Permissions: VirtualBox USB devices

[BigAl-sa]

I have a really weird problem which seems to be permissions related. I have four USB devices (two printers, a scanner and a tablet) that I use directly in the guest OS (XP). I can access the scanner, tablet and one printer under VBox's devices menu and use them with no problem under the guest OS. However, one printer is greyed out in the menu and nothing I've tried gets it un-greyed.

If I run VBox as root, I can access this printer from the guest OS with no problem. Can anyone give me some advice as where to look to set the relevant permissions?

Google has been decidedly unhelpful in trying to solve this problem.

 

[BigAl-sa]

I've found something very interesting. If I do an ls -al in /dev/usb, I get the following:

drwxr-xr-x  2 root root     100 2009-12-19 11:30 .
drwxr-xr-x 16 root root    4160 2009-12-19 11:30 ..
crw-rw----  1 root root 180, 96 2009-12-19 11:30 hiddev0
crw-rw----  1 root lp   180,  0 2009-12-19 11:30 lp0
crw-rw-rw-  1 root lp   180,  1 2009-12-19 10:09 lp1

If I switch the printer off and do the ls again, lp0 and hiddev0 is gone.

drwxr-xr-x  2 root root     60 2009-12-19 11:30 .
drwxr-xr-x 16 root root   4080 2009-12-19 11:30 ..
crw-rw-rw-  1 root lp   180, 1 2009-12-19 10:09 lp1

I still can't access the printer if I do a chmod on lp0, and delete hiddev0.

 

[adrianx]

I have a really weird problem which seems to be permissions related. I have four USB devices (two printers, a scanner and a tablet) that I use directly in the guest OS (XP). I can access the scanner, tablet and one printer under VBox's devices menu and use them with no problem under the guest OS. However, one printer is greyed out in the menu and nothing I've tried gets it un-greyed.

If I run VBox as root, I can access this printer from the guest OS with no problem. Can anyone give me some advice as where to look to set the relevant permissions?

Google has been decidedly unhelpful in trying to solve this problem.

The fact that you have access to some USB devices and not others sounds a bit weird.

In VirtualBox 3+ you should not have to do anything in /etc/fstab at all. Does your user belong to the "vboxusers" group? Have you tried deleting and adding the affected USB devices (in VirtualBox settings)?

 

[BigAl-sa]

The fact that you have access to some USB devices and not others sounds a bit weird.

In VirtualBox 3+ you should not have to do anything in /etc/fstab at all. Does your user belong to the "vboxusers" group? Have you tried deleting and adding the affected USB devices (in VirtualBox settings)?

Thanks for bending your brain on this one.

I'm beginning to think this is a Karmic thing. I can access the printer from Vbox with no problems on my missus's Jaunty machine. The devices that I can still access on my machine were all installed before I upgraded to Karmic. I see there's a new kernel available. I'll upgrade to that and see if anything changes.

Just found this on Ubuntu forums

 

[BigAl-sa]

Got it. Add yourself to the lp group, then log out and back in again.

I almost had it when i was looking at the listing of /dev/usb as I thought I should add myself to the lp group as members of the group could use the device. However, I didn't do the log out/in bit.

This is the first irritation I've had with Karmic.