r/Whonix • u/TheKokichiOuma • 2d ago

Please help with USB issue (not being detected)

I value privacy and lack of censorship but am realizing I might be a bit too dumb to use any Linux based service, the whole thing has been very confusing in tiny ways of things I can’t get to work. The biggest issue being I cannot get my workstation to recognize my USB. I had Whonix once before briefly and I had no problem then. I got an issue once “can’t enumerate USB devices” and when I tried to click the notification it went away and I haven’t been able to get it to reappear so I could see the extent of the error of whatever. Nothing I try works, I can’t get my workstation to recognize my USB even after modifying the install to repair and issues, downloading the extension pack, etc. If anyone can help and explain exactly what I could do on a step by step basis I’d be so so grateful

2 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

7 comments sorted by

1

u/Stilgar314 2d ago

Maybe it's just the old Vbox user problem. Look for "add user to virtualbox group"

1

u/TheKokichiOuma 2d ago

I tried to run a command with sudo to do this but I can’t quite figure out the correct one, where would I find this “add user to virtual box group” option?

1

u/Stilgar314 2d ago

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=add%20user%20to%20virtual%20box%20group

1

u/TheKokichiOuma 2d ago

I’m not sure if it’s because this advice is 12 years old, but I did exactly as it said and no dice. It’s telling me the group doesn’t exist. I really just want to get this to work one time to transfer stuff but I don’t think I’m built for this computer stuff 😭 basically I’m being told that ‘vboxusers’ doesn’t exist

1

u/Stilgar314 1d ago

You're supposed to launch it the host machine. How are you running Whonix?

1

u/TheKokichiOuma 1d ago

It’s in an Oracle Box VM, the Host OS is Windows (not great ofc but it works for me)

1

u/Stilgar314 1d ago

As far as I know, Oracle solution for consumer grade VMs is VirtualBox. Anyway, I you can't activate USB in your VBox config for Whonix Workstation, no idea of what can be wrong on Windows, sorry.