No USB devices available to Win7/Win10 guests on Linux host [VBox 6.0.16]

[thoikix]

Under VirtualBox 6.0.14-133895, right-clicking on the USB icon on the VBox window status displays a menu showing a list of the USB interfaces/devices available on the host. Each entry in the list has a checkbox which can be used to assign the USB device to the Guest OS.

However, after upgrading to Version 6.0.16-135674 of VirtualBox, right-clicking on the USB icon does not show the list of USB interfaces/devices - instead it shows a menu list with the only entry of "USB Settings..." and a greyed-out entry stating "No USB Devices Connected"

Although I discovered this issue when running Windows 7 and Windows 10 guest VMs, the same issue also arose when running an Ubuntu 16.04.6 guest VM too.

I have attached the following files:

• a screenshot of a Win10 guest VM, showing the the USB device statuses when running under VBox 6.0.14-133895
• a screenshot of a Win10 guest VM, showing the the USB device statuses when running under VBox 6.0.16-135674
• a zipped copy of the VM log for the Win10 guest, runing under VBox 6.0.16-135674.

My host system is a Lenovo Thinkpad E590 laptop with Intel Core i5-8265U CPU & 8Gb RAM, running Ubuntu 16.04.6.

I originally raised this as an issue on the forum, at ​https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=96663&p=469555#p469555

[thoikix]

Win10 guest under VBox 6.0.14

[thoikix]

Win10 guest under VBox 6.0.16

[thoikix]

Win10 guest VM log under VBox 6.0.16

[GOrr]

How did you correct this issue?

[nursoda]

This is no bug. You need to be in vboxusers group to access USB devices. Verify with

$ id

that you are. If not, use

$ sudo gpasswd -a your_username vboxusers

or

sudo usermod -aG vboxusers your_username

to add yourself to that group. After the change you need to log out and back in to inherit that change to virtualbox.

See "NOTE for Linux hosts" in # 2 of ​https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=82639, ​https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/VirtualBox#Accessing_host_USB_devices_in_guest (and ​https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/User_group#Group_management).