Subject: Bug Report: Permission Denied Error When Creating Containers on VirtualBox Host

[gustavobarsan]

Hello,

I'm reporting an issue I've encountered while using your application to create containers with Distrobox on a system running a VirtualBox host.

Problem Description

When I create a new container using the application's graphical user interface (GUI), the process fails with a "permission denied" error. The error message explicitly mentions a mount issue related to VirtualBox's USB devices:

Error: unable to start container... error mounting "/dev/vboxusb/002/005"... permission denied

Steps to Reproduce

Start the application on a system running a VirtualBox host (e.g., a Linux distribution installed in a VirtualBox VM).

Use the GUI to create a new Distrobox container (e.g., Arch Linux).

The container creation process fails with the permission error.

Expected Behavior

The container should be created successfully without any permission errors.

Observed Behavior

The container creation fails due to a permission denied error related to the automatic mounting of /dev/vboxusb devices.

Root Cause and Suggested Solution

I've identified that the issue is related to how the container is being created. Distrobox, by default, tries to share host devices, which causes a permission conflict in this specific environment.

I was able to successfully create a container by manually running the distrobox create command from the terminal and including the --unshare-all flag. This flag prevents the container from trying to share the host's devices, resolving the error.

Command used to fix the issue manually:
Bash

distrobox create --name mycontainer --unshare-all --image archlinux

I suggest that the application either:
a) Includes the --unshare-all flag by default when creating new containers, especially in environments where device sharing might cause conflicts.
b) Adds an option in the GUI to allow users to specify which unshare flags to use during container creation.

Thank you for your attention to this matter. Please let me know if you need any further information.

Best regards,

gustavo