shared folder won't work with Ubuntu Guest on Vista host

[vboxusr]

Hi,

I followed the instructions in the manual. I can get the Windows guest to Windows host to work with shared folders. It reads and writes both ways. But when I tried to follow the commands in the manual Ubuntu Guest with Vista host, I can read but I can't write from within the guest OS. The command I used in the guest os is... mount -t vboxsf hostshare //mnt/ubushare

hostshare is on the host machine
ubushare is on the guest

Can you please help me?

Thanks.

[Aliby]

I have installed UbuntuStudio in VBox 1.4.
Installed Guest Addons (Note I have to use the std kernel not the low latency kernel for the addons to compile/install)

Setup shared folder and can read from it no problem.
However, I can't copy files from Ubuntu onto the XP host using Nautilus drag & Drop.
I did discover that I can use cp in a terminal window and it works fine.

Any suggestions on what I can do to "activiate" or enable it to work OK in Nautilus?

[Aliby]

Drag and drop into the "Mounted Shared Folder" produces this pop-up error.

Error "Generic error" while copying "/home/alist...Addons.txt".

Is that pehaps related to a file type error? The Host XP is running on NTFS.

[vboxusr]

I have the exact same problem.

[vboxusr]

I have installed UbuntuStudio in VBox 1.4.
Installed Guest Addons (Note I have to use the std kernel not the low latency kernel for the addons to compile/install)

Setup shared folder and can read from it no problem.
However, I can't copy files from Ubuntu onto the XP host using Nautilus drag & Drop.
I did discover that I can use cp in a terminal window and it works fine.

Any suggestions on what I can do to "activiate" or enable it to work OK in Nautilus?

I have to try the cp from a terminal.

thanks.

[dafo407]

I've just posted the same problem in another topic. I hadn't seen this topic before.
I can do everything from my host OS (Vista) but not from the guest (Ubuntu 7.04).
I receive the same "generic error" on Ubuntu.

Cheers

[Aliby]

How do you connect to the shared folder from the host?

[vboxusr]

How do you connect to the shared folder from the host?

Are we speaking of a shared folder on the host or on another machine on the network? My original question is regarding a shared folder on the host machine.

[dafo407]

I followed the manual of Virtualbox 1.4.
I'm mean that I can copy and move files into the shared folder on the host and access them from the guest but not the opposite.
When trying to copy or move files into the shared folder on the guest that "genereci error" pops up. It doesn't work either using nautilus or terminal.
I understood we're talking about a VM shared folder not network, aren't we?
Cheers

[vboxusr]

I understood we're talking about a VM shared folder not network, aren't we?
Cheers

Yes...

[Aliby]

How do you connect to the shared folder from the host?

Man that was a dumb question ...
My emabarased appologies.



I was thinking you were accessing a folder on the Guest from the Host. i.e. the Guest was sharing a folder with the Host.

[VirtualJoe]

I get the same error message using Vista as the host and Ubuntu 7.04 as the guest. Vista can place files into the shared folder, Ubuntu can copy them out when the folder has been mounted. But Ubuntu cannot copy files to the shared folder -- the "Generic error" message is given when I try, and though the file appears to be created in the folder -- the file name shows up in both Vista and Ubuntu in the folder -- the file is an empty file to both the host and client.

And the cp command from a terminal window in Ubuntu doesn't work for me, even if I use sudo. The same problem still occurs.

Anybody from Innotek care to comment on this?

[dafo407]

I get the same error message using Vista as the host and Ubuntu 7.04 as the guest. Vista can place files into the shared folder, Ubuntu can copy them out when the folder has been mounted. But Ubuntu cannot copy files to the shared folder -- the "Generic error" message is given when I try, and though the file appears to be created in the folder -- the file name shows up in both Vista and Ubuntu in the folder -- the file is an empty file to both the host and client.
And the cp command from a terminal window in Ubuntu doesn't work for me, even if I use sudo. The same problem still occurs.
Anybody from Innotek care to comment on this?

Your case is exactly the same as mine. So far I haven't been able to solve this problem. Has anyone solved this? Could anybody from Innotek tell us something?

[fla]

Hi, i have a Debian Etch guest installed in a Vista host, and everything is working perfectly, i can read and write files from debian inside the shared folder as a normal user without errors automatically at boot.
I suppose this should work in ubuntu as well, because ubuntu is a debian derivate. I will try to explain how i did for those of you still struggling with it.

Prerequisites:
I will assume that you have already correctly installed VirtualBox guest additions for Linux and you also have already choosen the folder to share, user maual is giving perfet instructions for that and i cannot do better here.

Open your favourite editor and write the following text

Code: Select all

#!/bin/bash

case "$1" in
    start)
        /bin/mount -t vboxsf -o uid=username,gid=username winshare /mnt/winshare
        ;;
    stop)
         # No-op
         ;;
     *)
         echo "Usage: vboxshare [start|stop]" >&2
         exit 3
         ;;
esac

substitute username with your actual username and winshare with the name of your shared folder. Save the file as vboxshare and give it execute permissions with

Code: Select all

chmod +x vboxshare

From now on we need to be root so use

Code: Select all

su root

in debian or

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sudo su

in ubuntu, and start paying attention to what we do, it's gonna be dangerous .

Create the folder where we are going to mount, so

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mkdir /mnt/winshare

substitute winshare with the name of your shared folder.

Copy the script we did to the /etc/init.d/ directory with

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cp vboxshare /etc/init.d/

Register the script to be started at boot with

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update-rc.d vboxshare defaults

Ok we have finished just reboot and cross your fingers the folder sould be readable and writeble in /mnt/winshare or whatever the name you gave it.

If something goes wrong you can unregister the script we created as root with

Code: Select all

update-rc.d -f  vboxshare remove

If you are wondering why i didn't use fstab, the answer is i tried but didn't work, i suppose fstab mount orders are called before the virtualbox guest additions modules are loaded, so the mount fails at that point during boot.

Hope i remembered every step i did, anyway if you need help post here i will try to help. Ciao!

[boxbox]

I also have this problem.

Host is Windows XP Professional SP2, guest is Ubuntu 7.04, VirtualBox version is 1.4.0. Guest additions are installed.

If I copy via GUI to the shared folder inside Ubuntu, an empty file will be created instead of a proper copy. "Generic Error" pops up. I can use the commandline for copying, but that's extremely slow (e. g., about 40 seconds for 80 KB).
Copying is not the only manipulation of the shared folder that doesn't work. E. g., deleting a subfolder also doesn't work.

I thought this might have to do with Gnome, so I tried to install Kubuntu which uses KDE, but I have even more problems with Kubuntu. (That is another topic that I might post about in another thread.)

I'd also appreciate some help from someone!