USB and folder sharing problem with Virtual Box

[whs]

I am running Ubuntu in Virtuakl Box. Runs fine except that I have trouble with sharing. Guest additions are installed. When I try to attach the USB stick, I get this message:

The USB stick was activated in the vBox control panel when the Virtual machine was off.

And when I try to attach the folder, nothing happens. More details here: That one was activated too.

 

[Night Hawk]

The main problem you are running into there is that Linux doesn't natively support USB from the start. One reference I can point you to for Basic USB Configuration can be seen at: How to get USB devices working under Linux

The home page for that site is seen at: USB Support for Linux Often with the other OS just like with Windows with usb devices of any type drivers may be required!

As for VBox I never can get anything usb even optical going since I still have to get the integrated components part to work on the Portable VirtualBOX version of that particular program. For now however I'll be getting more familiar with the latest VM Player 4.0 just released. The first VM was Linux Mint Debian for a look at the latest version of VM Player.

Upon starting up the VM I just saw created it automatically listed the external hard drive enclosure presently on as well as a flash drive plugged into a hub. Note the screen attached below.

 

[whs]

The funny thing is that I had the USB shared on my vBox in my old system. But I do not remember how I did that. This new installation is the same, but it just does not want to work. The folder sharing though I have never managed.

 

[Night Hawk]

I went over the support docs at the VBox site and was only able to find one item regarding "Setting up USB on Ubuntu 7.04" obviously a much older release seen at: https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/USB_on_Ubuntu_7.04

That's likely the closest to what you are looking for there with the edit of ubuntu configuration file adding a little more info on one entry already present.

 

[whs]

Thanks, that is an interesting next step once I was able to mount the stick. I will work on it some more tomorrow. I may also seek the help of the vBox forum where I am a member. Now it is after midnight and too late for experiments, lol.

 

[Night Hawk]

Well let me know how it goes once you can get back to it. Meanwhile I'll be tasked with another distro on another program trying to custom install it onto the VHD there!

 

[whs]

Will do. Your project sounds interesting too.

 

[Night Hawk]

I went for the latest version of VM Player 4.0 and had a few surprizes! For one I never expected to be using GParted on the 8gb VHD stored on the drive as a file.

When the distro's installer wouldn't take I found out the VHD needed a partition table then created by the distro's version of GParted. The new primary was created after followed by choosing the file system and editing the primary to see it made the mount point "/".

When the installation finishes up I won't need to keep the live to install disk in the dvd drive any longer.

 

[Kari]

Wolfgang, did you download and install VirtualBox Extension Pack? It is needed for USB2 support, so if your USB port and stick are USB2, stick is not going to work with VirtualBox when Extension Pack is not installed.



Kari

 

[whs]

Kari, I did not download the extension pack originally. But after reading the documentation a bit, I installed it afterwards. But maybe it did not install right. I will try again with your link. Thank you.

 

[Night Hawk]

Here's a ffew things to note from the USB Support section on the Chapter #3 page seen at https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch03.html#settings-usb

USB settings

The "USB" section in a virtual machine's Settings window allows you to configure VirtualBox's sophisticated USB support.


VirtualBox can allow virtual machines to access the USB devices on your host directly. To achieve this, VirtualBox presents the guest operating system with a virtual USB controller. As soon as the guest system starts using a USB device, it will appear as unavailable on the host.
Note

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.
2. Solaris hosts have a few known limitations regarding USB support; please see Chapter 14, Known limitations.

In addition to allowing a guest access to your local USB devices, VirtualBox even allows your guests to connect to remote USB devices by use of the VirtualBox Remote Desktop Extension (VRDE). For details about this, see the section called “Remote USB”.


In the Settings dialog, you can first configure whether USB is available in the guest at all, and in addition also optionally enable the USB 2.0 (EHCI) controller for the guest. If so, you can determine in detail which devices are available. For this, you must create so-called "filters" by specifying certain properties of the USB device.

You'll find that section by scrolling down near the bottom of the page there. Read that over good. The expansions are something for the latest version of VBox. I think I still have the 3.1 if correct installed here.

 

[whs]

Thanks for the additional info. I finally got the USB sharing working. Now I am wrestling with folder and clipboard sharing. But we'll skin that cat too.

This vBox sometimes acts strange. I updated to the latest release and lost my Guest Additions in the process. No big deal I though and tried to reinstall them. 3 times they refused to install and the 4th time it worked. Go figure.

 

[Night Hawk]

Don't feel bad! I haven't been using VBox for some time now and once you let a vm sit idle for too long you end up needing to remove one to see a new replacement!

This latest version is now seeing additional parts likely to update support for things like usb but will take some getting used to. The VMs you had will likely need to be replaced with new ones to accomidate the changes seen with the updated version.

I'm trying to get the first VM on the latest VM Player 4.0 to take at the moment. The first attempt seems to have stalled completely. But the distro going on is a bit larger about the size of Knoppix being Linux Mint Debian.

Everything is detected automatically however. Flash drives, external hard drive enclosure, usb printer, etc. along with the other host drives and hardwares. I'm favoring this over VBox for the alternative already having the support already integrated into it.

Later I will be giving this VBox release a much closer look and glad to hear you got past the usb part of it. You should be able to get through the sharing part too once you get past the new feel of the program.

 

[whs]

Yeah, easy does it. This is not a vital matter. I am only playing around with it in the hopes to learn something - just curious. I used Fedora for a while, but I seem to have little affinity to any Linux. Maybe Mint would be a better choice. I'll try that one day when I have nothing to do - which is most any day, LOL.

 

[Night Hawk]

The Debian release of Mint is all self contained with no newer releases as you would see with other distros more or less having their "flavor of the month" as a few writers remark. This is one where you simply update each item individually while keeping the same install. It also includes the install option for some 200 apps rather then looking around to see what is available.

You can mount the iso you download for a live session easy enough or burn that to disk. What I am working on with the VM Player is a direct install to VHD to see how that will go. This one as well as ubuntu has already been installed direct to a few larger usb flash drives. But this was mostly for a look at the 4.0 version.