Thanks Marius for the tutorial i was looking for the solution since a month.

It is really useful. I searched a lot in the net to find a solution for this problem and i was empty handed until now. Thanks

You need to desactivate Compiz too.
I can't have the mouse with that.

Wow. Don't I feel like a fool. I played with this setting for 3 weeks and deleted my vbox install because of this

Thanks. I have looked for months.

so does anyone know if this will help with problems in installing XP with virtualbox? certain... permission....problems?

What problems? I am not aware of such "permission" problems, please be more explicit.

Marius,

I want to thank you so much for posting this. I have told a lot of people to add their user account to the vboxusers group, some of them were able to without more assistance, but some couldn't understand how to do this (I try and help out users at work and play that are "trying" linux so it's no wonder they can't add the group themselves without much assistance). I was thinking of similarly documenting it, prior to finding this. I will point them in your articles direction!

Thanks for taking the time out to post this.

Chris Crisafulli
itnet7

Running VirtualBox 2.2.0 on Debian Lenny. Am already in vboxusers group yet usb devices in virtual machines are grayed out.

i have the same problem.
here is the proof
rob@robunto:~$ cat /etc/group | grep rob
adm:x:4:rob
dialout:x:20:rob
cdrom:x:24:rob
plugdev:x:46:rob
lpadmin:x:104:rob
admin:x:115:rob
rob:x:1000:rob
sambashare:x:122:rob
vboxusers:x:123:rob
~~~~~
i am in the vboxusers.
bu still greyed out in vertualbox

duh.. had to logout and login

coooooooooooool , it works .......................... at last
but let me inform u that that dosent work only on the last version of VB 2.2.2
thanks alot

It doesn't work...

This will not work with the version in the Ubuntu repositories, you have to down load the version from http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Linux_Downloads

This is because the USB code is not entirely free and open.

Brilliant,
I could not use vb for ages, I know that I had to a member of vboxusers but it had not been ticked off.
How stupid am I?

Thanks

My vb tells me at the top under devices that there are no usb devices. How do I fix this?
Hope you can come up with something.
Thanks

Thanks so much for the solution.

It's amazing to me how many users missed the large type, bold faced instructions when installing VirtualBox. That notice was to make sure all users that were going to use VirtualBox should be made members of the vboxusers group. I've used VirtualBox for almost two years now, and I didn't miss it when I installed the first time. (Maybe it's the default Ubuntu packages that fail to show the instructions. I installed it into Debian from a package file downloaded from the VirtualBox download site. Synaptic popped up an instruction box at the end of the install with instructions to add users to the vboxusers group.

Make sure the USB device you want activated in VB is plugged in. Open the VB starting window but don't start a machine. Select the machine you want the USB device attached to. Click the "Settings" button. On the left-hand side, choose "USB." Make sure "Enable USB Controller" is selected. Unless you have an older computer, also make sure that "Enable USB 2.0 (EHCI) Controller" is also selected. On the far right side, there are several buttons that have a picture of a USB plug and a symbol. The second button from the top is a USB plug with a plus sign. It is to add a device filter from a plugged device. Click it. If your desired device is in the list, select it. This adds the device to the list of devices that can be accessed by VB. If it is not in the list, then you have problems with your USB set up working well with VB.

BTW, when VB is "attached" to a USB device, the same device becomes unavailable in your host OS. If this is for an external drive, it is best to register the external drive as a shared folder in VB. This way both the host and the guest can access the external drive at the same time.

I don't even have "USB" on the menu to the left, all I have is:

General
Hard Disks
CD/DVD-ROM
Floppy
Audio
Network
Serial Ports
Shared Folders

And I've seen screenshots of the menu and they all have a USB tab, but I don't. What the heck? I don't have that USB icon on the bottom of the VB window that you have in your screenshots either.

Install the DEB package from www.virtualbox.org not from the Ubuntu repository!

Dude. This is a life saver !!!

Will try, do you need to reboot?

In my case, you need to LOGOUT of Ubuntu.

This will reset Users and Groups.

Don't need to reboot, remember this when you change users and groups in the future. Thanks for the info.

PS Can you change the design of the website, it's really hard to read and type using small letters.

You are an ANGEL!!!

This just confirms my belief that many problems can be solved simply. Thank you!!

This is a good tutorial. However, this does not work for everyone. While I am able to connect my usb devices, I am unable to access them with USB 2.0 enabled. When I disable USB 2.0, everything works.

Wow really nice. it work . thanks Marius

I have followed the instructions above fully. I:
installed VB 3.0
added my user to the vboxusers group
enabled usb 2.0
logged out/in (even restarted)
disabled usb 2.0

The attached usb items show up on the usb button, but do not show up in the WinXp VM. Am I missing something else?

Thanks
twitter: @tsairox

Thanks it still works!

ubuntu 9.04 kernel verion 2.6.28-15 + virtualbox 3.02

Thanks, i had given up on, and about to remove, virtualbox when i found your life-saver.

Thank you very very much for such a simple work around without playing with the console.

Thanks Marius, this help me a lot

Thank you. You're great!

wow that was really helpful! I had been researching this answer for almost 2 days! Thanks so much! :)