This guide will walk you through the steps on how to setup a VirtualBox shared folder inside your Ubuntu Server guest.
This guide assumes that you are using the following setup:
- Oracle VM VirtualBox version 6.0.10 with Extension Pack installed
- Microsoft Windows 7 SP1 as the host OS
- A fresh install of Ubuntu Server 18.04.2 LTS as the guest OS
You could still make this guide work with other setups (possibly with some modifications to the commands and whatnot). But if you want to do it the way I did then please feel free to use my setup above.
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Open VirtualBox
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Right-click your VM, then click Settings
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Go to Shared Folders section
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Add a new shared folder
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On Add Share prompt, select the Folder Path in your host that you want to be accessible inside your VM. Type
shared
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
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Once your VM is up and running, go to Devices -> Insert Guest Additions CD image
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Use the following command to mount the CD
sudo mkdir /media/cdrom sudo mount -t iso9660 /dev/cdrom /media/cdrom
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Install dependencies for VirtualBox guest additions
sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install -y build-essential linux-headers-`uname -r`
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Run the installation script for the guest additions. Wait until the installation completes.
sudo /media/cdrom/./VBoxLinuxAdditions.run
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Reboot VM
sudo shutdown -r now
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Create
shared
directory in your homemkdir ~/shared
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Mount the shared folder from the host to your
~/shared
directorysudo mount -t vboxsf shared ~/shared
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The host folder should now be accessible inside the VM.
cd ~/shared
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
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Edit
fstab
file in/etc
directorysudo nano /etc/fstab
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Add the following line to
fstab
(separated by tabs). Make sure to replace<username>
with your username. Save the file.shared /home/<username>/shared vboxsf defaults 0 0
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Edit
modules
sudo nano /etc/modules
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Add the following line to
/etc/modules
and savevboxsf
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Reboot the VM and log-in again
sudo shutdown -r now
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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.