When you run VirtualBox at the first time on Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot, you may get this following error message: "Failed to access the USB subsystem. VirtualBox is not currently allowed to access USB devices. You can change this by adding your user to the 'vboxusers' group. Please see the user manual for more detailed explanation."


As describe in the error message, we must add the user to 'vboxusers' group to fix this problem. Unfortunately, there is no GUI tool to manage users and groups on Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot (yet). So, we must do it manually by using command line.

Assume that we have user "hok00age" and we'll add him to member of "vboxusers" group. Simply type the following command:
  • sudo usermod -a -G vboxusers hok00age
Make sure you have done it correctly by checking "/etc/group" file:
  • cat /etc/group

Restart your computer and once computer restarted, run VirtualBox and check if the problem is fixed.

Enjoy :)