04 May, 2011

USB 2.0 Not recognized by Virtualbox Guest OS

It seems this is a common issue in Virtualbox using Linux as a host OS, and I think it should be addressed by Oracle either adding a button get all stuff configured or creating a 2-steps how-to like this blog entry in the official documentation.

First you must install Oracle VM Virtualbox Extension Pack. Download it from the link above, and follow:

- Select File-> Preferences, it opens a dialog box with configuration preferences
- Select "Extensions" and click the arrow in the right side to add the Extension Pack
- Select the file downloaded, for example: Oracle_VM_VirtualBox_Extension_Pack-4.0.6-71344.vbox-extpack
- Click open and wait until process is complete.

Now that you have USB 2.0 support, you need to add the user running Virtualbox to the vboxusers groups, otherwise you wont be able to see the usb devices:

- edit /etc/group

in the line
vboxusers:x:501:

add the userid of the host OS user running Virtualbox, like this:
vboxusers:x:501:hjuarezv

And voilá, you can start your guest OS and it should be recognizing properly all your usb 2.0 devices.

Hope this helps.

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