Jair Rillo Junior’s blog

VirtualMachine is a reality nowadays. If you have a base operating system (called host) and want to use another one on the base (called guest), you can use a VM to do that.
Sun VirtualBox is a great free tool to do that in an easy and fast way. However, by default on Ubuntu, the USB doesn’t work properly. Inside the guest operating system, the USB is not accessible at all.
In this topic, I’ll show up how to setup Ubuntu to enable the USB on guest operating system. Fortunately it is straightforward and doesn’t hurt

Downloading and installing Sun VirtualBox

Downloading the Sun VirtualBox directly from its website.For Ubuntu, there’s a .deb file. Simply download it and double click on it install it. After that the VirtualBox is installed. Now, you can install the Operating system that you want.

Setup Ubuntu

If you have already run Sun VirtualBox, probably you notified that USB didn’t appear. It happens because you need to make some changes on Ubuntu. Let’s do that now.
First, open the terminal and type the following:

grep vboxusers /etc/group

Memorize the number that appear for you. In my example, the number is 121.

Now, go to System -> Administration -> Users and Groups. After that, click on “Change button” and enter your password.

After that, click on Manage Groups. Find and select the vboxusers and click on Properties button. On the screen, select your user and type the Group ID that you picked early.

The changes are done. Now restart the Ubuntu and in the next time you run VM, the USB are gonna appear for you.

PS: When you start the USB on guest machine, the USB port on host machine is closed and vice-versa.

This is a simple post but I hope it be helpful for anyone else. If you have any question or comment, fell free to leave your comment below.