Prevent duplicate VirtualBox usbfilters from being added

[follower]

The standard approach for "capturing" USB devices on VirtualBox with Vagrant is (via):

vb.customize ['usbfilter', 'add', '0', '--target', :id, '--name', 'USB Blaster-II', '--action', 'hold', '--active', 'yes', '--vendorid', '0x09fb', '--productid', '0x6810']

Unfortunately the underlying VBoxManage usbfilter add ... command does not prevent duplicate filters from being added. This means running Vagrant multiple times results in multiple filters added--which at a minimum is unpleasant.

The ideal solution would be for VBoxManage to have some way of ignoring (exact) duplicate filters addition requests; a slightly less ideal solution would be for the Vagrant VirtualBox provider to ignore (exact) duplicate filter addition requests; and, my extremely un-ideal but "working" solution is to put this code in my Vagrantfile and shudder:

  def usbfilter_exists(vendor_id, product_id)
    #
    # Determine if a usbfilter with the provided Vendor/Product ID combination
    # already exists on this VM.
    #
    # TODO: Use a more reliable way of retrieving this information.
    #
    # NOTE: The "machinereadable" output for usbfilters is more
    #       complicated to work with (due to variable names including
    #       the numeric filter index) so we don't use it here.
    #
    machine_id_filepath = ".vagrant/machines/default/virtualbox/id"

    if not File.exists? machine_id_filepath
      # VM hasn't been created yet.
      return false
    end

    vm_info = `VBoxManage showvminfo $(<#{machine_id_filepath})`
    filter_match = "VendorId:         #{vendor_id}\nProductId:        #{product_id}\n"
    return vm_info.include? filter_match
  end

  def better_usbfilter_add(vb, vendor_id, product_id, filter_name)
    #
    # This is a workaround for the fact VirtualBox doesn't provide
    # a way for preventing duplicate USB filters from being added.
    #
    # TODO: Implement this in a way that it doesn't get run multiple
    #       times on each Vagrantfile parsing.
    #
    if not usbfilter_exists(vendor_id, product_id)
      vb.customize ["usbfilter", "add", "0",
                    "--target", :id,
                    "--name", filter_name,
                    "--vendorid", vendor_id,
                    "--productid", product_id
                    ]
    end
  end

  config.vm.provider "virtualbox" do |vb|

    better_usbfilter_add(vb, "<the_vendor_id>", "<the_product_id>", "<the_filter_name>")

    vb.customize ["modifyvm", :id, "--usb", "on"]
    vb.customize ["modifyvm", :id, "--usbehci", "on"]
  end

In my defence, I'm not a Ruby or Vagrant developer. ;)

You'll need to substitute your desired Product/Vendor ID and filter name where indicated in the code.

Hopefully this is useful for you or encourages someone to develop a better solution. :)

[sethvargo]

Hi @follower

Thank you for opening an issue. As you have discovered, sometimes the VirtualBox APIs (and their behaviors) are less than to be desired 😦. I am glad you came up with a solution. I do not think this warrants adding code in Vagrant core (especially since this is a very specific use case), but I think this would make an excellent plugin!

Please let me know if you have any questions 😄

[AgDude]

Thanks @follower for the snippet.

As a note for future readers, if you are on windows you'll need alter the machine_id_filepath to use backslash, or probably use ruby File.join.

[mark-veenstra]

If you really want to enjoy the USB filters and add all known filters based on vendor ids, you could do something like:

    require 'open-uri'
    source = open('http://www.linux-usb.org/usb.ids', &:read)
    source = source.lines.reject { |line|
      line =~ /^(?![0-9a-f])/
    }.join()
    #puts "#{source}"
    source.lines { |line|
      field = line.gsub(/\s+/m, ' ').strip.split(" ", 2)
      vendorId = "0x#{field[0]}"
      name = "#{field[1]}"
      vb.customize ["usbfilter", "add", "0", "--target", :id, "--name", name, "--vendorid", vendorId]
    }

[larryli]

# -*- mode: ruby -*-
# vi: set ft=ruby :

class VagrantPlugins::ProviderVirtualBox::Config < Vagrant.plugin("2", :config)
  def update_customizations(customizations)
    @customizations = customizations
  end
end

class VagrantPlugins::ProviderVirtualBox::Action::Customize
  alias_method :original_call, :call
  def call(env)
    machine = env[:machine]
    config = machine.provider_config
    driver = machine.provider.driver
    uuid = driver.instance_eval { @uuid }
    if uuid != nil
      lines = driver.execute('showvminfo', uuid, '--machinereadable', retryable: true).split("\n")
      filters = {}
      lines.each do |line|
        if matcher = /^USBFilterVendorId(\d+)="(.+?)"$/.match(line)
          id = matcher[1].to_i
          vendor_id = matcher[2].to_s
          filters[id] ||= {}
          filters[id][:vendor_id] = vendor_id
        elsif matcher = /^USBFilterProductId(\d+)="(.+?)"$/.match(line)
          id = matcher[1].to_i
          product_id = matcher[2].to_s
          filters[id] ||= {}
          filters[id][:product_id] = product_id
        end
      end
      config.update_customizations(config.customizations.reject { |_, command| filter_exists(filters, command) })
    end
    original_call(env)
  end

  def filter_exists(filters, command)
    if command.size > 6 && command[0] == 'usbfilter' && command[1] == 'add'
      vendor_id = product_id = false
      i = 2
      while i < command.size - 1 do
        if command[i] == '--vendorid'
          i += 1
          vendor_id = command[i]
        elsif command[i] == '--productid'
          i += 1
          product_id = command[i]
        end
        i += 1
      end
      if vendor_id != false && product_id != false
        filters.each do |_, filter|
          if filter[:vendor_id] == vendor_id && filter[:product_id] == product_id
            return true
          end
        end
      end
    end
    return false
  end
end

Vagrant.configure("2") do |config|
  config.vm.provider "virtualbox" do |vb|
    # Enable USB
    vb.customize ['modifyvm', :id, '--usb', 'on']
    # Please use your esp device id, run `VBoxManage.exe list usbhost` list devices
    vb.customize ['usbfilter', 'add', '0', '--target', :id, '--name', 'ESP', '--vendorid', '10c4', '--productid', 'ea60']
  end
end

[ghost]

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