[Solved] Virtualbox does not see the PC's USB ports

[AZgl1800]

inxi -S
System: Host: john-TP500LA Kernel: 4.13.0-26-generic x86_64 (64 bit)
Desktop: Cinnamon 3.6.7 Distro: Linux Mint 18.3 Sylvia

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Trying to get the pkgs installed into VM to see the ExtUSB HDD,
but when I look at Setting for VM, and click on the + to the right side, a window pops up and is grayed out, "not available"

Was unable to catch the little 'unavailable message in this screenshot, because when VM is running, the kybd Screenshot key is disabled.

So, I used the icon for Screenshot instead, that made the Message Window disapper.

.

VM USB.png

[Sir Charles]

Have you installed the Extension Pack for VB? If not, take a look at https://www.techrepublic.com/article/ho ... irtualbox/ for how to install the Extension Pack and enable the USB access for your VM. Hope this helps.

[Cosmo.]

Is your account on the host member of the group vboxusers?

Open Users & Groups and mark your account. You see on the right side near the bottom the list of the groups, where you belong to. If vboxusers is not listed there, click it (it is a button) and activate this group. You must (on the host) log out and back in to make this change effective.

Besides that: Forget at first the usb filters in the VM settings. They are there for convenience, but not technically needed. For beginners wrong filters can even confuse things.

[AZgl1800]

Is your account on the host member of the group vboxusers?

Open Users & Groups and mark your account. You see on the right side near the bottom the list of the groups, where you belong to. If vboxusers is not listed there, click it (it is a button) and activate this group. You must (on the host) log out and back in to make this change effective.

Besides that: Forget at first the usb filters in the VM settings. They are there for convenience, but not technically needed. For beginners wrong filters can even confuse things.

Okay, the USB port now shows up in Linux Mint Mate okay.

WinXP and Win7 both recognize the USB drive is there, they both go thru the motions of installing the driver.
But, neither one shows a USB drive in File Manager.

Much better than before.....

Cosmo: Your hint about being in the VBoxUsers was dead on. My account did not have that selected, but it is now.

Oh, no USB ports showed up in Linux until I added a USB filter and pointed it at the proper ExtUSB drive.

thanks to everyone....

I am curious though, why neither version of Windows can see the USB port

Marziano » Thu Feb 22, 2018 2:51 am
Have you installed the Extension Pack for VB? If not, take a look at https://www.techrepublic.com/article/ho ... irtualbox/ for how to install the Extension Pack and enable the USB access for your VM. Hope this helps.

Dead on, thanks a lot.... I had read half a dozen different articles on how to install the Guest Addition, and none of them aided me in getting it done. That TechRepublic article walked me thru it in one step, done.

I have a subscription to their newsletters, quite good.


Just to make the thread complete, this is the steps to go thru:

open up VirtualBox and do the following:

Click File | Preferences
Click the Extension tab and then click the + button (Figure A)
Navigate to where you saved the Extension Pack
Select the Extension Pack and click Open
When prompted, click the Install button
Scroll through the EULA and then click I Agree
Type your sudo password
Allow the installation to complete

[Cosmo.]

USB devices can only appear either in the host or in the guest - never in both on the same time. If a usb device is visible on the host, you can select this device from the devices menu of the running VM.

Big But: Do not connect a usb drive to a virtual machine (other usb devices are OK). The reason is, that as soon as you do this the drive gets hard disconnected from the host. This will result in possible data loss. Use instead a shared folder to copy files from / to the usb drive.

[AZgl1800]

USB devices can only appear either in the host or in the guest - never in both on the same time. If a usb device is visible on the host, you can select this device from the devices menu of the running VM.

Big But: Do not connect a usb drive to a virtual machine (other usb devices are OK). The reason is, that as soon as you do this the drive gets hard disconnected from the host. This will result in possible data loss. Use instead a shared folder to copy files from / to the usb drive.

Thanks for that big piece of advice, being a newbie at this game, I was not aware of that tar pit.

I am aware that Ext4 has a delay writing things to the HDD and am very carefully to always use the System to do a "Safe unmount" on my ExtUSB HDD which is always in the 3.0 port on this laptop. Took me a bit to figure out which of the 3 ports was 3.0, there are 3 ports total, but only one of them is 3.0 but when I was copying some big files from the HDD to the USB drive, I was noticing the bps rate as it was done. Unmounted the drive, and moved it to another port.... and when it was in the 3.0 port, the transfer rate went up by a tremendous amount.

This became extremely obvious when I was running Grsync to make a full backup.... the first time I was using the 2.0 port, and then I moved it over to the 3.0 port... and wow! is that a huge improvement.