Create Shared Folders with VirtualBox

Create and access shared folders and hard drives from virtual machines created in VirtualBox and get Linux guests to automount them at boot.

Step-by-step instructions are:

1. Notice the directory for /media (in the video) contains only 4 folders, initially
2. Go to Devices/Shared Folders in the top bar menu
3. Enter the address of the folder to be shared (in the video this is /media/disk)
4. Enter a name for the shared folder as it is to be seen by the guest OS (in the video it is called "disk")
5. Click OK
6. Open a terminal and write

sudo mkdir /media/(name of shared media)
sudo mount -t vboxsf (name of shared folder as seen my the guest) /media/(name of shared media)

In the video those two lines are written as

sudo mkdir /media/disk
sudo mount -t vboxsf disk /media/disk

7. Make the shared media automount by adding the mount command (e.g sudo mount -t vboxsf disk /media/disk) into the file rc.local by opening it with a text editor and placing the mount command before "exit 0". For example

Open Terminal and type

kdesudo kate /etc/rc.local

then edit the file as demonstrated in the video.

8. Notice the directory for /media (in the video) now contains 4 folders plus the one we've just added i.e /media/disk

Warning: do not delete the mount point without first unmounting the shared media with "umount /media/(name of shared media)" otherwise you will delete the content of the shared media.

More detailed instructions for setting up shared media and using VirtualBox (from start to finish) can be found at http://journalxtra.com/virtualbox

Category:

Education

Tags:

• virtual box
• shared folders
• virtual machines
• how2
• guide
• learn how to
• instructions for
• accessing shared media
• automount shared media