Thursday 4 June 2009

Accessing VirtualBox Shared Folders From Ubuntu Guest

Apologies for the glut of technical posts - normally I drop this kind of thing onto my PhD wiki but it's not available atm :(

So...

1) Setup the shared folder on the host by bringing up the settings dialogue for the appropriate VM within VirtualBox. Click 'Shared Folders' and set up as required with a particular name. Remember the name you've given the folder.

2) Start the VM. Make a new directory in /mnt, this will be the directory to contain your shared folder content. E.g.

mkdir /mnt/docs_host

3) Type the following command into your terminal:

sudo mount.vboxsf *name_created_in_1* /mnt/*folder_created_in_2 *

E.g.

sudo mount.vboxsf my_docs /mnt/docs_host/

All done! You should now be able to do an ls on the directory you created in 2) and see the content you linked to in 1).

9 comments:

  1. thks, your example command should be changed to

    sudo mount -t vboxsf my_docs /mnt/docs_host/

    ReplyDelete
  2. After searching for hours all over the web, I finally find your perfectly clear explanation of how to set this up. Thank you.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thanks for your simple howto.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I'm able to mount a shared folder following the above steps, but I'm running into permission problems. The mounted folder and all its contents belong to root, and with sudo or even being root I'm not able to change their ownership or permissions. This drops the usefulness of these folders considerably. Have you run into this issue?

    ReplyDelete
  5. I've not seen this. Perhaps it relates to the permissions of the original files?

    ReplyDelete
  6. mhhh! my system tells:
    mount: unknown filesystem type 'vboxsf'

    ReplyDelete
  7. Hi Saffy...

    I have done the following configuration which is shown below.

    Steps:
    1) I have used Windows XP as the Host Operating System
    2) In the host system, I have shared a folder called "sh-are" and add a share in virtual box
    3) I have used Redhat 5.1 as a Virtual Machine in Virtual box.
    4) When I type mount -t vboxsf sh-are share
    where 'share' is the directory which i have created in redhat for mounting purpose.
    It's perfectly working like a charm.. as i have done with the installation of VBoxGuestAdditions.
    When i access mounted share directory in redhat...
    a)mount -t vboxsf sh-are share
    b)cd /share
    c)I am getting all the files and folders with full permissions...
    d)If i create a file under a share directory..I am getting a full permissions instead of normal file permissions(644)...

    Could u please provide a solution for this...

    ReplyDelete
  8. Hi, I'm not actually working on this project at the moment so don't have anything set up to try this on. Hope you get it sorted.

    ReplyDelete

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