help?
Among the things I tried were various /sys and /proc/bus/usb related fstab and rc.sysinit changes. Drew a total blank on this one ...
I have had the same problem. The only thing that I've found to work is this:
Get your vboxusers group ID # cat /etc/group | vboxusers
Remount the USBFS with your vboxusers GID # mount -t usbfs -o remount,devgid=GID,devmode=664 /proc/bus/usb /proc/bus/usb
Change the permissions on /dev/vboxdrv # chmod g+rw /dev/vboxdrv
Restart the vboxdrv service # service vboxdrv restart
Now when you boot your VM up the USB devices aren't greyed out any longer. I suppose you could script this if you wanted, add the usbfs mount to /etc/fstab and have the chmod go in a startup script or something.
Regards, Max
Get your vboxusers group ID # cat /etc/group | vboxusers
Remount the USBFS with your vboxusers GID # mount -t usbfs -o remount,devgid=GID,devmode=664 /proc/bus/usb /proc/bus/usb
This is the bit that won't work. The mount options seem to have no effect:
# ll /proc/bus total 0 dr-xr-xr-x 2 root root 0 Dec 8 16:51 input dr-xr-xr-x 2 root root 0 Dec 8 16:51 pccard dr-xr-xr-x 6 root root 0 Dec 8 12:09 pci drwxr-xr-x 7 root root 0 Dec 8 12:08 usb # ll /proc/bus/usb total 0 dr-xr-xr-x 2 root root 0 Dec 8 12:08 001 dr-xr-xr-x 2 root root 0 Dec 8 12:08 002 dr-xr-xr-x 2 root root 0 Dec 8 12:08 003 dr-xr-xr-x 2 root root 0 Dec 8 12:08 004 dr-xr-xr-x 2 root root 0 Dec 8 12:08 005 -r--r--r-- 1 root root 0 Dec 8 16:47 devices
Change the permissions on /dev/vboxdrv # chmod g+rw /dev/vboxdrv
This one is new to me ...
Restart the vboxdrv service # service vboxdrv restart
... and this one resets the permissions on /dev/vboxdrv to 600.
On Tue, Dec 8, 2009 at 11:52 AM, Lars Hecking lhecking@users.sourceforge.net wrote:
I would imaging it's rather similar to this -> http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=20097
On Tue, Dec 8, 2009 at 11:57 AM, Jim Perrin jperrin@gmail.com wrote:
On Tue, Dec 8, 2009 at 11:52 AM, Lars Hecking lhecking@users.sourceforge.net wrote:
I would imaging it's rather similar to this -> http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=20097
Gah, lowsy spel chekc not pikcing up waht I mean. s/imaging/imagine/
Jim Perrin wrote:
I would imaging it's rather similar to this -> http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=20097
Gah, lowsy spel chekc not pikcing up waht I mean. s/imaging/imagine/
Ridiculous, I know...a computer should know what you're thinking and how to spell it. :)
I tried everything in that post as well, and nothing worked for me. Finally I found the process I laid out and it worked.
The link to it is here which is an old ticket:
http://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/705
Max
I tried everything in that post as well, and nothing worked for me. Finally I found the process I laid out and it worked.
The link to it is here which is an old ticket:
I've tested it and it works! Presumably, it might have worked in some of my previous attempts, but I only now figured out that I need to manually attach the device via device menu or USB icon. Not exactly plug and play, but workable.
The mount command itself is sufficient here, no need to stop vboxdrv (or vboxnet, which doesn't exist), or chmod g+rw /dev/vboxdrv.
Thanks, Max!
Lars Hecking wrote:
I've tested it and it works! Presumably, it might have worked in some of my previous attempts, but I only now figured out that I need to manually attach the device via device menu or USB icon. Not exactly plug and play, but workable.
The mount command itself is sufficient here, no need to stop vboxdrv (or vboxnet, which doesn't exist), or chmod g+rw /dev/vboxdrv.
Oh, ok, cool. Yeah, I didn't try it without restarting vboxdrv so that's nice to know too!
Thanks, Max
On Wed, Dec 09, 2009 at 04:13:04PM +0000, Lars Hecking wrote:
I tried everything in that post as well, and nothing worked for me. Finally I found the process I laid out and it worked.
The link to it is here which is an old ticket:
I've tested it and it works! Presumably, it might have worked in some of my previous attempts, but I only now figured out that I need to manually attach the device via device menu or USB icon. Not exactly plug and play, but workable.
The mount command itself is sufficient here, no need to stop vboxdrv (or vboxnet, which doesn't exist), or chmod g+rw /dev/vboxdrv.
Thanks, Max!
A late addition to this thread:
I just got an external USB drive and wanted to access it from my XP guest. I couldn't figure it out, but I did remember seeing this thread.
i did the steps in the first posting (or at least the first one I still have) and it worked. then I went to look at the virtualbox forum post whose URL is above. I see it has us commenting out the /proc/usb things in rc.sysinit. I've done that, but I assume I need to reboot to see the result (and I don't reboot unless forced to), but I also wonder what else I'm breaking by commenting out those lines. Anybody got any ideas on that?
Thanks!
On Wed, 2009-12-30 at 20:32 -0500, fred smith wrote:
On Wed, Dec 09, 2009 at 04:13:04PM +0000, Lars Hecking wrote:
I tried everything in that post as well, and nothing worked for me. Finally I found the process I laid out and it worked.
The link to it is here which is an old ticket:
I've tested it and it works! Presumably, it might have worked in some of my previous attempts, but I only now figured out that I need to manually attach the device via device menu or USB icon. Not exactly plug and play, but workable.
The mount command itself is sufficient here, no need to stop vboxdrv (or vboxnet, which doesn't exist), or chmod g+rw /dev/vboxdrv.
Thanks, Max!
A late addition to this thread:
I just got an external USB drive and wanted to access it from my XP guest. I couldn't figure it out, but I did remember seeing this thread.
i did the steps in the first posting (or at least the first one I still have) and it worked. then I went to look at the virtualbox forum post whose URL is above. I see it has us commenting out the /proc/usb things in rc.sysinit. I've done that, but I assume I need to reboot to see the result (and I don't reboot unless forced to), but I also wonder what else I'm breaking by commenting out those lines. Anybody got any ideas on that?
--- Um, IF it still want work after one of those methods do rpm -q gparted and if your using it you will have to remove it or rename the gparted UDEV entry. gparted prevent automounting USB Devices.
John
Jim Perrin writes:
On Tue, Dec 8, 2009 at 11:52 AM, Lars Hecking lhecking@users.sourceforge.net wrote:
I would imaging it's rather similar to this -> http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=20097
Been there, tried that.
VirtualBox actually complains if you mess with /sys/bus/usb/drivers:
"You seem to have the USBFS filesystem mounted at /sys/bus/usb/drivers. We strongly recommend that you change this, as it is a severe mis-configuration of your system which could cause USB devices to fail in unexpected ways."
Lars Hecking wrote:
This is the bit that won't work. The mount options seem to have no effect: dr-xr-xr-x 2 root root 0 Dec 8 12:08 001 dr-xr-xr-x 2 root root 0 Dec 8 12:08 002 dr-xr-xr-x 2 root root 0 Dec 8 12:08 003 dr-xr-xr-x 2 root root 0 Dec 8 12:08 004 dr-xr-xr-x 2 root root 0 Dec 8 12:08 005 -r--r--r-- 1 root root 0 Dec 8 16:47 devices
Not to doubt you, but you made sure to put your group id in devgid=some_number?
... and this one resets the permissions on /dev/vboxdrv to 600.
Hmmm, the permissions stay for me.
I too struggled to get USB to work, it seems to be pretty lacking with Linux support in VirtualBox, which is a big downfall. Although, I had a lot of issues with permissions with VMware Server as well when I ran it. I guess pick your poison.
This process works for me though, so I'm not sure what else to suggest to help you out.
Regards, Max
-----Original Message----- From: centos-bounces@centos.org [mailto:centos-bounces@centos.org] On Behalf Of Lars Hecking Sent: Tuesday, December 08, 2009 7:24 AM To: centos@centos.org Subject: [CentOS] VirtualBox and CentOS
I recently doownloaded and installed the latest RHEL5 rpm from the VirtualBox web site. While it generally works very well, I have been unable to get USB access to work on the guest.
This seems to be a very common problem. Many references to it turn up in a web search, but I have not found a solution that works on CentOS 5. I got no response on the vbox-users mailing list either. Can anyone here help?
Among the things I tried were various /sys and /proc/bus/usb related fstab and rc.sysinit changes. Drew a total blank on this one ...
--- Give this a try but I would advise not using on a production machine.
# For VirtualBox # none /sys/bus/usb/drivers usbfs devgid=501,devmode=664 0 0
Also make sure the User is in the VBox Users Group.
John
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fred smith -
Jim Perrin -
JohnS -
JS
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Lars Hecking -
Max Hetrick