VirtualBox USB Setting on Ubuntu and Fedora

Setting up USB on Ubuntu

After I had a taken a look into the insides of Ubuntu 7.04, I managed to get VirtualBox's USB-Support working there in such a way that the user only needs to be a member of a group called usbusers. This howto describes how I did it.

Basically, you just have to tell Ubuntu that a group called usbusers should have read and write access to all usb devices.


Create a group called usbusers
Add yourself to this group
Edit the file /etc/udev/rules.d/40-permissions.rules (for this, you must have administrative privileges)

Search for the following lines
# USB devices (usbfs replacement) SUBSYSTEM=="usb_device", MODE="0664"
Change them to the following
# USB devices (usbfs replacement) SUBSYSTEM=="usb_device", GROUP="usbusers", MODE="0664"

Restart your PC

You should now have write access to all USB devices.


How to setup USB with udev on Fedora

This is how I resolved my VirtualBox USB issues on FC6 which uses udev.

First decide what group usb devices will be in and add yourself to that group. I chose usb (if you choose something else, be sure to update the chgrp commands below).

Add /etc/udev/rules.d/51-usb-group.rules:

SUBSYSTEM=="usb_device", RUN="/etc/udev/scripts/set-usb-group '%c'"

Add /etc/udev/scripts/set-usb-group:

#! /bin/sh
ret=false
if [ "$1" != "" ]; then
if [ -f /proc/$1 ]; then
chgrp usb /proc/$1 && \
chmod g+rw /proc/$1 && \
logger udev/set-usb-group: `ls -l /proc/$1`
ret=true
fi


if [ -e /dev/$1 ]; then
chgrp usb /dev/$1 && \
chmod g+rw /dev/$1 && \
logger udev/set-usb-group: `ls -l /dev/$1`
ret=true
fi
else
logger udev/set-usb-group: Called without device arg
exit 0
fi


if ! $ret; then
logger udev/set-usb-group: Setting permissions on device $1 failed
fi

And then, Reboot your machine. Done!


Revel in how much faster VirtualBox is than VMPlayer.