Boxes USB Redirect Not Working

ryanjpreston · October 21, 2020, 8:18pm

On my Librem 13, I installed a virtual machine in the Boxes app, using a freshly downloaded PureOS image.

While the virtual machine seems to be working ok, I cannot get the USB re-direct feature to work.
When I go into the Boxes [Properties] submenu and enable the USB device, the USB device is unmounted on my physical system…which is good…but then in the virtual machine, the device never appears in the Files app.

Anybody have some ideas?

taylor-williamc · October 21, 2020, 9:58pm

I have sometimes needed to install Spice guest tools within the VM to have devices work correctly. What OS does the VM have?

ryanjpreston · October 22, 2020, 1:09am

Thanks!
VM has PureOS

taylor-williamc · October 22, 2020, 1:23am

Within the PureOS VM, try opening up the Terminal and running

sudo apt install spice-vdagent

Might have to restart the VM.

ryanjpreston · October 22, 2020, 1:38am

looks like spice-vdagen is already installed.

taylor-williamc · October 22, 2020, 1:47am

Ah, wait, how did you install GNOME Boxes? I don’t think the Flatpak version of GNOME Boxes currently supports USB redirection, so if you have the Flatpak version, that would probably be the issue.

ryanjpreston · October 22, 2020, 2:09am

Thanks! I will check this out. I didn’t manually install Boxes, it was pre-installed when I got the laptop.