Windows – Sharing folder from Windows Host to Freebsd Guest

freebsdvirtualboxwindows

What I am trying to accomplish:

I have (at home) a PC with Windows 7 installed
I would like to run a Unix in Virtual Box, because I am more used to developing / scripting on it

I settled on Freebsd at the moment, and I managed to install it and configure the network. The next step is sharing a folder from Windows to Freebsd so that I can easily edit files on Windows and on Freebsd both. Unfortunately it seems a though thing to do.

I rummaged on the net and found two different ways:

I installed the guest additions in freebsd using pkg_add -r virtualbox-ose-additions, the install proceeded switfly enough, and I edited /etc/rc.conf to add the two suggested lines: vboxguest_enable="YES" and vboxservice_enable="YES" and rebooted.

It did not work. The command to mount the system ends up in an error:

# mount -t vboxsf shared /home/myuser/shared
mount: shared : Operation not supported by device

where shared is the name of the folder I setup in my virtual box settings for this VM.

Is it actually possible to use a vboxsf filesystem type in freebsd ? Some comments seem to suggest it is not supported but finding up-to-date information is difficult.

Next, I moved on to the samba approach. I basically followed the guide I linked it. Unfortunately it ends up with:

# mount_smbfs -N -I 192.168.56.1 //winuser@winmachinename/Shared /mnt/shared
mount_smbfs: unable to open connection: syserr = RPC struct is bad

where Shared is the name of the shared folder I configured with windows, accessible to the winuser obviously. The ping works.

I would like to note that I have no password on the windows guest account I am trying to connect at, it seemed easier, but perhaps that it's bothering samba somehow.

edit: working from PuTTY I had not seen that some messages were printed in the console:

smb_maperror: Unmapped error 3:31
smb_co_lock: recursive lock for object 1

both appear several times. /end of edit

If the direct filesytem sharing does not work, any idea how to get samba to do it ? The article suggest it's already be done by some at least.

Technical information:

Host: Windows 7 Familial Edition (up-to-date)
Guest: FreeBSD 9.0-RELEASE #0: Tue Jan 3 07:15:25 UTC 2012 root@obrian.cse.buffalo.edu:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC i386
Virtual Box: 4.1.16 r78094

I am open to new suggestions to sharing as well. I would if possible prefer avoiding transferring files back and forth: it's not particularly efficient and always a source of confusing errors.

I am also open to changing systems. I like the philosophy of freebsd, but if it does not work, I have no qualms about moving to a linux.

EDIT:

This question is now purely of theoretical interest. I switch to using Ubuntu Server and managed to set it up without samba since vboxsf is well supported.

Best Answer

VirtualBox shared folders are still not suppported on FreeBSD.

A FreeBSD ports committer has confirmed this on the FreeBSD mailing lists as of (2014-06-24):

Shared Folders for FreeBSD guests are not supported yet [...] There is some draft code and a kernel module for it but it's not working yet.

If you want to follow the state of the port, please search the mailing lists. There is also the #freebsd-vbox IRC channel on Freenode. It was posted to the freebsd-hackers mailing list at the bottom of this post. You will find developers there.

Finally, here is what the virtualbox-ose-additions port currently supports according to Chapter 22.2 of the FreeBSD Handbook as of today:

The VirtualBox™ guest additions provide support for:

Clipboard sharing.

Mouse pointer integration.

Host time synchronization.

Window scaling.

Seamless mode.

As you can see, no shared folders support yet for FreeBSD.

Chapter 4.3 of the VirtualBox manual states:

Shared Folders are supported with Windows (2000 or newer), Linux and Solaris guests.

Yet again no FreeBSD. Use SMB shares for now, following the instructions that others have mentioned.

QEMU's built-in Samba service

The not-functioning -net user,smb option was caused by an incompatibility with newer Samba versions (>= 4). This is fixed in QEMU v2.2.0 and newer with these changes:

b87b8a8 slirp/smb: Move ncalrpc directory to tmp (since v2.1.0)
44d8d2b net/slirp: specify logbase for smbd (since v2.2.0)
7912d04 slirp/smbd: modify/set several parameters in generated smbd.conf (since v2.2.0, disables printer too)

(Debian has backported the latter two patches to 2.1+dfsg-6 which is present in Jessie.)

Usage

You can export one folder as \\10.0.2.4\qemu when using User networking:

qemu-system-x86_64 \
    -net user,smb=/absolute/path/to/folder \
    -net nic,model=virtio \
    ...

When QEMU is successfully started with these options, a new /tmp/qemu-smb.*-*/ directory will be created containing a smb.conf. If you are fast enough, then this file could be modified to make paths read-only or export more folders.

Mode of operation

The samba daemon is executed whenever ports 139 or 445 get accessed over a "user" network. Communication happens via standard input/output/error of the smbd process. This is the reason why newer daemons failed, it would write its error message to the pipe instead of protocol messages.

Due to this method of operation, the daemon will not listen on host ports, and therefore will only be accessible to the guest. So other clients in the network and even local users cannot gain access to folders using this daemon.

Since QEMU v2.2.0 printer sharing is completely disabled through the samba configuration, so another worry is gone here.

The speed depends on the network adapter, so it is recommended to use the virtio netkvm driver under Windows.

Also note that the daemon is executed by its absolute path (typically /usr/sbin/smbd) as specified at compile time (using the --smbd option). Whenever you need to try a new binary or interpose smbd, you will need to modify the file at that path.

Other caveats

Executables (*.exe) must be executable on the host (chmod +x FILE) for the guest to have execute permissions. To allow execution of any file, add the acl allow execute always = True option to a share.

Example read-only smb.conf configuration which allows execution of any file (based on QEMU v2.2.0):

...
[qemu]
path=/home/peter/windows
read only=yes
guest ok=true
force user=peter
acl allow execute always = True

Ubuntu – Virtual Box – Shared folder issue with Ubuntu 16.04

Were you able to successfully restart the guest os? That is necessary to be able to see sf_Share through the Auto-mount option. In the Guest OS you can run:

sudo mkdir ~/Share
sudo mount -t vboxsf Share ~/Share

to make it available in the guest OS as ~/Share

References

Best Answer

Related Solutions

QEMU File Sharing – Shared Folder Between Windows Guest and Linux Host

QEMU's built-in Samba service

Usage

Mode of operation

Other caveats

Ubuntu – Virtual Box – Shared folder issue with Ubuntu 16.04

Related Question