After having Virtualbox installed in my PC couple of days ago, I ran through that problem about USB devices. My guest OS, Windows XP and Ubuntu is not detecting both my A4 Tech Webcam and my USB Game pad. I thought all I need is just a simple restart to get it going but that doesn’t seem to be the case. It’s a good thing that our friendly google is around, so it just took me a couple of mins to get the USB ports working on both guest OS.

Enough said, let’s get started. This is actually a modified version from arsgeek.com on how he made the USB ports mounted in Windows XP. Windows XP is the guest OS in his Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon. I did not open my Kterminal window using these steps. I’m trying to avoid typing any commands from the terminal as much as possible.

• Let’s create a usb group first. Click on K Menu > System Settings > Users and Groups > click on the administrator mode button and type your password in > Click on the Group Tab > Click the New button at the bottom > and type ‘ usbusers ‘ (without the quotes) for the group name.

• Then look for your name/PC name on the list from the left side and click add > push ok and close the System Settings window.

• Open your Dolphin File Manager Go to Root > Click Open as Root on the right side, type your password and go to etc > udev > rules.d > and do a right click on 40-permissions.rules and open it via Kate or Kwrite and add the group usbusers in between the SUBSYSTEM code and GOTO. It will look something like this: (don’t forget to save the changes)

# USB Serial Converters
SUBSYSTEM==”usb_device”, GROUP=”usbusers”, GOTO=”usb_serial_start”

• Go back to Dolphin File Manager > Go to folder etc > then init.d > right click on mountdevsubfs.sh and use a text editor. (in my case I use either Kate or Kwrite). Look for this:

#
# Magic to make /proc/bus/usb work
#
#mkdir -p /dev/bus/usb/.usbfs
#domount usbfs“”/dev/bus/usb/.usbfs-obusmode=0700,devmode=0600,listmode=0644
#ln -s .usbfs/devices /dev/bus/usb/devices
#mount –rbind /dev/bus/usb /proc/bus/usb

• Uncomment the last 4 lines to make it like this:

#
# Magic to make /proc/bus/usb work
#
mkdir -p /dev/bus/usb/.usbfs
domount usbfs“”/dev/bus/usb/.usbfs-obusmode=0700,devmode=0600,listmode=0644
ln -s .usbfs/devices /dev/bus/usb/devices
mount –rbind /dev/bus/usb /proc/bus/usb

• Once you’re done. Click save.

• Go back to your Dolphin File Manager, go back to etc > then look for fstab, do a right click and open it with Kate or Kwrite. Add this line at the bottom and save:

none /proc/bus/usb usbfs devgid=46,devmode=664 0 0

ALright! That’s it! All you need to do is fire up your virtualbox, load your guest OS and before you switch to seamless mode, go to Devices > and click the USB device that you would like to enable.