VirtualBox and USB devices

My parents bought a new panasonic camcorder, the software that came with it is Windows only of course. So I tried to get it running in Wine, but the installer didn't get very far before hanging. Next I installed VirtualBox, and installing the video software in a Windows 2000 hosted on VirtualBox worked just fine.

Unfortunately, Windows didn't see the camera's SD card that was attached via a USB adapter. Some googling showed that USB support in VirtualBox is broken in Gutsy. Here are the steps to get it working:

1. Edit /etc/init.d/mountdevsubfs.sh as root
, then activate the commented lines for making /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



2. Save the file and run the script via sudo /etc/init.d/mountdevsubfs.sh


3. Edit /etc/fstab as root and add a line:
   
none /proc/bus/usb usbfs devgid=XXXX,devmode=664 0 0

   where XXXX is the gid for group vboxusers as defined in /etc/group
   


4. Save the file, then activate the changed configuration via sudo mount -a



When you start VirtualBox now, a USB controller can be activated in the settings for each virtual machine.