Techerator

Update: This problem has been resolved in VirtualBox Version 3.0.8. Remove the following fix before upgrading to 3.0.8 to take advantage of the update.  For help on installing VirtualBox on Fedora 11, checkout our guide.

I have come across one problem with VirtualBox on Fedora 11 – USB devices are listed in the device manager but are grayed out and cannot be enabled.  To see if this problems exists on your system you can navigate to Devices > USB Devices in a running virtual machine console window.  The devices physically connected to the host are shown, but are grayed out and are not clickable, preventing them from being connected to the virtual machine.

To correct the problem, edit /etc/fstab and add the following line:

none /sys/bus/usb/drivers usbfs devgid=501,devmode=664 0 0

Substitute “devgid=501″ with the id of the vboxusers group which all VirtualBox users should be part of.  The id of the vboxusers group can be found by navigating to System > Administration > Users and Groups.

Once you are finished, power off all virtual machines.  Run the following command in Fedora to enable USB support:

mount -a

When you power on your Virtual Machine next time, the USB devices under Devices should no longer be grayed out and are now clickable, allowing you to connect them to your virtual machines.