{"id":59,"date":"2010-01-27T08:54:00","date_gmt":"2010-01-26T22:54:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.serenux.com\/?p=59"},"modified":"2021-01-14T08:55:49","modified_gmt":"2021-01-13T22:55:49","slug":"howto-fix-virtualbox-not-allowing-you-to-attach-usb-devices-to-your-virtual-machines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.serenux.com\/index.php\/2010\/01\/27\/howto-fix-virtualbox-not-allowing-you-to-attach-usb-devices-to-your-virtual-machines\/","title":{"rendered":"HowTo: Fix Virtualbox not allowing you to attach USB devices to your virtual machines."},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Virtualbox is a great desktop virtualisation tool, but one of its annoying installation niggles is that when you setup and run a virtual machine you can\u2019t attach any USB devices to it at all because all your USB options in Virtualbox are greyed out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There are a raft of different solutions to this problem out there ranging from adding an extra line to the&nbsp;<em>\/etc\/fstab<\/em>&nbsp;file to modifying your udev rules, but the real cause of this problem is simply that your login name does not have&nbsp;<em>permission<\/em>&nbsp;to access Virtualbox\u2019s USB driver which interfaces itself between the VM\u2019s virtual USB hardware and your real USB stack.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">During the initial installation process, Virtualbox sets up a new group called&nbsp;<em>vboxusers<\/em>, but it doesn\u2019t put your login name into it. Since using USB in Virtualbox occurs at the device level, your normal user permissions that allow you to run up virtual machines in general are not enough to manipulate Virtualbox\u2019s USB driver. As a result, you cannot tell Virtualbox to attach a given USB device to your virtual machine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Like most things, this is easily fixed of course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>If your login name is\u00a0<em>johndoe<\/em>, all you need to do is jump into a terminal and type in:<br><br><code>$ sudo adduser johndoe vboxusers<\/code><br><br>\u2026which will add the user\u00a0<em>johndoe<\/em>\u00a0to the\u00a0<em>vboxusers<\/em>\u00a0group.<br><\/li><li>Now close all applications and windows, and log yourself out of Ubuntu. You don\u2019t need to reboot, but you can if you\u2019re the kind of person who enjoys the subtle pleasures of watching your PC start up.<br><\/li><li>Log yourself back in again as normal. This will read in your new group membership.<br><\/li><li>Fire up Virtualbox and start your virtual machine(s) as normal. You will now find that you can attach USB devices to all your VM\u2019s via the Virtualbox\u00a0<em>Devices<\/em>\u00a0menu without any further ado.<br><\/li><li>Pat yourself on the back \u2013 you\u2019re done.\u00a0<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20150317145640im_\/http:\/\/www.serenux.com\/wp-content\/themes\/grey-opaque\/images\/smilies\/icon_smile.gif\" alt=\"Smilie: :)\"><\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Until Sun Microsystems modify the deb installer to add the current login to the&nbsp;<em>vboxusers<\/em>&nbsp;group during install, these instructions should apply to just about any version of Virtualbox sporting the problem, on any Linux distro.&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Virtualbox is a great desktop virtualisation tool, but one of its annoying installation niggles is that when you setup and run a virtual machine you can\u2019t attach any USB devices to it at all because all your USB options in Virtualbox are greyed out. There are a raft of different solutions to this problem out [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-59","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tutorials"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.serenux.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.serenux.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.serenux.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.serenux.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.serenux.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.serenux.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60,"href":"https:\/\/www.serenux.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59\/revisions\/60"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.serenux.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.serenux.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.serenux.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}