virtualbox wont show USB ports in the guest OS

[Graham Watkins]

Jack Wallen wrote:
> Joep,
>
> Have you done the following (I am cutting an pasting from an article I
> wrote on ghacks.net):
>
> Configure USB
>
> Now it’s time to configure the system to allow USB support. You have to
> get the user ID of the vboxusers group. To do this issue the following
> command:
>
> grep vboxusers /etc/group
>
> which will report something like:
>
> vboxusers:x:123:
>
> What you need to now do is add a line to the /etc/fstab file. This line
> will be (if we stick with the user ID report you see above):
>
> none /proc/bus/usb usbfs devgid=123,devmode=664 0 0
>
> With that file saved you are ready to reboot and start up VirtualBox
> with USB support.
>
>
>   
>>> -- 
>>> ubuntu-users mailing list
>>> ubuntu-users at lists.ubuntu.com
>>> Modify settings or unsubscribe at:
>>> https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-users
>>>       
>
>
> to that Jack Wallen says:
>
>
>
>   
If you have done all that is suggested above there are 2 further points
worth looking at.  If your USB devices are shown greyed out in
Virtualbox configuration, it may be the case that they need to be
unmounted in Ubuntu before Virtualbox is started as they can't be shared.

The other point is that there seems to be some sort of bug in Windows XP
that prevents the USB drivers from being installed properly even when
Virtualbox shows the devices as being available.  This is corrected when
XP Service Pack 2 is installed.  I did that and the USB drivers then
installed correctly and my flash drives were available under Windows.

Not a lot of people know that.  At least nobody told me.

-- 
Graham Watkins

"To mess up a Linux box, you need to work at it; to mess up your Windows
box, you just need to work on it."
SecurityFocus columnist Scott Granneman.