Virtualbox with USB Support

This guide is specific to ubuntu jaunty (9.04).  It may work on previous version, or other distros, but it is untested.  If you do not need usb support in your copy of virtualbox, you can just install the open source version from the ubuntu package repositories by typing:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install virtualbox-ose

If you need usb support in your virtualbox install (great for hooking up devices that are not compatible with linux), you need to install the proprietary version (also free), and do a few tweaks in order to get it to work.

Installing USB Version:

Make sure the open source version of virtualbox is uninstalled:

sudo apt-get remove virtualbox-ose

First, add the respective line to your /etc/apt/sources.list file according to the current version you are running (for example, add the first line if you are running Jaunty):
Read the rest of this entry »