USB Devices in VirtualBox guests

Prerequisites:
    Oracle version of Virtualbox (The OSE version found in the standard repository does not support USB)
    Virtualbox extension pack
    Virtualbox guest tools
    Member of the vboxusers group

Note: It is usually not necessary to add the USB device from the command line as described here. As long as the above prerequisites are met you can usually use the gui to add device filters.

I want to connect an external HDD to a virtualbox guest. The unit is a WD "My Book" and the guest is named "Windows". Make sure your VM is powered off before you start!

First, check that your user is a member of the vboxusers group:

groups | grep vboxusers
myuser adm disk cdrom sudo dip plugdev lpadmin sambashare vboxusers libvirt

Note: If you aren't a member of the vboxusers group you must add yourself, logout and login again for the changes to take.

On the host running VirtualBox run the following command:

sudo VBoxManage list usbhost

Find the section that relates to the device you want to use. In my case it looks like this:

UUID:               f61de8f1-9c92-4781-92c5-d091705a0b79
VendorId:           0x1058 (1058)
ProductId:          0x1100 (1100)
Revision:           1.117 (01117)
Manufacturer:       Western Digital 
Product:            My Book         
SerialNumber:       57442D574341565930303934373837
Address:            sysfs:/sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.7/usb1/1-4//device:/dev/bus/usb/001/003
Current State:      Busy

Add a usb filter using the device details gleaned from the previous command:

VBoxManage usbfilter add 0 --target Windows --vendorid 1058 --productid 1100 --name "2TbExt" --active yes

The number after the "add" is the index number, if this is not the first device on the guest then adjust to the next "free" index. You can see the devices currently associated with a guest using this command:

VBoxManage showvminfo Windows

Finally enable usb for the guest:

VBoxManage modifyvm Windows --usb on

Now, after starting your VM, you should be able to see that the usb device is present in the virtual machine.

Note: If you have this working and it suddenly stops working, possibly after an update check that you still belong to the vboxusers group. If you don't belong to that group then no devices will show but there will be no "permisison denied" errors that might help to explain why.

UPDATED: November 2018

HOWTO: VirtualBox "headless" on Lucid Lynx

As of karmic koala, Vbox 3.x is provided via the standard Ubuntu repositories. Unfortunately, this is the OSE version and it does not appear to work headless.

So, we have to download the "free as in beer" version from the Oracle website, which is currently here

At the time of writing the current build for Lucid is virtualbox-3.2_3.2.4-62467~Ubuntu~lucid_i386.deb

Before we can install the deb, we will also need to install some dependencies.

sudo apt-get install libcurl3 dkms libqt4-network libqtgui4 libxslt1.1 libasound2 \
libdirectfb-1.2-0 libgl1-mesa-dri libgl1-mesa-glx libqt4-opengl libsdl1.2debian \
libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsysfs2 libts-0.0-0 libxcursor1 linux-headers-`uname -r` \
libxdamage1 libxfixes3 libxmu6 libxxf86vm1 tsconf libqtcore4 libaudio2 libmng1

Now we can install the virtualbox deb that we downloaded earlier.

sudo dpkg -i virtualbox-3.2_3.2.4-62467~Ubuntu~lucid_i386.deb

Next, add your user account to the vboxusers group

sudo adduser brettg vboxusers

Virtualbox machines that you create will by default go in your home directory

/home/brettg/.VirtualBox/

Ensure vboxusers have appropriate permissions to the kernel, create the file;

sudo vi /etc/udev/rules.d/40-permissions.rules

/etc/udev/rules.d/40-permissions.rules

KERNEL=="vboxdrv", GROUP="vboxusers", MODE="0660"

That's it, Virtualbox should be installed and ready to go.
Now we can move on to creating a virtual machine
Create a machine named "io"

VBoxManage createvm -name io --ostype Ubuntu -register

Configure it with a nic bridged to eth0, 256Mb RAM, enable acpi and set to boot from DVD

VBoxManage modifyvm io --memory 256 --pae on --acpi on --boot1 dvd --nic1 bridged --bridgeadapter1 eth0

Create a virtual IDE controller

VBoxManage storagectl io --name IDE0 --add ide

Create a virtual HDD

VBoxManage createvdi -filename ~/.VirtualBox/Machines/io/sda.vdi -size 48000 -register

Attach the virtual HDD

VBoxManage storageattach io --storagectl IDE0 --port 0 --device 0 --type hdd --medium ~/.VirtualBox/Machines/io/sda.vdi

Create and attach a virtual DVD drive to the controller and insert the DVD image

VBoxManage storageattach io --storagectl IDE0 --port 1 --device 0 --type dvddrive --medium /store/archive/ISO/ubuntu-10.04-server-i386.iso

The default vrdp port for machines is 3389, however, if you intend to run more than one guest then each one will need to listen on a different port. I use the 3xxx range with the xxx being the last octet of the machines IP address. For example, 192.168.0.1 would be 3001.

VBoxManage modifyvm io --vrdpport 3001

And thats it, your machine has been created. Time to start it up and give it a test drive!

Using the virtual machine

Start the machine

nohup VBoxHeadless -startvm io &

On a GUI workstation, establish a remote desktop connection to the machine. In my case, the host server is called "jupiter" so I type;

rdesktop -a 8 jupiter:3001

After you have installed the OS, you need to tell the machine to boot from the hdd.

VBoxManage modifyvm io --boot1 disk

You can also deregister the dvd image if you don't intend to use it again.

VBoxManage unregisterimage dvd /store/archive/ISO/ubuntu-10.04-server-i386.iso

Here are some other useful commands;

VBoxManage showvminfo io
VBoxManage list hdds
VBoxManage list runningvms
VBoxManage controlvm io poweroff
VBoxManage unregistervm io --delete
VBoxManage controlvm io savestate
VBoxManage closemedium disk UUID
VBoxManage modifyhd UUID --type immutable

Virtualbox3 Headless with Bridged Networking

Note: This howto is now outdated due to changes introduced in Virtualbox 3.1x

See this post for an updated version.

As of karmic koala, Vbox 3 is provided via the standard Ubuntu repos. Unfortunately, this is the OSE version and it does not appear to work headless.

So, we have to download the "free" version from the Sun (soon to be Oracle?) website, which is currently here

At the time of writing there was no Karmic build, so I used the Jaunty package (virtualbox-3.0_3.0.4-50677_Ubuntu_jaunty_i386.deb)

Before we can install the deb, we will also need to install some dependencies.

sudo apt-get install python2.5 libcurl3 dkms libqt4-network libqtgui4 libxslt1.1

Now we can install the virtualbox deb that we downloaded earlier.

sudo dpkg -i virtualbox-3.0_3.0.4-50677_Ubuntu_jaunty_i386.deb

NOTE: When I installed this for the nth time I received the following error:

virtualbox-3.0.postinst: 118: /etc/init.d/vboxdrv: not found

I'm not sure if this was due to my previous installations of different versions or not. I figured it was so ignored it and things seemed to be OK. Of course YMMV.

Next, add your user account to the vboxusers group

sudo adduser brettg vboxusers

Virtualbox machines that you create will by default go in your home directory

/home/brettg/.VirtualBox/

Ensure vboxusers have appropriate permissions to the kernel

sudo vi /etc/udev/rules.d/40-permissions.rules

/etc/udev/rules.d/40-permissions.rules

KERNEL=="vboxdrv", GROUP="vboxusers", MODE="0660"

Creating a virtual machine
Create a machine named "io"

VBoxManage createvm -name io -register

Configure it with a nic bridged to eth0

VBoxManage modifyvm io --nic1 bridged --bridgeadapter1 eth0

Create a virtual DVD link called "dvd" to an ISO image on the server

VBoxManage registerimage dvd /store/archive/ISO/ubuntu-8.04-server-i386.iso

Connect the DVD to the virtual machine

VBoxManage modifyvm io -dvd /store/archive/ISO/ubuntu-8.04-server-i386.iso

Assign "io" 128Mb RAM, enable acpi and set to boot from DVD

VBoxManage modifyvm io -memory 128MB -acpi on -boot1 dvd 

Create an 8Gb virtual HDD named "io-sda.vdi"

VBoxManage createvdi -filename io-sda.vdi -size 8000 -register

Assign that Virtual Drive Image to "io"

VBoxManage modifyvm io -hda io-sda.vdi

Because we are installing Ubuntu Server as a guest we need to enable PAE

VBoxManage modifyvm io -pae on

Using the virtual machine
Start the machine

VBoxHeadless -startvm "io" &

On a GUI workstation, establish a remote desktop connection to the machine

rdesktop -a 16 io:3389

Congratulations, you are now up and running!

After you have installed the OS, you need to remove the DVD and instruct the machine to boot from the hdd.

VBoxManage modifyvm "io" -dvd none

You can also deregister the dvd image if you don't intend to use it again.

VBoxManage unregisterimage dvd /store/archive/ISO/ubuntu-8.04-server-i386.iso

Note: When I installed Ubuntu Server the network autodetection didn't work. After installation was completed there was no eth0 present. I simply added the following to /etc/network/interfaces

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp

and was then up and running

Other useful commands;

VBoxManage showvminfo io
VBoxManage list hdds
VBoxManage list runningvms
VBoxManage controlvm io poweroff
VBoxManage controlvm "io" savestate

HOWTO: Deluge on a Headless Server

Install Deluge on the server;

sudo apt-get install deluged deluge-console deluge-web

Before we start the deluge daemon, we will tell it which user(s) can connect. To do this we add a "user" to the authentication file;

mkdir -p ~.config/deluge
echo "username:password" >> ~/.config/deluge/auth

Note:

The username and password can be anything you like, they do not have to correspond with a username and password combo from UNIX userland.

Now we can start the deluge daemon;

deluged

By default connections from remote hosts are disabled. We need to enable them using the deluge console.

Load the Console UI;

deluge-console

Entering the following command into the console;

config -s allow_remote True

Exit the Console UI with the 'exit' command;

exit

Open your deluge client on your workstation and open the 'Preferences' dialog. Disable 'Classic mode' on the 'Interface' page.

Restart the client and you should now be able to use the GTK Deluge client to connect to your Deluge server using the 'Connection Manager' dialog.

To start the web process;

deluge-web &

This small script will start both process's and then confirm that they have started using 'ps'

#!/bin/bash
deluged
deluge-web &
ps ax | grep deluge | grep -v grep

You can now browse to your server on port 8112;

http://myserver:8112

The default password is 'deluge'. You should change this of course.

You do that using the WebUI in 'Preferences > Interface'