Unable to use an USB floppy drive in VirtualBox

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#1

I have installed VirtualBox 2.0.6_OSE on openSUSE 11.0.All is functioning correctly, except for the floppy drive. This is a USB floppy drive, it functions correctly under openSUSE (I can use it and boot from it).
It is recognized in a virtual machine.

When I want to boot from it in the VM, I get the following message:
“Could not read from the boot medium. System halted”.

When I want to use it from the VM, I get:
“General failure reading drive A:” or
“General failure reading drive B:”

What do I have to do?
Thank you for your answer.

#2

Gian-Piero wrote:

>
> I have installed VirtualBox 2.0.6_OSE on openSUSE 11.0.All is
> functioning correctly, except for the floppy drive. This is a USB floppy
> drive, it functions correctly under openSUSE (I can use it and boot from
> it).
> It is recognized in a virtual machine.
>
> When I want to boot from it in the VM, I get the following message:
> “Could not read from the boot medium. System halted”.
>
> When I want to use it from the VM, I get:
> “General failure reading drive A:” or
> “General failure reading drive B:”
>
> What do I have to do?
> Thank you for your answer.

OSE has no access to USB. Get the Sun version at virtualbox.org and check
the online help to configure things so that VB can see the USB devices.

–
Will Honea

#3

Gian-Piero wrote:

>
> I have installed VirtualBox 2.0.6_OSE on openSUSE 11.0.All is
> functioning correctly, except for the floppy drive. This is a USB floppy
> drive, it functions correctly under openSUSE (I can use it and boot from
> it).
> It is recognized in a virtual machine.
>
> When I want to boot from it in the VM, I get the following message:
> “Could not read from the boot medium. System halted”.
>
> When I want to use it from the VM, I get:
> “General failure reading drive A:” or
> “General failure reading drive B:”
>
> What do I have to do?
> Thank you for your answer.
>
>
also be sure to modify fstab as per the manual and to mount usbfs prior to
starting VirtualBox. as started in earlier post, OSE does not support any usb
device.

Russ
Register Linux User# 441463

#4

Thank you for your answers.
I have uninstalled the OSE version and replaced it with the Sun one (2.1.0). But when I want to activate USB in the VM, I get the following message:
“Could not load the Host USB Proxy Service (VERR_FILE_NOT_FOUND). The service might be not installed on the host computer.”

I have the following line in my “fstab” file:
usbfs /proc/bus/usb usbfs noauto 0 0

and in the “50-udev-default.rules” file:

libusb device nodes

SUBSYSTEM==“usb”, ACTION==“add”, ENV{DEVTYPE}==“usb_device”, NAME=“bus/usb/$env{BUSNUM}/$env{DEVNUM}”, MODE=“0666”

I am a member of the vboxusers group.

What do I have to change or to add to solve the problem?

#5

I have followed the instructions given by the following link:
VirtualBox USB Support - openSUSE
and I can now activate the USB in VirtualBox. The first error message no longer appears.
But I still have a problem: I cannot use my floppy drive in my guest OS (FreeDOS 1.0).
For example, if I type dir A:, I get:
Remove diskette in drive B:
Insert diskette in drive A:
Press any key to continue…

Reading error on drive A: DOS area: general failure.
Cancel, Ignore, Retry

What do I have to do to correct this?

#6

Gian-Piero wrote:

>
> Thank you for your answers.
> I have uninstalled the OSE version and replaced it with the Sun one
> (2.1.0). But when I want to activate USB in the VM, I get the following
> message:
> “Could not load the Host USB Proxy Service (VERR_FILE_NOT_FOUND). The
> service might be not installed on the host computer.”
>
> I have the following line in my “fstab” file:
> usbfs /proc/bus/usb usbfs noauto 0 0

here’s what my fstab entry looks like. if I remember the manual does not give
this completely and I got this from a Vbox news group entry.

usbfs /proc/bus/usb usbfs
auto,busgid=1000,busmode=0775,devgid=1000,devmode=0664 0 0

Since my new 11.0 64 bit system does not have a floppy drive I cannot test this.
All my other usb devices work with this. My old 11.0 32 bit system floppy worked
fine.

> and in the “50-udev-default.rules” file:
> # libusb device nodes
> SUBSYSTEM==“usb”, ACTION==“add”, ENV{DEVTYPE}==“usb_device”,
> NAME=“bus/usb/$env{BUSNUM}/$env{DEVNUM}”, MODE=“0666”
>
> I am a member of the vboxusers group.
>
> What do I have to change or to add to solve the problem?
>
>

–
Russ
Register Linux User# 441463

#7

Thank you for your answer.
But the entry in your fstab file does not work for me.

Looking at VirtualBox USB Support - openSUSE
I have introduced the two following lines in fstab:

none /proc/bus/usb usbfs devgid=109,devmode=0666 0 0
/sys/bus/usb/drivers /proc/bus/usb usbfs devgid=109,devmode=0666 0 0

and in /etc/init.d/boot.local
mount -a

After rebooting, I no longer get the first error message and I can enable USB in the VM, and filter the USB devices.
But my problem is not completely solved: I cannot boot a VM guest from the USB floppy or use it in the guest.

#8

Gian-Piero wrote:

> use.provo.novell.com)
> Date:
> Sunday 04 January 2009 5:56:01 am

thats probably true, the devgrp is the group for vboxusers. mine is 1000, yours
may be the 109. If you down loaded the manual look around page 138
(troubleshooting section) for “usb does not work”. make sure you have the lib QT
and SDL at the revision levels called out. installed also. I know there are
other prereq also like the OS headers and symbols. I notice your fstab has
noauto and I have auto, it was a change I made and I cannot remember who
suggested it. I still have to a manual " mount usbfs " command before starting
Vbox. I never gave a mount for the floppy I can remember.

Sorry I cannot help more.

Russ
Register Linux User# 441463

#9

On my system I need to add myself to the cdrom group to be able
to use the cdrom inside VBox, maybe you can try to add yourself
to the floppy group. I don’t use floppys myself so I’m just
guessing.

#10

Thanks to all of you.
I have tried what you have suggested, without success.
I have seen that VBox search for a floppy in /dev/fd*, and openSUSE mounts it in /dev/sdb*, which is considered as a hard disk! I have tried to set an environment variable by:
export VBOX_FLOPPY=’/dev/sdb1’
and also with:
export VBOX_FLOPPY=’/media/sdb1’
This did not change anything.And there is another thing I do not understand:
When USB is disabled in VBox, I can insert a diskette or an image file, but when USB is enabled, only an image file can be inserted.
I have seen in a VirtualBox forum that someone having installed a guest from a floppy drive, this drive was no longer available after installation.
Rather strange, isn’t it?
Perhaps this problem would be fixed in the next version of VBox.

#11

Well as for the floppy being unaccesable after installing from
an image I have the same behavior with my DVD-drive, but that’s
easy, just unmount it in the Machine menu and remount it on
the host system.

As for the device problem for the floppy you could try to change
it manually with an editor and see what happens. The xml file
to change would be this one:

/home/user/.VirtualBox/Machines/yourguest/yourguest.xml

Your entry would look something like this:

<FloppyDrive enabled="true">
         <HostDrive src="/dev/fd*" />
      </FloppyDrive>

Try to change it to something like this:

<FloppyDrive enabled="true">
         <HostDrive src="/dev/sdb1" />
      </FloppyDrive>

Pretty risk free to try, just be sure to back up the file first!

#12

Thank you for your answer.
In the xml file you mention, the setting is correct:
<HostDrive src="/dev/sdb" />
I no longer know what to do.

#13

Pretty long since I used a floppy, but I’m quite sure you’ll need
a number for the device, like /dev/sdb0 or /dev/sdb1, depends on
what other devices you have in that class, but probably 0.

#14

Unfortunately, adding a number for the device aborted the launch of the VM. I got a message saying the VM could not attach the USB interface.