You have an external USB drive or key. Apply this command (using the file path of anything on your device) and it will simulate the unplug of this device. If you just want the port, just type : echo $(sudo lshw -businfo | grep -B 1 -m 1 $(df "/path/to/file" | tail -1 | awk '{print $1}' | cut -c 6-8) | head -n 1 | awk '{print $1}' | cut -c 5- | tr ":" "-") Show Sample Output

Some times you may ban usb to protect thefting of your personal data. Blacklist the usb_storage module by adding blacklist usb_storage to /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf. To load the module manually, sudo modprobe usb_storage.

This command lists the names of your USB devices connected and what file in /dev they are using. It's pretty useful if you don't have an automount option in your desktop or you don't have any graphical enviroment. Show Sample Output

If you don't want your computer to try to boot form a USB stick that used to be used as a boot device (maybe for a live linux distro), you will have to remove the boot loader from your stick other wise the boot will fail each time the device is attached to your PC.

Usage: VBoxBlockBoot [Virtual_Machine] [Block_device] Eg: VBoxBlockBoot WinXP /dev/sdc In another words vm=usb; usb=sdc;sudo umount /dev/$usb* ; sudo chmod 777 /dev/$usb ; VBoxManage storageattach $vm --medium ~/raw-HD-4-VB/$usb.vmdk --type hdd --storagectl "IDE Controller" --device 0 --port 0 ; VBoxManage startvm $vm Where vm --> Name of the virtual machine to start usb --> Block device to use. (/dev/sdc) This can used after setup up a boot loader on to my USB pen drive or HDD (After creating Live USB). Here root privilege is needed but not granted to Virtual Box. Thus we can access all our VM.( If we run VBox as root we can't access our VMs). Root privilege is used to - Unmount the storage device - Chmod to full access (777) Requirements:- 1. Device information file (rawvmdk file) created by the following command. Need to run only once. Not bad to run many. VBoxCreateRawDisk() { VBoxManage internalcommands createrawvmdk -filename ~/.rawHD4VB_`basename "$1"`.vmdk -rawdisk "$1"; } 2. Root privilege to umount & chmod 3. Real storage medium (ie /dev/*) (Non-virtual such as USB HD, pen drive, a partition) 4. A virtual m/c already available (here "usb") vm=usb; usb=sdc;sudo umount /dev/$usb* ; sudo chmod 777 /dev/$usb ; VBoxManage storageattach $vm --medium ~/raw-HD-4-VB/$usb.vmdk --type hdd --storagectl "IDE Controller" --device 0 --port 0 ; VBoxManage startvm $vm VBoxBlockBoot() { sudo umount "$2"*; sudo chmod 777 "$2"; VBoxManage storageattach "$1" --medium ~/.rawHD4VB_`basename "$2"`.vmdk --type hdd --storagectl "IDE Controller" --device 0 --port 0 ; VBoxManage startvm "$1"; } Show Sample Output