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Topic: aside from vboxusers any other groups needed for virtualbox to run? (Read 900 times) previous topic - next topic
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Re: aside from vboxusers any other groups needed for virtualbox to run?

Reply #15 –
clearly everytime i ran ito issue in the past i came to same solution, add user to disk group.  dont know another way.
Cat Herders of Linux

Re: aside from vboxusers any other groups needed for virtualbox to run?

Reply #16 –
Quote from: nous – on
Quote from: cat herders of linux – on
def can not use vb now without user in disk group. so what are my other options? @nous
Code: [Select]
# ls -l /dev/sd*
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8,  0 Mar  1 22:37 /dev/sda
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8,  1 Mar  1 22:37 /dev/sda1
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 16 Mar  1 22:37 /dev/sdb
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 17 Mar  1 22:37 /dev/sdb1
There's a reason disks aren't even readable by mortals. This is especially important for multi-user machines, but even in single-user ones, an account which can read/write directly to disks is (almost) nothing short of a root user.
Imagine being tricked to run a script that zeroes everything it can write to, just to be able to run vbox on a real partition. If I were you, I'd clone the vmdk to a vdi. Expensive, storage-wise, for sure, perhaps there are leaner solutions out there with sparse files and such, but I'm not the best guy to advise on it since I mostly use virtualbox to test our ISOs.

If you're absolutely certain you'll never be compromised, disk group membership is a nice shortcut. If.
well i mean it's installed on a real partition so it's nice to run it from there too and i can still dual boot should i ever need to though i cant imagine why i might but i could.
Cat Herders of Linux

Re: aside from vboxusers any other groups needed for virtualbox to run?

Reply #17 –
Quote from: cat herders of linux – on
permission issue that is only solved by adding user to disk group.

In the context of virtualbox raw disk access, this can be addressed by creating a udev rule to give more relaxed permissions (user RW) to a specific partition or disk. However it's still dangerous as /dev/sd* type designations (which virtualbox expects) can't be relied upon not to change hence why we generally use UUID's in linux these days.

Re: aside from vboxusers any other groups needed for virtualbox to run?

Reply #18 –
i will read the wiki on udev rules and report back once i've made some attempts.
As goes the fickle state of sd*, i have experienced that first hand in the past and had to switch the attached drive  many times in the past between sdc and sda from what i recall.  I'm using an nvme so perhaps as i have one nvme it might be less of a hassle.
I put artix on my msata drive that's inside a sata case and that works great for linux.  that msata and the power supply are the last components of my old a6 laptop from 2012 that are still in use.  the powersupply is powering a european tv that uses an external power brick that just happens by sheer luck to be compatible.  Anyway, i have steam on the nvme for both windows and linux for peppy performance.  Now though it might make more sense to move windows onto my 1 tb hdd and give all that performance to linux only as i dont need that performance in windows.  If i do that i might as well put windows on a virtual drive.  All the ripple effects a beefier graphics card could cause...  who knew.

TY for your reply!
Cat Herders of Linux

Re: aside from vboxusers any other groups needed for virtualbox to run?

Reply #19 –
SO after all that thinking outloud i moved artix to nvme and removed windows from it.  moved partitions and resized them and reinstalled grub and put a 150 gb vdi on the 1tb hdd and am reinstalling windows.  Time to retire the msata i think...  nearly a decade of use from it after all on a 128gb device is beyond expectations i think.
Cat Herders of Linux