How to Fix VirtualBox USB Support (ubuntu 9.10)

Step-by-step tutorial with screenshots !!

It is actually a known fact that there is an issue with VirtualBox and the attached USB devices that many of us are trying to use in the virtual machine. Here is a real-life example:

I am a 100% Linux user and I have a photo printer that Linux can't recognize. Let's say that I want to print some photos quickly, to give them to someone. I have a Windows installation in a virtual machine just for this reason (sad, I know) and I want to access my printer, which is connected via a USB port. To my surprise, I can see the printer in the USB device list of VirtualBox, but I can't access it (very frustrating). Firing up Firefox and searching on Google for a fix takes too long, because there are many old tutorials that teach you how to modify various files or change permissions, etc. What to do? Well, below is the answer to the endless VirtualBox – USB issue (and it's pretty damn simple too!).

This tutorial was created mostly for my needs, but I am sure that many of you will find it very helpful. Ready?

This is how a default installation of VirtualBox in Ubuntu 9.04 shows the USB devices, and we need to fix it.




Go to System -> Administration -> Users and Groups...




Click the "Unlock" button...




Type your password and click the "Authenticate" button....




Click on the "Manage Groups" button...




In the "Groups settings" window that will appear, scroll down until you see the vboxusers entry. Select it and then click on the "Properties" button...




Another window will appear, called "Group 'vboxusers' Properties. Just check the box in front of your username and click the "OK" button when you're done...




Close the "Group settings" and "Users Settings" windows and log out. Log in and open up VirtualBox, start your virtual machine and you will see that you can now access the USB devices!




Yes... it was that simple!

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How to Fix Windows 7 Sharing in VirtualBox

Workaround for Shared Folders in VirtualBox with Windows 7 !!!

So, what's not working? Well, you set the folder(s) in the "Shared Folders" section of the virtual machine's settings dialog and they will NOT appear in Windows 7, like it works with Windows XP.

Like many of you out there, I've searched and searched on the Internet for a solution to this issue, which I've also noticed to be quite popular (why should it be? you create something on the virtual machine and you want to save it, right?), and many guides are incomplete or they point you in the wrong direction. Therefore, I present today  a step-by-step tutorial (with screenshots) to this very simple-to-fix issue (you won't believe how simple it was in the end).

For this tutorial, we've used VirtualBox 3.0.6 and Windows 7 Ultimate, on an Ubuntu 9.10 Alpha 6 machine. The following steps assume that you do NOT have any shared folders added to your Windows 7 virtual machine. If you already have set the folders, just follow the last three steps!

1. Open VirtualBox, and with the Windows 7 virtual machine selected in the left side, click the 'General' button on the "Details" tab.

2. In the settings window that appears, click the "Shared Folders" entry (last one) and then click on the little folder icon with a + on it (on the right) to add a new shared folder...


3. A new dialog appears, called Add Share. Click the arrow on the "Folder Path" field and select 'Other.' Search for the folder you want to share with the Windows 7 virtual machine and click OK...


4. You will now see the full path to the folder you want to share and you can give it a name or just leave it as it is. Click OK to close the "Add Share" dialog...


5. You will now see the folder in the "Shared Folders" section. Click OK to close the settings dialog...


6. Now, start the Windows 7 virtual machine. When the system is fully loaded, open My Computer and click on the "Map network drive" button...


7. In the new window that appears, select a driver letter on the "Drive" field (any letter you want from the list), and... here is the big secret... type \\vboxsrv\ followed by the name of your shared folder, in the "Folder" field!

Also, don't forget to check the "Connect using different credentials" option either.


After this, click the "Finish" button and you will be prompted to insert the username and password of your Linux machine. Check the "Remember my credentials" option and click the OK button...


You can see your shared folder in the My Computer window, under the Network Location section... and it also shows how much space is left on the drive...


Simple, wasn't it?!

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VirtualBox -- professional, flexible, open : Interesting solution for many problems !!

VirtualBox is a general-purpose full virtualizer for x86 hardware. Targeted at server, desktop and embedded use, it is now the only professional-quality virtualization solution that is also Open Source Software.
Some of the features of VirtualBox are:

• Modularity. VirtualBox has an extremely modular design with well-defined internal programming interfaces and a client/server design. This makes it easy to control it from several interfaces at once: for example, you can start a virtual machine in a typical virtual machine GUI and then control that machine from the command line, or possibly remotely. VirtualBox also comes with a full Software Development Kit: even though it is Open Source Software, you don't have to hack the source to write a new interface for VirtualBox.

• Virtual machine descriptions in XML. The configuration settings of virtual machines are stored entirely in XML and are independent of the local machines. Virtual machine definitions can therefore easily be ported to other computers.

• Guest Additions for Windows, Linux and Solaris. VirtualBox has special software that can be installed inside Windows, Linux and Solaris virtual machines to improve performance and make integration much more seamless. Among the features provided by these Guest Additions are mouse pointer integration and arbitrary screen solutions (e.g. by resizing the guest window). There are also guest additions for OS/2 with somewhat reduced functionality.

• Shared folders. Like many other virtualization solutions, for easy data exchange between hosts and guests, VirtualBox allows for declaring certain host directories as "shared folders", which can then be accessed from within virtual machines.

A number of extra features are available with the full VirtualBox release only (see the "Editions" page for details):

• Virtual USB Controllers. VirtualBox implements a virtual USB controller and allows you to connect arbitrary USB devices to your virtual machines without having to install device specific drivers on the host.

• Remote Desktop Protocol. Unlike any other virtualization software, VirtualBox fully supports the standard Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP). A virtual machine can act as an RDP server, allowing you to "run" the virtual machine remotely on some thin client that merely displays the RDP data.

• USB over RDP. With this unique feature, a virtual machine that acts as an RDP server can still access arbitrary USB devices that are connected on the RDP client. This way, a powerful server machine can virtualize a lot of thin clients that merely need to display RDP data and have USB devices plugged in. 

Download VirtualBox

Here, you will find links to VirtualBox binaries and its source code.

VirtualBox binarie

The binaries in this section are all released under the VirtualBox Personal Use and Evaluation License (PUEL). By downloading, you agree to the terms and conditions of that license.

• VirtualBox 3.1.6 for Windows hosts x86/amd64

• VirtualBox 3.1.6 for OS X hosts Intel Macs
  Due to an accident the original 3.1.6 Mac OS X package (build 59338) was broken. Please install the fixed package if you installed the broken package. Sorry for the inconveniences!

• VirtualBox 3.1.6 for Linux hosts

• VirtualBox 3.1.6 for Solaris and OpenSolaris hosts x86/amd64

• VirtualBox 3.1.6 Software Developer Kit (SDK) All platforms (registration required) 

• Open Source Edition (OSE) Source code

This is a snapshot of the OSE sources at the time of the stable 3.1.6 release.

• Browse the source code repository
  

This is the current development code, which is not necessarily stable.

• View the latest source code changes

• Checking out from our Subversion server.
  

  svn co http://www.virtualbox.org/svn/vbox/trunk vbox

  This is the current development code, which is not necessarily stable.
  
  Note: The repository was recently moved. If svn update aborts with an error message regarding a moved repository, then do
  

  svn switch --relocate \
     http://virtualbox.org/svn/vbox/trunk \

  http://www.virtualbox.org/svn/vbox/trunk

After getting the sources in one of the ways listed above, you should have a look at the build instructions.

End-user documentation

This page is for end users who are looking for information about how to download and run VirtualBox.
In order to run VirtualBox on your machine, you need:

• Reasonably powerful x86 hardware. Any recent Intel or AMD processor should do.

• Memory. Depending on what guest operating systems you want to run, you will need at least 512 MB of RAM (but probably more, and the more the better). Basically, you will need whatever your host operating system needs to run comfortably, plus the amount that the guest operating system needs. So, if you want to run Windows XP on Windows XP, you probably won't enjoy the experience much with less than 1 GB of RAM. If you want to try out Windows Vista in a guest, it will refuse to install if it is given less than 512 MB RAM, so you'll need that for the guest alone, plus the memory your operating system normally needs.

• Hard disk space. While VirtualBox itself is very lean (a typical installation will only need about 30 MB of hard disk space), the virtual machines will require fairly huge files on disk to represent their own hard disk storage. So, to install Windows XP, for example, you will need a file that will easily grow to several GB in size.

• A supported host operating system. Presently, we support Windows (primarily XP) and many Linux distributions on 32-bit hosts and on 64-bit hosts. Support for Mac OS X and Solaris and OpenSolaris appeared in 1.6.

• A supported guest operating system. Besides the user manual (see below), up-to-date information is available at "Status: Guest OSes". 

	VirtualBox for FreeBSD. This screenshot shows a first version running Ubuntu. NAT networking works.
	VirtualBox for FreeBSD. This screenshot shows a first version capable of running Windows.
	VirtualBox for Mac OS X. One virtual machine is running in seamless mode on Leopard. Note the realtime preview of the virtual machine in the dock.
	VirtualBox for Mac OS X, currently in beta test. Two virtual machines are visible: one with Windows Vista, another with Gentoo Linux.
	Creating a new, empty VM for installing Windows Vista.
	The new VM in the VirtualBox main window. Note that an ISO file (containing the Vista setup CD) has been mounted as the VM's CD-ROM drive.
	After starting the VM, it boots off the virtual CD-ROM (the ISO file with the Vista setup), and Vista Setup starts up.
	Vista is installing into the virtual hard drive.
	Vista install complete: the log-on screen.
	Compiling VirtualBox on Ubuntu Edgy Eft in VirtualBox on Windows XP.
	Details of a snapshot performed after Vista installation. We can revert the virtual machine to this snapshot at a later time.
	Damn Small Linux 2.0 works damn well in VirtualBox!
	The Virtual Disk Manager allows you to work with VM images.
	VirtualBox in Vista inside VirtualBox on XP? Perhaps some day...
	A community-based effort is underway to port VirtualBox to OS/2 hosts. This screenshot shows a first alpha version.

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