Mobile USB Tethering stops working after reconnection -> not virtualisation related, possibly device problem

[Knorxi]

Steps to reproduce: 1) Plug in Android Device, activate tethering, share USB 2.0 and Filter Android Dev (SAMSUNG_Android FFFF) 2) Start Linux Guest (Lubuntu), surf 3) Disconnect Android USB Cable and reconnect it, activate tethering 4) Guest shows working network connection, but internet connection is lost

This worked in prev. versions of virtual box (> 5.0.20)

[Knorxi]

Fresh log

[Michael Thayer]

Are you sure that this is a problem with VirtualBox and not with the guest operating system? I see the same symptoms tethering my (slightly older) Android phone to my physical Ubuntu laptop with no virtualisation involved: if I unplug the phone once and plug back in, Ubuntu can no longer retrieve an IP address from the phone. This worked with Ubuntu 16.04 but not with 16.10 and 17.04. It seems to be a problem that the phone will not respond to DHCP requests until the last lease has expired. Ramdom guess, but if you remember the last IP address which you had for the connection and re-set that manually when you can no longer connect, does it work? In any case, look at the guest NetworkManager logs to see what is happening when the connection fails.

[Michael Thayer]

After a lot of fiddling I seem to have got that working on my system. Before the disconnect, I checked the IP address on the interface (192.168.xx.xx) and the current routes via "ip route". The IP address was also visible by searching for "192.168" in the "journalctl" log.

After the disconnection and the failed reconnection, I disconnected the failing connection in the NetworkManager menu, ran "sudo ifconfig <interface name> 192.168.xx.xx netmask 255.255.255.0" to set the old IP address back (this can probably be done "right" with the "ip" command), then ran "ip route" to see the current route table, "sudo ip route del <current line for the interface>" to remove current routing information for the device and "sudo ip route add <old line>" for each of the route lines I had had for the interface before the disconnection.

[Knorxi]

OK - verified; this is not a problem with virtualbox. Thanks for your afford. Shoot!

[Michael Thayer]

Thanks for confirming.