kentwait

How to mount a VirtualBox shared folder when the Guest OS boots

Problem

While using VirtualBox's Guest Additions to mount shared folders provides a seamless way to mount shared folders, there are also disadvantages.

• Shared folders will always mount in /media/sf_(share name) unless specified using through vbox drivers in the guest OS
• Mounting does not happen at boot-time. Applications that require paths at boot will not be able to access the shared folder even after it is mounted - such as Docker.

Solution

Instead of relying on Guest Additions, if you have sudo permissions, shared folders can be mounted at boot-time using fstab. Using this approach allows

samiraguiar

Note for newcomers:

In the shortcuts below, "C" stands for CTRL and "A" stands for "ALT". This is a convention
used in the Midnight Commander documentation and was kept here.

You can also use "ESC" instead of "ALT", which is useful on Macbooks.

Main View
---------------------------------------------------------------
- File/directory operations