VirtualBox USB Support

From openSUSE

This section does not apply to the Open Source Edition (OSE), as the OSE version does not have USB support. It applies only to the commercial version supplied as a binary file.

The following instructions were tested using VirtualBox 1.5, 2.x, and 3.x. Before using these instructions be sure you have a successful, working install of VirtualBox. You will need to be logged in under the user ID of root to use these instructions.

Step 1. Check that the user group ID vboxusers exists. If not, create the user group vboxusers using YaST -> Security and Users -> Group Management.

Step 2. Discover the group ID (GID) number for group ID vboxusers. You can do this using YaST -> Security and Users -> Group Management. A new window will appear with a drop-down menu named Set Filter in the lower-right-hand corner. Change Set Filter to System Groups and scroll down to near the bottom of the list, where you should see the group name vboxusers with its group ID number to the right of vboxusers. Alternative way: grep vbox /etc/group as user root.

Step 3. Add the desired user ID (e.g. john) to the user group vboxusers. Click the button in the lower-right-hand corner labeled Finish.

Step 4. Add the following to the end of the file /etc/fstab:

none /proc/bus/usb usbfs devgid=XXX,devmode=664 0 0

where XXX is the group ID number you discovered in Step 2.

For VirtualBox 2 and 3 on OpenSUSE you should add the following to /etc/fstab and delete any other lines with usb:

/sys/bus/usb/drivers /proc/bus/usb usbfs devgid=XXX,devmode=664 0 0

and add following line to /etc/init.d/boot.local

mount -a

Step 5. Reboot.

Now, all users added to the group ID vboxusers should have USB access in VirtualBox. When you open an existing virtual machine, or finish creating a new virtual machine, you should see USB as one of the possible configuration options like this (please note the red highlighted area):

Next, click on the blue word USB shown in the red highlighted immediately above. This takes you to:

As shown in the example immediately above, enable (click) the checkbox labled Enable USB Controller, then click OK.

VirtualBox USB support should work now.