Virtualbox USB Support

From openSUSE

For openSuSE 10.3 (should work on other versions as well)

To enable usb support for Virtualbox on openSuSE 10.3, you simply need to modify fstab to load usbfs under the vboxuser gid with a device mode (permissions) of 0644. It is a two step process:

(1) locate the vboxuser gid, either using Yast->Group Management, or simply:

       Rankin-P35a~> grep vboxuser /etc/group
       vboxusers:x:113:david

       The vboxuser gid is "113", yours will vary of course

(2) As root, edit /etc/fstab and set the gid and mode for usbfs as follows:

  /sys/bus/usb/drivers  /proc/bus/usb  usbfs   devmode=664,devgid=113     0 0

That's it, reboot or source fstab in your favorite way and usb will now work flawlessly with Virtualbox. Once in Virtualbox, just add a filter for the usb device you would like to connect and your done.

For openSuSE 11

To enable usb support for Virtualbox on openSuSE 11, you simply need to modify fstab to load usbfs under the vboxuser gid with a device mode (permissions) of 0644. It is a two step process:

(1) locate the vboxuser gid, either using Yast->Group Management, or simply:

       Rankin-P35a~> grep vboxuser /etc/group
       vboxusers:x:113:david

       The vboxuser gid is "113", yours will vary of course

(2) As root, edit /etc/fstab and set the gid and mode for usbfs as follows:

  /sys/bus/usb/drivers  /proc/bus/usb usbfs  devmode=664,devgid=113 0 0

Pay attention to the flags, they are different from those used in 10.3, devmode instead of mode and devgid instead of gid.

That's it, reboot or source fstab in your favorite way (the easiest way is probably by running "mount -a") and usb will now work flawlessly with Virtualbox. Once in Virtualbox, just add a filter for the usb device you would like to connect and your done.

--Drankinatty 16:20, 21 February 2008 (UTC) David C. Rankin, J.D., P.E.

Reported Problems:

With the changes USB works in VirtulaBox, but my iPod cannot be mounted. If I roll back the change to the USBFS line in the fstab, then the iPod works again.

-- 02:45, 29 July 2008 (CET) Igor Jagec

Reported Problems:

I had to put 'mount -a' entry in the /etc/init.d/boot.local file (or run it manually) on my openSUSE 11.0 in order to make USB support working. Otherwise usbfs support doesn't load for some reason.

Reported Problems:

On openSUSE 11.0 and VirtualBox 2.0.4 the usbfs fstab entry did not work for me. However the following, from the VirtualBox FAQ, did:

   none  /proc/bus/usb  usbfs  auto,busgid=XXX,busmode=0775,devgid=XXX,devmode=0664  0  0

Where XXX is the 'gid' of vboxusers. -- 07:06, 6 November 2008 (GMT)