estorgio/Mounting VirtualBox shared folders on Ubuntu Server 16.04 LTS.md

## Mounting VirtualBox shared folders on Ubuntu Server 16.04 LTS.md

      
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              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Update 23 May 2020: This guide is ALREADY OUTDATED and might no longer work with new versions of Ubuntu and VirtualBox.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:


Open VirtualBox


Right-click your VM, then click Settings


Go to Shared Folders section


Add a new shared folder


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


In the Folder Name field, type shared


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


Start your VM


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


Use the following command to mount the CD:


sudo mount /dev/cdrom /media/cdrom


Install dependencies for VirtualBox guest additions:

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


Run installation script for the guest additions:

sudo /media/cdrom/./VBoxLinuxAdditions.run


Reboot VM

sudo shutdown -r now


Create "shared" directory in your home

mkdir ~/shared


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

sudo mount -t vboxsf shared ~/shared


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

Edit fstab file in /etc directory

sudo nano /etc/fstab


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

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


Edit modules

sudo nano /etc/modules


Add the following line to /etc/modules and save

vboxsf


Reboot the vm and log-in again

shutdown -r now


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.

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

sudo rm -rf /var/www/html	


Add a symbolic link in its place

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