Virtualbox add shared folder windows

With the shared folders feature of Oracle VM VirtualBox, you can access files of your host system from within the guest system. This is similar to how you would use network shares in Windows networks, except that shared folders do not require networking, only the Guest Additions. Shared folders are supported with Windows 2000 or later, Linux, and Oracle Solaris guests. Oracle VM VirtualBox includes experimental support for Mac OS X and OS/2 guests.

Shared folders physically reside on the host and are then shared with the guest, which uses a special file system driver in the Guest Additions to talk to the host. For Windows guests, shared folders are implemented as a pseudo-network redirector. For Linux and Oracle Solaris guests, the Guest Additions provide a virtual file system.

To share a host folder with a virtual machine in Oracle VM VirtualBox, you must specify the path of the folder and choose a share name that the guest can use to access the shared folder. This happens on the host. In the guest you can then use the share name to connect to it and access files.

There are several ways in which shared folders can be set up for a virtual machine:

In the window of a running VM, you select Shared Folders from the Devices menu, or click on the folder icon on the status bar in the bottom right corner.

If a VM is not currently running, you can configure shared folders in the virtual machine’s Settings dialog.

From the command line, you can create shared folders using VBoxManage , as follows:

There are two types of shares:

Permanent shares, that are saved with the VM settings.

Transient shares, that are added at runtime and disappear when the VM is powered off. These can be created using a checkbox in the VirtualBox Manager, or by using the —transient option of the VBoxManage sharedfolder add command.

Shared folders can either be read-write or read-only. This means that the guest is either allowed to both read and write, or just read files on the host. By default, shared folders are read-write. Read-only folders can be created using a checkbox in the VirtualBox Manager, or with the —readonly option of the VBoxManage sharedfolder add command.

Oracle VM VirtualBox shared folders also support symbolic links, also called symlinks , under the following conditions:

The host operating system must support symlinks. For example, a Mac OS X, Linux, or Oracle Solaris host is required.

Currently only Linux and Oracle Solaris Guest Additions support symlinks.

For security reasons the guest OS is not allowed to create symlinks by default. If you trust the guest OS to not abuse the functionality, you can enable creation of symlinks for a shared folder as follows:

4.3.1.В Manual Mounting

You can mount the shared folder from inside a VM, in the same way as you would mount an ordinary network share:

In a Windows guest, shared folders are browseable and therefore visible in Windows Explorer. To attach the host’s shared folder to your Windows guest, open Windows Explorer and look for the folder in My Networking Place s, Entire Network , Oracle VM VirtualBox Shared Folders . By right-clicking on a shared folder and selecting Map Network Drive from the menu that pops up, you can assign a drive letter to that shared folder.

Alternatively, on the Windows command line, use the following command:

While vboxsvr is a fixed name, note that vboxsrv would also work, replace x: with the drive letter that you want to use for the share, and sharename with the share name specified with VBoxManage .

In a Linux guest, use the following command:

To mount a shared folder during boot, add the following entry to /etc/fstab :

In a Oracle Solaris guest, use the following command:

Replace sharename , use a lowercase string, with the share name specified with VBoxManage or the VirtualBox Manager. Replace mountpoint with the path where you want the share to be mounted on the guest, such as /mnt/share . The usual mount rules apply. For example, create this directory first if it does not exist yet.

Here is an example of mounting the shared folder for the user jack on Oracle Solaris:

Beyond the standard options supplied by the mount command, the following are available:

This option sets the character set used for I/O operations. Note that on Linux guests, if the iocharset option is not specified, then the Guest Additions driver will attempt to use the character set specified by the CONFIG_NLS_DEFAULT kernel option. If this option is not set either, then UTF-8 is used.

This option specifies the character set used for the shared folder name. This is UTF-8 by default.

The generic mount options, documented in the mount manual page, apply also. Especially useful are the options uid , gid and mode , as they can allow access by normal users in read/write mode, depending on the settings, even if root has mounted the filesystem.

In an OS/2 guest, use the VBoxControl command to manage shared folders. For example:

As with Windows guests, shared folders can also be accessed via UNC using \\VBoxSF\ , \\VBoxSvr\ or \\VBoxSrv\ as the server name and the shared folder name as sharename .

4.3.2.В Automatic Mounting

Oracle VM VirtualBox provides the option to mount shared folders automatically. When automatic mounting is enabled for a shared folder, the Guest Additions service will mount it for you automatically. For Windows or OS/2, a preferred drive letter can also be specified. For Linux or Oracle Solaris, a mount point directory can also be specified.

If a drive letter or mount point is not specified, or is in use already, an alternative location is found by the Guest Additions service. The service searches for an alternative location depending on the guest OS, as follows:

Windows and OS/2 guests. Search for a free drive letter, starting at Z: . If all drive letters are assigned, the folder is not mounted.

Linux and Oracle Solaris guests. Folders are mounted under the /media directory. The folder name is normalized (no spaces, slashes or colons) and is prefixed with sf_ .

For example, if you have a shared folder called myfiles , it will appear as /media/sf_myfiles in the guest.

The guest properties /VirtualBox/GuestAdd/SharedFolders/MountDir and the more generic /VirtualBox/GuestAdd/SharedFolders/MountPrefix can be used to override the automatic mount directory and prefix. See Section 4.7, “Guest Properties”.

Access to an automatically mounted shared folder is granted to everyone in a Windows guest, including the guest user. For Linux and Oracle Solaris guests, access is restricted to members of the group vboxsf and the root user.

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How to create Virtualbox shared folder between Windows host and Ubuntu18.04 guest machine

I’ve read docs and all questions about sharing folder from host machine to Virtualbox’s guest machine and still can’t get it working. In my case the host is Windows machine and guest is Ubuntu18.04 server machine.

What is advised and what I’ve already tried:

1) In the VM’s menu I found ‘devices’ submenu and clicked ‘Insert Guest Additions CD image’ option after which the CD icon in the status bar was lit and shows that the CD is inserted and the path to iso is C:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox\VBoxGuestAdditions.iso (I checked that file really exists there).

2) In the same ‘devices’ VM’s settings submenu I opened ‘Shared Folder Settings’ and added shared folder with name ‘test’ and path ‘D:\test’ which leads to the folder on my D: disk which contains test files.

3) I reboot my Ubuntu VM and look into /media directory expecting to find /media/cdrom directory or something like this with file VBoxLinuxAdditions.run in it, which should be run according to docs. But /media directory is empty so I have nothing to do with it. I looked for this file into other directories but had no success.

After that I tried to install Virtualbox-guest-additions from repository as was advised on ubuntu forum:

And checked that the package was installed with command:

But when I rebooted and tried to mount the shared folder with:

I see there is no /sbin/mount.vboxsf link present, I’m not sure if this is a problem, also I tried add my user to ‘vboxsf’ group with:

but the group was not created too.

What am I missing, what is the way to make it work?

How to Create Shared Folder on VirtualBox – Windows and Ubuntu

I have a Windows 10 laptop, and I am running VirtualBox. One of my virtual machines has Ubuntu 14.04 64 bit operating system. Now, I want to be able to share folders from my Ubuntu to Windows 10 and vice versa. I’m assuming that you have installed the Ubuntu virtual machine already and ready to set up the shared folder.

Step 1) Make a folder to be shared on your Windows 10 host operating system.

I’ll create a folder called shared on my Windows 10 Desktop.

I’ll put a bunch of stuff inside the shared folder to be used by the Ubuntu virtual machine.

Step 2) Make sure that you have an empty optical drive for your virtual machine.

Step 3) Boot your Ubuntu virtual machine. Go to Devices tab and click Insert Guest Additions CD image…

Step 4) Open up a terminal and install the Guest Additions CD.

We make a directory to mount the Guest Additions CD. The Guest Additions CD contains a file system type that we need to use.

Now, we can mount the Guest Additions CD to the /media/cdrom folder.

We should install necessary packages if they have not already been installed.

Now, we can install and run the Guest Additions CD.

Step 5) Click on the Devices tab and click Shared Folder Settings… and integrate the Windows 10 shared folder.

Hit the add shared folder button.

Click on the Folder Path list and find your shared folder on Windows 10. I checked off Read-only, Auto-mount, and Make Permanent. Hit OK.

Step 6) Create a shared folder on Ubuntu virtual machine and mount the shared folder.

You make a directory on the Ubuntu virtual machine that will act as Ubuntu’s shared folder.

We mount the shared folder on Windows 10 to the

shared was the name of the Windows 10 shared folder, and I called the Ubuntu shared folder,

/shared-windows10 , to differentiate between the two.

Step 7) Change directory into the shared folder and see all the shared files.

Huzzah! The shared folder is great for transferring files from Windows 10 to the Ubuntu virtual machine and vice versa.

I set the shared folder to Read-only, but you can uncheck the box in the Shared Folder Settings…

How To Share Folders Between VirtualBox And Windows Host Machine

Last Updated on March 24, 2013 by admin 2 Comments

Not too long ago, we covered how to share drives/folders between XP Mode and the Windows 7 host machine to be able to access files and folders on the host machine right from the XP Mode.

In this guide, we are going to show you how to share a folder present under the host machine with the guest OS on VirtualBox.

Before you follow the procedure, please make sure that you have installed the Guest additions. Click Devices, Install guest additions option and then follow the simple on-screen steps to install it.

Method 1: To share folders between Windows 7/Vista guest OS and host machine.

1. Run the virtual machine (VM) under VirtualBox.

2. Click Devices under menu and then select Share folders option to open Share Folders dialog-box.

3. Click on Add shared folders button to browse to the folder (present on the host machine) that you want to share with the virtual machine. Once added, you can set the read-only permission to the shared folder so that the guest OS (virtual machine) user will not be able to write to the added folder. Click Ok button.

4. Now open the explorer in virtual machine. If you can’t see the shared folder in the explorer under Networked Location category, follow the next step as well.

5. Click Map network drive button on the explorer tool bar to launch the Map network drive wizard. Here, click Browse button next to the folder box and expand the VBOXSVR by clicking on the arrow icon to see the folder name that you have added in step 3. Select the folder and then click Ok button. If you want to connect to the shared folder every time you logon, enable the option named Reconnect at logon option. Click Finish button to see the shared folder in the guest OS explorer.

Method 2: To share folders between XP guest OS and host machine:

1. Follow the above mentioned procedure till step 3 and then follow the below mentioned steps.

2. Open My Computer and then click My network places option present in the left pane.

3. In My Network Places window, click Add a network place option to launch Add a network place wizard.

4. Click Next button, choose Another network location option and again click Next button.

5. Here, click Browse button, expand Entire Network, and then expand VirtualBox Shared Folders to see your shared folder. Hit Next button to type a name for the new network place (shared folder). Click Finish button to complete the procedure.

6. Go to XP Start menu and then click Network places to view the shared folder.