Mount shared folder on CentOS in VirtualBox

shared_folder_centos_virtualbox.txt

# The VirtualBox documentation[1] for how to install guest additions 
# for Linux on a virtual host is somewhat messy. So here is what 
# I did to make it work.

# Install the packages required
yum update
yum install gcc kernel-devel make

reboot

# Click: Devices/Install Guest Additions... 

# Mount the ISO image with the guest additions
mkdir /cdrom
mount /dev/cdrom /cdrom

# Install guest additions
/cdrom/VBoxLinuxAdditions.run

# Share a folder from the VirtualBox control panel, giving it a share name.

ls  /media/sf_<share_name>


# You could always mount the directory yourself as well
mkdir /a_folder_name 
mount -t vboxsf the_share_name /a_folder_name


[1] http://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch04.html

@simon-eQ ... and of course any guide that contains the phrase "before you do anything we need to disable SELINUX" should probably be avoided!

thx a lot!

Solved my problem. thx

Thanks for sharing! Worked like a charm!

hi!
I have an idea! I want to get list of shared but not mounted folders in my guest CentOS. In future I will mount this all folders under /var/www/html with filtering by regexp (lsOfMySharedFolder | grep 'shared_' | mountEachOf) and reconfigure my web-server for using this folders as web-source.
So.. my question: can I get list of shared but not mounted folders under guest OS?

hm... i can use automount and get this list from ls /media | grep 'shared_'

Hi, thanks for sharing, but my folder share is read-only (setting in VirtualBox is full access), I want full edit this folder in guest CentOS too.

I've installed anything like this tutorial, but with CentOS 7 I obtain when type "mount -l":

none /media/sf_<share_name>

so I can't do a new mount

mount -t vboxsf the_share_name /a_folder_name

because "the_share_name" is "none".

I would to do a new mount because I would a shared folder for web server (apache) in read-write, now the automount (/media/a_folder_name) is for root:vboxsf

thanks

Worked for me ... one improvement I can suggest is to remove the reboot line.

You need to reboot only if you catch an update of a something like the kernel itself in the yum update step ( which is IMO unnecessary ). Installing kernel-devel does not require a restart afterwards. They are just adding a bunch of header files that will be used by the VBox installer, later in the procedure mentioned above.

@codemedic actually, reboot is important. I don't know why, but since I made this comment I regularly get the same error at least once, when I create/recreate my vBox and rebooting seems to fix the issue half the time. I am even here now, because I have the same problem, and guess what ... I worked with after the 2nd time.

Thank you - this instructional worked for me!

nice!!!

work like a charm on my centos 6.4

my issue is that its telling me I dont have permission for the folder

Work great on my centos 7.2.

Hi. You need to install extra package bzip2 for VirtualBox >=5.0.

Thank you for this!

Thx. Been looking for this. In my case, I was doing a fresh install off the latest v7, 1611 minimal iso and had to also reboot after the .run file was executed before /media/sf_<share_name> was seen. Not sure if a fresh terminal window would've also worked, but I was good after 2nd reboot.

Thanks! This worked for me with the following additional steps:

• reboot after running /cdrom/VBoxLinuxAdditions.run
sudo reboot
• adding my user to vboxsf group (reference: link) because I encountered permission issues when opening the shared folder
  sudo usermod -aG vboxsf $(whoami)

[vagrant@aliyun-local /]$ sudo mkdir /vv
[vagrant@aliyun-local /]$ sudo mount -t vboxsf vv_host /vv
mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on vv_host,
       missing codepage or helper program, or other error

       In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try
       dmesg | tail or so.

I executed the sudo mount -t vboxsf vv_host / vv after the above error
How to solve it?

is there any way to permanently mount the shared folder in every reboots ?

Thank you worked for me. I had to do this first. yum install dkms binutils gcc make patch libgomp glibc-headers glibc-devel kernel-headers
then yum install kernel-devel
followed your instructions to get the shared drive working on CentOs7.4

Mount with fstab as so

<name_of_share> /path/to/mountpoint vboxsf default 0 0

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

Thank you worked for me. I had to do this first. yum install dkms binutils gcc make patch libgomp glibc-headers glibc-devel kernel-headers
then yum install kernel-devel
followed your instructions to get the shared drive working on CentOs7.4

I did that and

sudo mount -t vboxsf Share /root/Share
/sbin/mount.vboxsf: mounting failed with the error: Protocol error

One of the best post .. wasted almost whole day for this issue .... once i landed here ..able to resolve in few mins

Great post ! Worked like a charm !

Thanks man ! good job.

Thanks! this worked with my CentOs image from Osboxes
CentOS 7-1908 (64bit).vdi

worked great thanks

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

@pius-pworld - I got the same error. If you look at the suggested log to figure out what went wrong /var/log/vboxadd-setup.log you probably will see the message asking you to install libelf-dev, libelf-devel, or elfutils-libelf-devel.

I did install the elfutils-libelf-devel by: yum install elfutils-libelf-devel. After that, the /cdrom/VBoxLinuxAdditions.run worked for me.