Ubuntu – How to set up shared folders in a Windows Virtualbox guest

shared-foldersvirtualboxwindows

I have installed VirtualBox OSE on Ubuntu 11.04 and Windows XP pro as the virtual machine.
Now I want to have a shared folder which can be accessed on both, my host Ubuntu machine, and my WinXP guest virtual machine.

How can I do that?

Best Answer

First step is to install Guest Additions in your virtual Windows.

After that you may define a shared folder as outlined in this answer. However in Windows you don't "mount" it but instead you take the following steps (from the user manual of Virtual Box):

In a Windows guest, shared folders are browseable and therefore visible in Windows Explorer. So, to attach the host's shared folder to your Windows guest, open Windows Explorer and look for it under "My Networking Places" -> "Entire Network" -> "VirtualBox Shared Folders". By right-clicking on a shared folder and selecting "Map network drive" from the menu that pops up, you can assign a drive letter to that shared folder.

If you don't see any entries coming up in the Browse dialog, you can manually fill out the Folder: field with \\VBOXSVR\<folder-name> where <folder-name> is the share name of your folder.

Screenshots for Windows Explorer (German locale)

Windows XP

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Windows 7

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Windows 10

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – Sharing folders between Ubuntu(guest) and Windows 7 (host) using VirtualBox

If you get Permission denied when accessing the mounted shared folder, run the following command:

sudo adduser <yourUsername> vboxsf

Substitute <yourUsername> by your actual username (e.g. john or whichever is yours).

Then restart and you should have full access.

Ubuntu – VirtualBox shared folder is accessible but not workable

I experienced the same issue. My setup: VirtualBox 4.2.12 with Ubuntu 13.04 guest running on W7SP1 host, mounted Windows folder with fstab like this

dev /home/dregad/dev    vboxsf  auto,rw,uid=dregad,gid=dregad,umask=0022,dmode=0755,fmode=0644  0   0

I'm using Geany. Saving the file fails with similar symptoms as described in the question above for gedit (which fails too). Error message as follows:

Error saving file.
Error renaming temporary file: Text file busy
The file on disk may now be truncated!

My solution for Geany:

Edit / Preferences
Select Various tab
scroll down and check the box for use_atomic_file_saving
click OK

I don't use it much, so not sure if gedit provides a similar trick, but FWIW, you may want to have a look at this stackexchange question as it offers a workaround.