[gutsy] virtualbox-ose should handle errors caused by lack of USB support gracefully

The OSE, Open source edition, doesn't support USB. If you're using it for personal use, you can get the full featured personal version for free, otherwise you'll have to buy a license.
http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Editions

The command you issued to get the error, in my opinion should return a message stating that the OSE doesn't support USB. I think this should be forwarded to innotek, the VirtualBox owner.
http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Community

I filed upstream bug http://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/745 to fix the issue.

IMHO, if innotek wants to lock out certain features in the OSE, they should handle errors accordingly. It would behoove them to handle the exceptions so their software doesn't appear borked.

I just changed the subject line of this bug report to reflect the new direction it took through further discussion.

The solution to this problem can be found here:

http://www.bgevolution.com/blog/index.php/virtualbox-on-gutsy-gibbon-ubuntu-710-usb-enable/

Copied below without permission

VirtualBox on Gutsy Gibbon Ubuntu 7.10: USB Enable
Posted on October 21, 2007 by nseidm1.
Categories: 7.10, Gutsy Gibbon, fstab, usb, virtualbox.

By default the USB Host system, when installed on Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon, is disable. To enable it is extremely simple. You can do it manually with “nano” or “gedit”. Open the following file:

sudo nano /etc/init.d/mountdevsubfs.sh

or:

sudo gedit /etc/init.d/mountdevsubfs.sh

In this configuration file there is the following section:

—————————————————————————-

#
# Magic to make /proc/bus/usb work
#
#mkdir -p /dev/bus/usb/.usbfs
#domount usbfs “” /dev/bus/usb/.usbfs -obusmode=0700,devmode=0600,listmo$
#ln -s .usbfs/devices /dev/bus/usb/devices
#mount –rbind /dev/bus/usb /proc/bus/usb
—————————————————————————————

To enable USB support simple remove the “#” sign in from the the bottom 4 lines so that the section looks like this:

—————————————————————————————

#
# Magic to make /proc/bus/usb work
#
mkdir -p /dev/bus/usb/.usbfs
domount usbfs “” /dev/bus/usb/.usbfs -obusmode=0700,devmode=0600,listmo$
ln -s .usbfs/devices /dev/bus/usb/devices
mount –rbind /dev/bus/usb /proc/bus/usb

————————————————————————————

Don’t forget to add the following line in your /etc/fstab configuration file (this is required to successfully mount USB devices in your VirtualBox guest OS):

usbfs /proc/bus/usb usbfs devgid=1001,devmode=664 0 0

Note that 1001 is the id of the group vboxusers! In my configuration, it was 123 for example. You can find out by going to System->Administration->Users and Groups->Manage Groups, and clicking on the Properties button when having selected vboxusers.

Tarek Loubani wrote on 2007-10-28:
>The solution to this problem can be found here:
>http://www.bgevolution.com/blog/index.php/virtualbox-on-gutsy-gibbon-ubuntu-710-usb-enable/

I don't think this is the solution. The link refers to fixing an Ubuntu Gutsy bug that disables USB support. But the problem is that Virtualbox OSE does not support USB.

Thank you for reporting this bug to Ubuntu.
Ubuntu Gutsy isn't supported anymore.
Please see this document for currently supported Ubuntu releases:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases