Mounting VirtualBox shared folders on Ubuntu Server 16.04 LTS

Mounting VirtualBox shared folders on Ubuntu Server 16.04 LTS.md

Update 28 July 2019: An updated version of this guide for Ubuntu Server 18.04 LTS is now available. Feel free to check it out.

Update 23 May 2020: This guide is ALREADY OUTDATED and might no longer work with new versions of Ubuntu and VirtualBox. Please consider switching to the updated guide instead. I will no longer respond to the replies to this gist. Thank you.

Mounting VirtualBox shared folders on Ubuntu Server 16.04 LTS

This guide will walk you through steps on how to setup a VirtualBox shared folder inside your Ubuntu Server guest. Tested on Ubuntu Server 16.04.3 LTS (Xenial Xerus)

Steps:

1. Open VirtualBox

2. Right-click your VM, then click Settings

3. Go to Shared Folders section

4. Add a new shared folder

5. On Add Share prompt, select the Folder Path in your host that you want to be accessible inside your VM.

6. In the Folder Name field, type shared

7. Uncheck Read-only and Auto-mount, and check Make Permanent

8. Start your VM

9. Once your VM is up and running, go to Devices menu -> Insert Guest Additions CD image menu

10. Use the following command to mount the CD:

sudo mount /dev/cdrom /media/cdrom

11. Install dependencies for VirtualBox guest additions:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install build-essential linux-headers-`uname -r`

12. Run installation script for the guest additions:

sudo /media/cdrom/./VBoxLinuxAdditions.run

13. Reboot VM

sudo shutdown -r now

14. Create "shared" directory in your home

mkdir ~/shared

15. Mount the shared folder from the host to your ~/shared directory

sudo mount -t vboxsf shared ~/shared

16. The host folder should now be accessible inside the VM.

cd ~/shared

Make the mount folder persistent

This directory mount we just made is temporary and it will disappear on next reboot. To make this permanent, we'll set it so that it will mount our ~/shared directory on system startup

1. Edit fstab file in /etc directory

sudo nano /etc/fstab

2. Add the following line to fstab (separated by tabs) and press Ctrl+O to Save.

shared	/home/<username>/shared	vboxsf	defaults	0	0

3. Edit modules

sudo nano /etc/modules

4. Add the following line to /etc/modules and save

vboxsf

5. Reboot the vm and log-in again

shutdown -r now

6. Go to your home directory and check to see if the file is highlighted in green.

cd ~
ls

If it is then congratulations! You successfully linked the directory within your vm with your host folder.

Bonus:

How to point apache's web directory to our folder in the host.

1. Remove apache's old html directory (WARNING! Backup your data if necessary)

sudo rm -rf /var/www/html	

2. Add a symbolic link in its place

sudo ln -s ~/shared /var/www/html

Thanks! I had forgotten about installing the Guest Additions from CD. After step 9, I didn't have to do anything else, as VirtualBox 6.0.16 automatically ran the installation script (VBoxLinuxAdditions.run) and mounted the shared folder. Caveat: Mac host, Ubuntu Desktop 16.04.1 guest.

It doesn't seem to use the /etc/fstab file, as there was no entry for the shared folder. But the mount command shows
/home/justin/mydocs on /home/justin/mydocs type vboxsf (rw,nodev,relatime,iocharset=utf8,uid=0,gid=999,dmode=0770,fmode=0770,tag=VBoxAutomounter)

Spoke too soon. It seems there's an extra step related to permissions, for some reason (see https://www.howtogeek.com/187703/how-to-access-folders-on-your-host-machine-from-an-ubuntu-virtual-machine-in-virtualbox/). The mount folder is owned by root:vboxsf and has permissions 770, so you have to add yourself to the vboxsf group.
sudo adduser $USER vboxsf
and reboot.

the text file can't write by gedit ,but can write by LibreWriter

After running this command : sudo mount -t vboxsf shared ~/shared
i get this error :

/sbin/mount.vboxsf: mounting failed with the error: No such device or address

@abdes-zakari

I had the same issue on 16.04 after successfully installing Guest Additions .iso, not sure why it didn't start. Instead of installing the Guest Additions .iso, I used packages from Ubuntu repositories and it worked:

sudo apt-get install virtualbox-guest-utils virtualbox-guest-dkms
sudo service virtualbox-guest-utils start

I prefer to add it as a inside crontab -e:

@reboot mount -t vboxsf shared home/user/shared

So you dont mess with fstab

Note that your VirtualBox might be too old for the Ubuntu version. I have installed 20.04 on VirtualBox 5.2.x and the mounting failed. It started working after upgrading to 6.0

Thank you very much for this , am using VirtualBox 6.1 and Ubuntu 20.04, and it works great.

This breaks my ubuntu VM

This breaks my ubuntu VM

It's because I was using
shared /home//shared vboxsf defaults 0 0
with "shared" instead of the name of my folder in the host

Host: Windows Server 2012 R2
Guest: Ubuntu Server 18.04 LTS

I had to additionally install following to get the shared folder mounted:

sudo apt-get install virtualbox-guest-utils virtualbox-guest-dkms

After rebooting, the shared folder appears under /media; vboxadd-service.service still fails for me though.

Hi, this solved my problem, thanks. How did you find this answer ?

1. Add the following line to fstab (separated by tabs) and press Ctrl+O to Save.
   shared /home/<username>/shared vboxsf defaults 0 0

Doing so lead to the machine booting in emergency mode, It loads normally when I remove it.

Did you substitute with the name of your user account?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-teQnZ8LEY
Follow this beautiful tutorial from youtube. (this is part 10, please watch part 9 as well)

VirtualBox version: 6.1.22 r144080 (Qt5.6.2)
Host: Windows 10 Enterprise 1909
Guest: ubuntu 16.04 LTS
Description:
followed all the steps, it is working in other ubuntu versions, but not with the one i have
I am getting error in the mount step itself....
on running this command: sudo mount -t vboxsf ShareVM ~/Desktop/ShareVM
getting error: /sbin/mount.vboxsf: mounting failed with the error: Invalid argument
any idea what to do?

VirtualBox version: 6.1.22 r144080 (Qt5.6.2)
Host: Windows 10 Enterprise 1909
Guest: ubuntu 16.04 LTS
Description:
followed all the steps, it is working in other ubuntu versions, but not with the one i have
I am getting error in the mount step itself....
on running this command: sudo mount -t vboxsf ShareVM ~/Desktop/ShareVM
getting error: /sbin/mount.vboxsf: mounting failed with the error: Invalid argument
any idea what to do?

You are mounted in root space.
Use the full path from the root, for example /home/USER/ShareVM. The ShareVM directory must exist. If you plan to upload files, the user must be granted permissions.

Worked for me to the T. Thank you so much for a comprehensive and easy to follow guide.

Host: Ubuntu 20
Guest: Ubuntu 22

This worked perfectly - Many thanks for the guidance!

how did you solve it?
I faced the same, my VM is broken and i don't know how to fix it.
should i try to delete it and reinstall it again?!

I updated to ubuntu 20. Too many headaches for things not bring compatible with it anymore

…

On Tue, Aug 23, 2022, 08:51 alaa-shubbak ***@***.***> wrote: ***@***.**** commented on this gist. ------------------------------ how did you solve it? I faced the same, my VM is broken and i don't know how to fix it. should i try to delete it and reinstall it again?! — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <https://gist.github.com/1d679f962e8209f8a9232f7593683265#gistcomment-4276651>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AH4Z6AO6LUTC4LXPAC2O3VTV2S3MBANCNFSM4HOMEKRA> . You are receiving this because you commented.Message ID: <estorgio/Mounting VirtualBox shared folders on Ubuntu Server 16.04 LTS.md/comments/4276651@ github.com>

This worked perfectly.
Host: Ubuntu 22.04 LTS
Guest: Windows 10 Pro
VirtualBox 6.1.36

Brilliant !!
These steps solved the common mounting issue I face using vagrant

/sbin/mount.vboxsf: mounting failed with the error: No such device