3.7.6. USB support - USB settings
The "USB" section in a virtual machine's Settings window allows you to configure VirtualBox's sophisticated USB support.
VirtualBox can allow virtual machines to access the USB devices on your host directly. To achieve this, VirtualBox presents to the guest operating system a virtual USB controller. As soon as the guest system starts using a USB device, it will appear as unavailable on the host.
Note
Be careful with USB devices that are currently in use on the host! For example, if you allow your guest to connect to your USB hard disk that is currently mounted on the host, when the guest is activated, it will be disconnected from the host without a proper shutdown. This may cause data loss.
In addition to allowing a guest access to your local USB devices, VirtualBox even allows your guests to connect to remote USB devices by use of the VRDP protocol. For details about this, see Section 7.4.3, "Remote USB".
In the Settings dialog, you can first configure whether USB is available in the guest at all, and in addition also optionally enable the USB 2.0 (EHCI) controller for the guest. If so, you can determine in detail which devices are available. For this, you must create so-called "filters" by specifying certain properties of the USB device.
Clicking on the "+" button to the right of the "USB Device Filters" window creates a new filter. You can give the filter a name (for referencing it later) and specify the filter criteria. The more criteria you specify, the more precisely devices will be selected. For instance, if you specify only a vendor ID of 046d, all devices produced by Logitech will be available to the guest. If you fill in all fields, on the other hand, the filter will only apply to a particular device model from a particular vendor, and not even to other devices of the same type with a different revision and serial number.
Aktivieren der USB-Geräteunterstützung und suchen/aktivieren der gewünschten USB-Geräte
erst jetzt sucht auch die VM nach der neuen Hardware...nach mehrmaligen VM-Neustart und ggf. neuanschließen des USB-Gerätes sollte es nun gehen
usw. wie mans kennt - weiter wie gewohnt !
In detail, the following criteria are available:
- 1. Vendor and product ID. With USB, each vendor of USB products carries an identification number that is unique world-wide, the "vendor ID". Similarly, each line of products is assigned a "product ID" number. Both numbers are commonly written in hexadecimal (that is, they are composed of the numbers 0-9 and the letters A-F), and a colon separates the vendor from the product ID. For example, 046d:c016 stands for Logitech as a vendor, and the "M-UV69a Optical Wheel Mouse" product.
Alternatively, you can also specify "Manufacturer" and "Product" by name.
To list all the USB devices that are connected to your host machine with their respective vendor and product IDs, you can use the following command (see Chapter 8, VBoxManage reference):
VBoxManage list usbhost
On Windows, you can also see all USB devices that are attached to your system in the Device Manager. On Linux, you can use the lsusb command.
3. Remote. This setting specifies whether the device will be local only, or remote only (over VRDP), or either.
On a Windows host, you will need to unplug and reconnect a USB device to use it after creating a filter for it.
As an example, you could create a new USB filter and specify a vendor ID of 046d (Logitech, Inc), a manufacturer index of 1, and "not remote". Then any USB devices on the host system produced by Logitech, Inc with a manufacturer index of 1 will be visible to the guest system.
Several filters can select a single device -- for example, a filter which selects all Logitech devices, and one which selects a particular webcam.
You can deactivate filters without deleting them by clicking in the checkbox next to the filter name.
3.7.6.2. Implementation notes for Windows and Linux hosts
On Windows hosts, a kernel mode device driver provides USB proxy support. It implements both a USB monitor, which allows VirtualBox to capture devices when they are plugged in, and a USB device driver to claim USB devices for a particular virtual machine. As opposed to VirtualBox versions before 1.4.0, system reboots are no longer necessary after installing the driver. Also, you no longer need to replug devices for VirtualBox to claim them.
On Linux hosts, VirtualBox accesses USB devices on Linux through the usbfs file system. Therefore, the user executing VirtualBox needs read and write permission to the USB file system. Most distributions provide a group (e.g. usbusers) which the VirtualBox user needs to be added to. Also, VirtualBox can only proxy to virtual machines USB devices which are not claimed by a Linux host USB driver. Please refer to the Driver= entry in /proc/bus/usb/devices to see which devices are claimed.
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