mountsudovirtualbox
I have a Ubuntu VM running in VirtualBox.
I have a Shared Folder set up as myshare
I have a folder created in my home directory (~/jamesw) as host.
using the line sudo mount -t vboxsf myshare host from my home directory in Terminal mounts the drive correctly, but if I reboot it is not mounted again.
This is a VM I use for running a simple web server and I would like this Share mounted each time I boot.
Is there any way to do this? Especially given that it requires sudo?
In order to use shared folder functionality few prerequisites need to be met:
vboxsf to be able to access shares.Depending on host or guest OS the following may also be needed:
/home/username or My DocumentsTesting shared folders functionality can be done by creating a shared directory on the host (e.g. C:\myshare), define this as a shared folder for your guest system in Virtual Box settings (e.g. share), create a mount point in your guest os (e.g. mkdir /home/username/host) and mount this in the guest OS with the command:
sudo mount -t vboxsf -o uid=1000,gid=1000 share /home/username/host
where the option -o makes sure that you will have access to the mount (that will otherwise be owned by root).
For further information on shared folders see also the Virtual Box User Manual.
Files or directories can also be shared over the network by using Samba on the host and the guest.
To always mount a Virtual Box "shared folder" on booting an Ubuntu guest we have two options. It is up to personal preference which option works best in our setting.
To mount a shared folder using the vboxsf filesystem provided with Guest Additions we first need to make sure prerequisites are met. Then we may put the following line in our etc/fstab file:
<name_of_share> /path/to/mountpoint vboxsf <options> 0 0
Replace name_of_share and /path/to/mountpoint with your individual setup (the directory for the mountpoint has to be created first). See the manpage for mount <options>. One possibility is to mount with defaults, or to give specific mount options (e.g. rw, suid, exec, auto, users).
On some systems the vboxsf kernel module is not yet loaded at the time fstab is read on boot. It may then help to append the vboxsf kernel module to /etc/modules.
Some systems may need option comment=systemd.automount in their fstab entry (source).
In recent releases of Virtual Box we can also automatically mount shared folders on creation:
After a reboot of the guest this shared folder will be mounted to the guest directory /media/<username>/sf_<name_of_share> accessible to all users who had been made member of the group vboxsf.
Best Answer
Auto-mount shared folders using Virtual Box Manager
From Virtual Box > 4.0 we are able to auto mount shared folders in a virtual machine. To do so for Ubuntu we
vboxsfRight click on your virtual machine and choose Settings->Shared Folders. This will list existing shares or lets you define a new shared folde by clicking on the blue folder icon with the green +-sign on the top right side:
Choose your folder from the dropdown menu Folder path or choose Define other for a file selector that lists the host filesystem. Choose a name for the share (e.g. myshares). By ticking Auto-mount this folder will always be mounted in the Ubuntu guest directory
/media/sf_myshares(the prefixsf_will automatically be added).Alternatively, to define shared folders in a running guest OS we may select Devices -> Shared Folders from the window menu of Virtual Box Manager:
By ticking Make Permanent these shared folders will also be available on the next boot and will be mounted when Auto-mount is ticked in addition.