Directory sharing: OSx Host, Oracle Linux guest

[LarryW]

My ultimate goal is create a functional virtual system: Oracle Linux 7.2, Oracle database XE, Apex 5.0.3 running under VirtualBox on Mac El Capitan host so I can replace really horrible desktop database applications such as FileMaker and MS Access (or worse, the use of Excel) with a real database backend and a reasonable front end. First problems encountered: I need to get file/directory sharing to work.

Given repeated failures to do so from scratch, I took the step to use an Oracle pre-built Developer VM -- the Service Delivery Platform (SDP) -- which gives me something close to what I ultimately want and which I know "works" at some basic level. Following SDP recommendations, I created OSX directory structures

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~/VMs/Images,~/VMs/Images, ~/VMs/ISOs, ~/VMs/Shared, ~/VMs/VBox

, where

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~/VMs/Shared

will be the directory shared with guest Linux.

Out of the box, SDP isn't configured for sharing. Following the instructions, in Linux, I entered

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sudo yum install dkms

-- it returned an error that yum could not find dkms.

With nothing to lose, I placed an alias of

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 VBoxGuestAdditions.iso 

into the

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~/VMs/ISOs

, and assigned this image to the VirtualBox CD/DVD device. Linux prompted to run from this virtual CD and the guest additions seemed to have been installed. In VirtualBox 'Shared Folders' settings for this system the values: VMShared is assigned to /Users/wkr/VMs/Shared as Permanent, automount, Full access.

In Linux,

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/mnt/shared

exists but is empty,

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/media/sf_VMShared

but inaccessible: gives me "Permission Denied" on

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cd /media/sf_VMShared

. Looking at permissions for this directory (

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ls -l /media

, it shows

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drwdrwx--- root vboxsf sf_VMShared

.

In this SDP VM, 'oracle' is the login user, and this login is not a member of the vboxsf group. Placing 'oracle' into the vboxsf group does not allow 'oracle' access either.

I'm at loss for what I need to do to resolve the issue of shareable files between OSX host and Linux guest.

[Perryg]

Linux guest shared folders

Remove the auto-mount and use the manual mount instead. See above link for example.

[LarryW]

Thanks. This link, finally, allowed me to correct the problem.

However, I ran into an error which as one of the Troubleshooting points, and the answer was unclear. Here is how this one problem answer would have been clearer to me.

Problem: Received a Protocol Error message

Answer: The share name and the mount point name must be different names. That is, if the share name is 'myshare', then the mount point name cannot be '~/myshare'. Change either the share name or the mount point name.