Fedora VirtualBox USB working

Scenario / Question:

How do I get VirtualBox USB support to work in Fedora ?

Solution / Answer:

Configure usbfs to allow vboxusers access to USB devices and add usbfs mount to /etc/fstab

Configure VirtualBox USB

Obtain the GID of the vboxusers group (your GID may different then 501):

# cat /etc/group |grep vboxusers |awk -F : '{print $3}'
501

Create a directory to mount usbfs in:

# mkdir /vbusbf

Add mount to /etc/fstab and change “devgid” value to the GID you obtained from the command above:

# echo none /vbusbf usbfs rw.devgid=501,devmode=664 0 0

Re-mount /etc/fstab mounts:

# mount -a

Add your user to the vboxusers group (change “username” to your username):

# usermod -a -G vboxusers username

Enable USB controller in VirtualBox for VM Host:

Settings > USB

virtualbox_usb

virtualbox_usb

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Fabio Milano has written 70 articles for us. Fabio Milano is a certified RHCE, MCP, and CFOI. He runs an IT consulting and services company called RDS Support inc. Website:http://www.rdssupport.com

3 Comments so far

  1. [...] http://www.kernelhardware.org/fedora-virtualbox-usb-working/ a few seconds ago from choqoK [...]

  2. alan on July 28th, 2010

    will this work for fedora 12 and 13?

    i was able to see the usb device mounted on virtualbox (winxp as guest OS) but i could not access the contents on the USB, i got a message that said that the filesystem is not recognized,
    i am using FAT32 for my usb device

  3. fx on August 1st, 2010

    thanks, this does work on my fedora 12
    but i’m still wondering why usb devices were already writeable for my user while only owned by root:root.
    Since i’m not a member of the root group it means there is another way to be given the rights on the device which is not used by virtualbox but it should be (a policy ?).

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