How to Create a USB Filter for a Known Device in Virtual Box

Maclean Liu(刘相兵

How to Create a USB Filter for a Known Device in Virtual Box

Applies to:
Oracle VM VirtualBox - Version: 4.1 and later   [Release: 4.0 and later ]
Information in this document applies to any platform.
Goal
The VirtualBox administrator would like to install and configure a solution that implements multiple VirtualBox Guests on a host machine.  The guest applications are using USB license dongles, devices which may or may not be physically attached to the host system when running the script to create/configure the guest machines.

In order to prevent guest machines from interacting with the incorrect license dongle, the VirtualBox Administrator may implement USB filters--even if the device is not connected--so long as the name of the USB device is already known.
Solution
It is possible to create a USB filter--even if the USB device is no present at creation--by using the VBoxManage command within a terminal shell on the host where VirtualBox is installed.

The syntax for the usbfilter command will look like:

# VBoxManage usbfilter add 0 --name < > --target <name> --vendorid <XXXX> --productid <XXXX>

Further details on the VBoxManage usbfilter command can be found within the official VirtualBox documentation.