VirtualBox shared folder access problem

[beanzontoast]

Anyone into VirtualBox? I've got Xp as host and Ubuntu 10.04 as guest and have created a shared folder on my Xp desktop using auto mounting in the new version of VirtualBox to make it appear in Ubuntu. I can see the shared folder in Ubuntu buried in the Media folder as 'sf_shared', but when I try to open it I get a permission error.

How do I get round this?

 

[2Loose]

Anyone into VirtualBox? I've got Xp as host and Ubuntu 10.04 as guest and have created a shared folder on my Xp desktop using auto mounting in the new version of VirtualBox to make it appear in Ubuntu. I can see the shared folder in Ubuntu buried in the Media folder as 'sf_shared', but when I try to open it I get a permission error.

How do I get round this?

I am unsure about auto mount but I may get a chance to try it out this weekend, but in the meantime I found this and wonder if it helps - maybe the command line works as expected? I have an ubuntu guest, but not tried a windows share out yet, so if it works then let me know

.


I do remember doing xp guest on windows7 host and it wasn't as easy to work out as I had hoped either...


EDIT: Tried the above linked instuctions and they work fine.

 

[beanzontoast]

I am unsure about auto mount but I may get a chance to try it out this weekend, but in the meantime I found this and wonder if it helps - maybe the command line works as expected? I have an ubuntu guest, but not tried a windows share out yet, so if it works then let me know

.


I do remember doing xp guest on windows7 host and it wasn't as easy to work out as I had hoped either...


EDIT: Tried the above linked instuctions and they work fine.

Cheers 2Loose - not working yet though as it's chucking out a protocol error on the second step. The instructions seem to have a lot of sucesses but a few failures too looking at the comments. The syntax etc is correct to my eyes. Going to fiddle with it a bit longer but plan b is to fall back on mounting a data stick and using that.

 

[2Loose]

have you set the windows permissions on your windows share to allow Everyone 'full control' rather than the default read-only? (note: using full control access is potentially insecure if you apply it to Everyone rather than a specific user, but makes it easy to test...)


I found my problems were down to that, rather than virtualbox or ubuntu.

 

[beanzontoast]

have you set the windows permissions on your windows share to allow Everyone 'full control' rather than the default read-only? (note: using full control access is potentially insecure if you apply it to Everyone rather than a specific user, but makes it easy to test...)


I found my problems were down to that, rather than virtualbox or ubuntu.

Yes - have given the folder full permission in Xp.

Have just tried it putting the file directly in the C: folder on Xp and sharing from there to see if it made any difference - can't even see the folder in Ubuntu - it hasn't gone into media this time. Where does your shared folder turn up in Ubuntu?

Edit - found it after a file search. It was in 'mnt' (of course - obvious now). Strange that the new automount option seems to want to use the 'media' folder instead.

Thanks for the help!

 

[beanzontoast]

One last problem I can see. I'm having to mount the shared folder in Terminal every time the vm of Ubuntu starts for Ubuntu to see its contents.

Possibly the auto-mount option in the new VirtualBox is designed to get around this? Will give it a try and see...

[Edit - no - sill getting same problem - the folder it creates has a permission issue when you try to access it. Need to look further at this. Anyway, the method 2Loose put me onto does work, so that will do nicely for now!]

 

[2Loose]

Hmmm, tried again this morning and had to reinstall guestaddons before it worked for some reason.
Also found that the share name being the same as the mount point folder can give a 'protocol error'.

 

[beanzontoast]

Hmmm, tried again this morning and had to reinstall guestaddons before it worked for some reason.
Also found that the share name being the same as the mount point folder can give a 'protocol error'.

Just been looking in the manual. This is in part where the problem I was getting when using auto-mount came from - Guest Additions creates a usergroup called vboxsf, so you have to be a member of the group to get access to the shared folder. Looking forward to giving this a try - auto-mount is literally supposed to mount the shared folder each time you log into the guest OS, which would be useful.

 

[2Loose]

Have you tried altering /etc/fstab to do the mounting on boot instead? Maybe an alternative...I have just written the mount command into a shellscript on my desktop for ease, but if I used it a lot I would probably start with fstab as the place to look.