Accessing VirtualBox Shared Folder in Ubuntu 12.10 Guest

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Accessing VirtualBox Shared Folder in Ubuntu 12.10 Guest

VirtualBox let you share folders, on the host side, that are accessible on the guest side. And it has the option to make share folders permanent and auto-mount. That's the easy part. But it's not terribly intuitive on how to access these auto-mounted shared folders on the guest.

For Ubuntu 12.10 guest installation, the auto-mounted folder shows up in "/media". The name is usually "sf_[folder]", where "[folder]" is the name you gave to the shared folder. However, if you try to access that directory, you'll get a permission denied error. So what's the point of sharing the directory if you can't even access it?

The reason you can't access it is because VirtualBox creates the folder using the root account with "vboxsf" group access. One way you can gain access to it is to add your user account to the group. You can do that with the following command:

  sudo usermod -a -G vboxsf [user name]

Replace "[user name]" with your user name, obviously. Once you've done that, log out and back in (or reboot your virtual machine). Now you'll have no problem accessing the shared folder.

Jake
Wed, 10 Apr 2013 06:09:17 +0400

I have since installed Ubuntu 13.04. You still need to perform this step in Ubuntu 13.04 to gain access to the shared folders. Strangely, Oracle has automated the process of installing VirtualBox Guest Additions. Why don't they automate this part of the process?

Jake
Wed, 26 Jun 2013 05:38:43 +0400

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