USB and folder sharing problem with Virtual Box

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

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.

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.

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.

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.