I installed the closed source edition of VirtualBox and then I got Windows installed inside of that. I had a little bit of trouble figuring out how to get the USB ports to work, but after a little while I had it all up and running just fine. One thing I had to do was make sure I was part of the vboxusers group. In Ubuntu, I clicked System -> Administration -> Users and Groups. I clicked the key button and entered my sudo password to make changes. I clicked “Manage Groups” and found the “vboxusers” entry. I opened that up and made sure there was a check mark next to my name and next to root.

I restarted the computer so the Users and Groups list would be reloaded. Then I started up Windows in VirutalBox. I attached my MiniDisc but it still didn’t show up in Windows. It appeared on the Ubuntu desktop. So I looked around some more. I found this line in the VirtualBox online user manual:

In order to use VirtualBox’s USB support, the user account under which you intend to run VirtualBox must have read and write access to the USB filesystem (usbfs).

So I went about trying to figure out how to get read/write access to usbfs. I found some posts from ’07 and ’08 that said I had to edit a file called “mountdevsubfs.sh” But the lines in that file that the post said to make the changes on didn’t exist. Then I found another post that said USB should be working “straight out of the box” now. I had read a post earlier that talked about USB filters in the VirtualBox settings. I tried that. I checked the USB settings in VirtualBox for the Windows machine. I had the MiniDisc plugged in and I clicked the “add filter” button. The MiniDisc showed up right away. I started Windows again and POW! The MiniDisc was there and I was able to transfer files from it using SonicStage.

So a big shout-out goes to cigarboxuke. You are awesome. Thanks for suggesting I use VirtualBox. Now I’m going to put Ubuntu 10.04 on the previously Windows-occupied machine and put VirtualBox on it, too.

As always, comments are greatly appreciated. See you soon.

Related posts:

1. VirtualBox OSE vs. VirtualBox CSE
2. Windows inside VirtualBox
3. The linux-minidisc project
4. Video editing in Linux
5. Adding fonts in Ubuntu