Mounting VirtualBox shared folders on an Ubuntu VM

Mounting VirtualBox shared folders on an Ubuntu VM.md

Mounting VirtualBox shared folders on an Ubuntu guest

This guide will walk you through the steps on how to setup a VirtualBox shared folder inside an Ubuntu VM that has been exported from an AWS EC2 instance.

Prerequisites

This guide assumes that you are using the following setup:

• Oracle VM VirtualBox version 6.0.10 with Extension Pack installed
• Microsoft Windows 10 as the host OS
• Ubuntu 14, exported from an AWS EC2 instance, as the guest OS

Initial Steps

• Open VirtualBox

  

• Right-click your VM, then click Settings

  

• Add an optical drive as Secondary Slave, left empty

• 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. Type projects for the Folder Name. Make sure that Read-only and Auto-mount are unchecked and Mount point is blank. Then click OK.

  

• Start your VM

  

• Boot and wait a few minutes for all the /latest/meta-data/instance-id pings to timeout

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

  

• Use the following command to mount the CD

  sudo mkdir /media/cdrom
  sudo mount -t iso9660 /dev/cdrom /media/cdrom
  

• Install dependencies for VirtualBox guest additions

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

• Run the installation script for the guest additions. Wait until the installation completes.

  sudo /media/cdrom/./VBoxLinuxAdditions.run
  

• Reboot VM

  sudo shutdown -r now
  

• Create projects directory in your home

  mkdir -p /media/projects
  

• Mount the shared projects folder from the host

  sudo mount -t vboxsf projects /media/projects
  

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

  ls -l /media/projects
  

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 to fstab

  projects	/media/projects	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

  sudo shutdown -r now
  

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

  

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