USB problem after upgrading to 5.0.18

[vboxer123]

Hello, I have been in the community and request assistance since I could not find a solution in web. Here is the issue: I am running ubunty 14.04 LTS as the host system. Up to version 4.3.12 I have not had any issues with USB everything worked fine. Earlier I tried 4.3.16 and did not work. Now I have upgraded to 5.0.18. In summary 4.3.12 was the last version which works fine for me. Of course I could go back to 4.3.12 however I decided to to contact you for a deep dive and hopefully for support since I believe that I am not the only person in the world having this issue but maybe the first one to seriously willing to tackle it. I am added to vboxusers and have installed the right extpack. Everything seems to be fine according to the community moderator. But it is not. When I start vbox and try to add a USB filter device I got the greyed out <no device available> even though it is visible in Ubuntu. As stated the last working release for me was 4.3.12. Let me know what kind of information you need in order to investigate. Thanks

[Frank Mehnert]

What's the output of

VBoxManage list usbhost

?

[vboxer123]

Host USB Device: <none>

[Frank Mehnert]

I would like to see the VBoxSVC.log file (in ~/.VirtualBox or ~/.config/VirtualBox).

Furthermore, please do the following:

1. Start the VBoxSVC process separately with strace:

   strace -f -s128 -o ~/vboxsvc.log /usr/lib/virtualbox/VBoxSVC
   

2. Execute

   VBoxManage list usbhost
   

   in a separate terminal.
3. Stop VBoxSVC (press Ctrl+C in its terminal)
4. Compress and attach the resulting vboxsvc.log file

[vboxer123]

Here it is. Capital letters before small letters after executing with strace

[vboxer123]

One Comment to the compressed file I had the command "strace" started 3 times or so. Because I had the vbox application open and got a message. Furthermore I have executed VBoxManage list usbhost executed twice. In the file there might be several devices listed which are not connected. Right know I have an usb stick connected. My keyboard and mouse is connected to a switchbox and when I start the guest Win8.1 mouse and keyboard is working fine.

[Frank Mehnert]

First, for some reason the permission of /dev/vboxdrvu seems to be wrong. The correct permission for this device node is 0666. Could you check if there is some udev rule in your system which changes the permission of this node?

Second, for some reason it's not possible to access any USB devices in /dev/vboxusb. What's the output of

ls -lR /dev/vboxusb

? Please check if there is a udev rule /etc/udev/rules.d/60-vboxdrv.rules and attach the content of this file.

[vboxer123]

output of ls -lR /dev/vboxusb: /dev/vboxusb: Total 0

In /etc/udev/rules.d only a 70-persistent-net.rules exists thus no 60-... rule.

[vboxer123]

My vboxdrvu looks like this in terminal:
crw------- 1 root root 10, 56 Apr 28 10:06 vboxdrvu

How do I change this to 0666?

[Frank Mehnert]

That means that for some reason no udev rule is generated. Which VirtualBox package did you install (exact package name please)?

[Frank Mehnert]

Actually I saw it from your VBoxSVC.log file. Please do the following:

sudo /var/lib/dpkg/info/virtualbox-5.0.postinst configure

and after that check if a new udev rule 60-vboxdrv.rules was created in /etc/udev/rules.d

[vboxer123]

I have executed the command you have listed. Terminal ouput:

addgroup: The group `vboxusers' already exists as a system group. Exiting.
Stopping VirtualBox kernel modules ...done.
Uninstalling old VirtualBox DKMS kernel modules ...done.
Trying to register the VirtualBox kernel modules using DKMS ...done.
Starting VirtualBox kernel modules ...done.
Stopping VirtualBox kernel modules ...done.

in /etc/udev/rules.d there is now only one file called root.rules with the content:
SUBSYSTEM=="block", ENV{MAJOR}=="8", ENV{MINOR}=="2", SYMLINK+="root"

Now I have started vbox went to setting and "voila" my connected USB devices are visible. Then I powered on my guest OS and USB is there. Perfekt!!! I will keep the above command for future use in case I upgrade and usb doesn't work. Many thanks you have done a great job supporting me.

[Frank Mehnert]

That still doesn't sound right. If /etc/udev/rules.d/60-vboxdrv.rules does not exist then I expect that you will see the same problems later. Something is broken with your setup and you could find this out by adding certain echo "foo" statements to /var/lib/dpkg/info/virtualbox-5.0.postinst.

Is /etc/udev/rules.d really a directory?

[vboxer123]

Yes, rules.d is a directory.
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Apr 28 11:41 rules.d

What do you mean adding certain echo "foo" statements?
Can you explain to me how to do this?

[Frank Mehnert]

Look at the script. I would like to know if udev_write_vboxdrv() / udev_write_usb() are called. If so, then why /etc/udev/rules.d/60-vboxdrv.rules is not created. If these methods are not called, then why not? This can be easily debugged by editing the script and enter 'echo "foo1"', 'echo "foo2"' etc, then call the script like requested above and then check the output.

[vboxer123]

I am sorry, I guess my expertise ends here and I would need more support. "Look at the script" What script do you mean and where is it?

[Frank Mehnert]

I refer to /var/lib/dpkg/info/virtualbox-5.0.postinst. Next try: Could you edit this script (as root) and append -x to the first line (making it !/bin/sh -x)? Then execute

sudo /var/lib/dpkg/info/virtualbox-5.0.postinst configure > $HOME/postinst.log

and attach the resulting $HOME/postinst.log file to this ticket?

[vboxer123]

I have append the -x as root and executed the command. The postinst.log is empty. By the way the first line is #!/bin/sh and not !/bin/sh. According to my limited knowledge hash is used for comments. So I guess I need to remove the hash as well, right?

[vboxer123]

I just double checked the rules.d folder. There is now a "60-vboxdrv.rules". According to the time stamp this file got generated during/ after execution of the script above.

[Frank Mehnert]

Sorry, my fault. First, no, the correct line is '#!/bin/sh -x', so please do NOT remove the hash. Second, the correct command line is this:

sudo /var/lib/dpkg/info/virtualbox-5.0.postinst configure > $HOME/postinst.log 2>&1

Now the resulting postinst.log file shouldn't be empty.

Hmm, as 60-vboxdrv.rules is now created this becomes more and more weird. I wonder why it wasn't created before -- you already executed the 'script ... configure' command before...

[vboxer123]

Ok, executed. File attached. The 60-... got the new time stamp.

[vboxer123]

I just realized that there is now a .20 version available. Should I upgrade and see what happens?

[Frank Mehnert]

According to the postinst.log file the USB udev rule was properly created and installed in /etc/udev/rules.d. So I'm curious why this file wasn't there when you installed the VirtualBox package but it's not there. Calling the /var/lib/dpkg/info/virtualbox-5.0.postinst script with the "configure" argument is not necessary as this will be automatically done by the Debian package system. Perhaps the VirtualBox package was not properly installed?

[vboxer123]

I have downloaded the package from the virtualbox.org website saved in to disk. Right click and open with software center. Here it states "upgrade" that is it. I could revert back to 4.3.12 and then try again to install to see what happens.