cannot use USB webcam inside VM

[Stéphane Charette]

I have spent countless hours over the past week trying to find a way to make this work. But it really is starting to look as if USB webcams don't work in VMs. I created a USB filter, and when the guest boots up I can initially see I have a /dev/video0 device. But as soon as I try to use it, I end up with many USB errors logged in the guest, in the VirtualBox machine log, and on the host. And the /dev/video0 device then disappears from the guest.

For additional details, also see: ​https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=44897

A partial list of guest dmesg errors includes:

[   62.850236] usb 1-1: new high speed USB device number 6 using ehci_hcd
[   62.944329] usb 1-1: device descriptor read/8, error -32
[   63.101419] usb 1-1: device descriptor read/8, error -32
[   63.210336] hub 1-0:1.0: unable to enumerate USB device on port 1

A partial list of VirtualBox VM log includes:

00:00:21.444 EHCI: USB Suspended
00:01:03.731 EHCI: USB Operational
00:01:11.294 EHCI: USB Suspended

A partial list of host dmesg errors includes:

[72941.802162] uvcvideo: Found UVC 1.00 device <unnamed> (046d:0819)
[72941.902744] input: UVC Camera (046d:0819) as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.0/usb2/2-1/2-1.3/2-1.3.4/2-1.3.4:1.0/input/input9
[72980.614942] usb 2-1.3.4: USB disconnect, address 17
[72980.694504] usb 2-1.3.4: new full speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 18
[72980.774068] usb 2-1.3.4: device descriptor read/64, error -32
[72980.963702] usb 2-1.3.4: device descriptor read/64, error -32
[72981.153249] usb 2-1.3.4: new full speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 19

[Stéphane Charette]

Can someone confirm whether USB webcams do or don't work in VMs? At least so I know if I've done something wrong with my VirtualBox setup, or whether this is a known limitation?

[Frank Mehnert]

Use the new webcam passthrough feature introduced in VBox 4.3.x and improved in VBox 5.0.x.