OpensSuSE 13.2 running in Virtualbox 4.18 with Win7/64 as host OS.
I have installed the Virtualbox guest extensions (they were installed automatically from SuSE repositoryor the DVD image). The mouse integration and monitor integration work as a charm. Much beter than anytime befor. Finally I can fully utilize my monitor resolution (2 monitors with 2560*1440) with SuSE running in Virtualbox. Thanks!
But I have problem with the Virtualbox ‘shared folder’ feature.
networking for the VM containing SuSE in Virtualbox has been set up as “bridged networking” (as I want Windows and SuSE/linux to appear to each others and the outside world as completely independent systems). It also works perfectly. I can connect wiht a client from one to a service on the other, forward ports to both in my router etc.
I have shared the folder in Windows for full access by all users on the network
I can access the folder as a smb:// -share in various programs by specifying the path including “smb://…” and in GUI tools (Dolphin file manager, whatever program has a “network” option in open file / save file dialogs etc.). But I’d prefer that it appeared as a local folder and not a network folder.
When share the folder in the Virtualbox GUI in Windows, Virtualbox does not complain. I use the (new in Virtualbox 4.x) option to “mount automatically”.
I cannot find the folder in my SuSE file system anywhere!
"With Linux guests, auto-mounted shared folders are mounted into the /media directory, along with the prefix sf_. For example, the shared folder myfiles would be mounted to /media/sf_myfiles on Linux and /mnt/sf_myfiles on Solaris. The guest property /VirtualBox/GuestAdd/SharedFolders/MountPrefix determines the prefix that is used. Change that guest property to a value other than “sf” to change that prefix; see Section 4.6, “Guest properties” for details.
Note
*Access to auto-mounted shared folders is only granted to the user group vboxsf, which is created by the VirtualBox Guest Additions installer. Hence guest users have to be member of that group to have read/write access or to have read-only access in case the folder is not mapped writable.
To change the mount directory to something other than /media, you can set the guest property /VirtualBox/GuestAdd/SharedFolders/MountDir."
Problems are:
No /media folder found (but I notice that there is a /run/media/my_username folder when I attach a USB drive to the VM)
No /VirtualBox folder found
… have they been moved to some other mount point, that I can symlink to for instance? Or what else can I do?
No user group “vboxsf”
… can work around this by simply creating the user group and add myselt to it?
It looks to me like the new “automount” option in Virtualbox 4.x was not considered too well with the guest extensions shipping with OpenSuSE 13.2. Am I right? If so please update the guest extension RPM’s or document a solution/workaround for this.
The thread your are referring is very messy. I don’t understand “yuor example”. I see a lot of other people complaining (that /media has gone or instance). It is NOT a proper solution to uninstall the guest extensions distributed with the distro and install from Oracle webiste (I did that before). I am not asking for a workaround, primarily. I am requiring SuSE developers to fix their bugs! As long as they provide the guest extensions as part of the distro, they should work ‘out of the box’. Besides I don’t want anything installed here unless using YaST.
This was abug report - and as such should be replied by OpenSuSE developers.
Where is the bug report? You require the devs to fix bugs? which bug? Requiring is a strong word don’t you think?
You should test the beta release so the “bugs” will be fixed before the final release
Also that thread said something about enabling the the service if you are using the default guest additions. Did you tried it? or you will insists on the “work-out-of-the-box or else i require you to fix it”
Thanks … i will consider this. I did not realize that the developers are not following discussions here (I think they should!).
But I found a usable workaround for my needs. The “Thunar” file manager (default filemanager for the ‘xfce’ desktop, I think) is able to access the complete file system of my Windows7 host (for both read and write). I really don’t know how it can be possible. It may be related to me using because I am using ‘bridged networking’ in Virtualbox only (most people will use the default ‘NAT networking’ I think). If it is a flaw in Windows, I hope that MS will never fix it!
Of course it is still not s proper shared folder in the sense that host system folders are network folders and not a local folders. Common programs don’t show it for ‘open’ and ‘save’. But I can copy files between host and guest easily using drag’n’drop in Thunar without messing with an USB drive, Samba, FTP or whatever.
Well, tell them that they should!
The developers have other channels to communicate, mostly mailing lists.
Although some do hang around here too.
But this is a forum for users helping users.
A forum like this is not at all suited for tracking bugs. That’s what a bug tracking system (bugzilla) is there for. It allows to manage bugs, assign bugs to people, close/reopen bugs, associate bugs to some particular version and so on.
Bugs mentioned here in some thread (maybe even buried deep between other stuff) most likely just get lost.
Instaling the guest extensions from Oracle solved this.
But a few tweeks were still necessary:
adding myself to the vboxsf user group. The script did not. Several other people have pointed out already
CHOWN the /media folder to me as owner. It was owner=root and group=vboxsf. This may however depend on exactly how you run the extensions install script (using sudo or logging in to the system as root - I did the latter).
But I still notice in VBdocs "To change the mount directory to something other than /media, you can set the guest property /VirtualBox/GuestAdd/SharedFolders/MountDir.". Where is this option? I basically want shared folders in /home (but I may - and did - create a symlink, of course).
How can VirtualBox know which user it should add to the vboxsf group? This is the intended behavior so stop complaining it is not a bug.
CHOWN the /media folder to me as owner. It was owner=root and group=vboxsf. This may however depend on exactly how you run the extensions install script (using sudo or logging in to the system as root - I did the latter).
Since the /media directory is not created by default on 13.2 that might have cause the permission issue.
But I still notice in VBdocs “To change the mount directory to something other than /media, you can set the guest property /VirtualBox/GuestAdd/SharedFolders/MountDir.”. Where is this option? I basically want shared folders in /home (but I may - and did - create a symlink, of course).
On a the host run the command :
VBoxManage guestproperty enumerate VMNAME
Note that nothing will show for the SharedFolder value is it is still not set.
To check the value of the shared folder.
VBoxManage guestproperty get VMNAME /VirtualBox/GuestAdd/SharedFolders/MountDir
Change the value of VMNAME to the name of your vm. uuid is also allowed but i don’t want it to be more complicated to you lol!
Now start reading this.
You have to install the guest additions in the virtualbox install on the host. Then after you install the guest OS, there will be a CD available from which you install the guest additions into the guest OS. Then you have to actually mount the share (after defining the share in virtualbox install on the host).
