VirtualBox 2.0.6 & Physical Serial Port

Hello, I am trying to get some windows software to work in VirtualBox 2.0.6. The program is called AquaNotes and it lets me interface my desktop PC with their AquaController computers via a Serial RS-232 port.

I tried to run the program in Wine, but it crashes. The program runs fine on XP in VirtualBox, but I can't figure out how to get virtualbox to let the virtual machine access my physical serial port.

Also, I am very interested in seeing the traffic that gets sent back and forth, the manual for the device lists a few commands you can use but does not give a full list.

Ok, I still can't get this to work. When I open up VirtualBox I get this error

Could not load the Host USB Proxy Service (VERR_FILE_NOT_FOUND). The service might be not installed on the host computer.

Result Code: 
NS_ERROR_FAILURE (0x00004005)
Component: 
Host
Interface: 
IHost {489fb370-c227-4d43-9761-ceb28484fd9f}
Callee: 
IMachine {1e509de4-d96c-4f44-8b94-860194f710ac}

On the Serial Port configuration panel in VirtualBox, there are 3 options for the serial port mode: disconnected, host pipe, and host device.

I don't really understand these options, but I *do* know that I don't want to run in disconnected or host device mode. The default value when setting up the serial ports in VB is /dev/tty0. Unfortunately that dosn't work for me.

NamedPipe#0 failed to bind to local socket /dev/tty0.
VBox status code: -448 (VERR_NET_ADDRESS_IN_USE).


Result Code: 
NS_ERROR_FAILURE (0x80004005)
Component: 
Console
Interface: 
IConsole {e3c6d4a1-a935-47ca-b16d-f9e9c496e53e}

SO... my question now is how does this host pipe thing work?

DirtyBirdNJ said: SO... my question now is how does this host pipe thing work?I'm pretty sure you do NOT want host-pipe. You want host device:You can connect the virtual serial port to a physical serial port on your host. (On a Windows host, this will be a name like COM1; on Linux or OpenSolaris hosts, it will be a device node like /dev/ttyS0). VirtualBox will then simply redirect all data received from and sent to the virtual serial port to the physical device.

I'm not very familiar with configuring a serial port. You may want to take a look at pages 50 and 51 of the User Manual (you can find it at http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads -- it is a PDF file)

I had problems trying to get virtualbox to recognize my serial port. Here's what I did: on the serial ports settings page set Port Number to COM1 set Port Mode to Host Device set Port Path to /dev/ttyS0 then after booting up winXP run Start > Settings > Control Panel > Add Hardware. the serial port didn't show up in the hardware wizard so I had to use the Advanced option (Install manually from a list.) After doin this virtualbox recognised my serial port as COM3.

Hi! (my English is very poor)...

I have a very similar problem... when i do that (port path = /dev/ttys0) the program crash!!! in internet says that we must do a pipe whit the virtual port (VirtualBox) and the Phsysical port (COM hard).... this pipe do whit a program, for example: socat....

but i dont understand how can i do it... :S

good luck and sorry 4 my bad English!

if i found a solution, immediately i tell you!

cod.almighty said: I had problems trying to get virtualbox to recognize my serial port. Here's what I did:

on the serial ports settings page set Port Number to COM1 set Port Mode to Host Device set Port Path to /dev/ttyS0 then after booting up winXP run Start > Settings > Control Panel > Add Hardware. the serial port didn't show up in the hardware wizard so I had to use the Advanced option (Install manually from a list.) After doin this virtualbox recognised my serial port as COM3.

Thanks, this worked for me using an Ubuntu Host with an XP Pro guest, I then tried it again with the same setup at a later date and Windows reported a problem with the port.

I have now managed to solve this by:

In Windows:

Device Manager - Ports - Communications Port (COM 3)- Properties - Port Settings - Advanced

Change the port number from COM1 to COM3 (even though it warns of conflict) click OK

Then at the Resources tab change the IRQ of the port to 4 (I used Basic Configuration 0000). Then restart.

I have now tried this a few times and it seems to work in each case

Glad my post helped, a lot of the information about virtual box seems quite cryptic and hard to understand. I haven't run into any probs with my own setup yet but I'll keep your fix in mind for any future installs. thanks Captain.

In my experience XP seems to create Com3 when installed on vbox.

On my 8.10 machine I setup COM1 in vbox then went into the device manager and deleted all the COM ports that magically existed and finally created a new COM port and changed it to COM1. Seems to be working for me.

Is there a reason why you would setup COM1 in the vbox setting and then use COM3 in the Windows install?

Odemia said: Is there a reason why you would setup COM1 in the vbox setting and then use COM3 in the Windows install?

I left the serial port in my windows guest as COM3 simply because it defaulted to this and it worked. I didn't have any reason to change it.