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Accepted
Karlson
Asked: 2012-01-10 11:31:08 +0800 CST

VirtualBox seems to disable printing in Ubuntu to USB Printer

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I am running Maverick on my machine and I have Lexmark X6675 connected to the system via USB. I also have VirtualBox 4.1 running Windows Vista on the system. And I have a very interesting situation with Printing.

If I have VirtualBox running with USB device that is my printer enabled to VirtualBox I am unable to print from Ubuntu. I have to shutdown VirtualBox (I haven't tested but disabling the USB access probably does the same, I'll have to check) and then I can print from Ubuntu.

Is this normal behavior? Is there a way to configure either VirtualBox or Ubuntu or both so that they can gracefully share the printer?

10.10

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    If both the virtualbox guest and ubuntu are sharing the same USB connection then you will need to define either the guest or ubuntu to be the "master" printer server.

    For example, you can have two printer connections in ubuntu - one for the local USB printer and the second set to print to the windows guest print server.

    enter image description here

    Thus, when you want to print from ubuntu when the windows guest is running, select the printer connected to the windows guest.

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  2. Virtualbox is sort of "funny" that way with usb devices. They can be shared, but typically are available to either the host or guest, but not both at the same time.

    You might be able to continue to share other usb devices, but mark the printer as not shared.

    enter image description here

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