So I followed the instructions here. However, when I went to Virtualbox and told it to use the file I got the error
Failed to open the hard disk file /home/parth/Win7.vmdk.
Permission problem accessing the file for the medium '/home/parth/Win7.vmdk' (VERR_ACCESS_DENIED).
Result Code: VBOX_E_FILE_ERROR (0x80BB0004)
Component: Medium
Interface: IMedium {05f2bbb6-a3a6-4fb9-9b49-6d0dda7142ac}
Callee: IVirtualBox {fafa4e17-1ee2-4905-a10e-fe7c18bf5554}
Callee RC: VBOX_E_OBJECT_NOT_FOUND (0x80BB0001)
Best Answer
The VirtualBox user should be the owner of
.vmdk
file and have read & write permissions for both.vmdk
and the device it refers to (like/dev/sda
). Everything in/dev/
is owned by root, so you have two options:Run VirtualBox as root. I wouldn't suggest it because such a huge application as VirtualBox potentially have bugs that are capable to crash your system being rooted.
Grant your user the permissions for the
.vmdk
file and the/dev/sdX
device:a. Make sure
.vmdk
is somewhere in your home directoryb. Make sure that your user is the owner of
.vmdk
and have read and write permissions for it (right click -> Properties -> Permissions)c. Grant your user the permissions for the device:
sudo chmod 666 /dev/sdX
(place the required device instead of
/dev/sdX
)