[Solved] Unable to access shared folders from login account

[Mordachai]

I've setup an Ubuntu 19.10 VM (two of them), and in both cases - when I attempt to share folders from my Windows host to the vm - all appears to succeed - but I cannot cd or ls the shared folder - in fact - I cannot cd nor ls the /media folder itself, let alone the contained shared folder.

I found a stackoverflow question that indicated how to add the login to the vboxsf group - did that - logged out & back - restarted the servers - none of that helped. Without explicitly asking for the $user to be added, it was not a member of vboxsf.

What I don't know is how any of this is intended to work?

Is it a problem to share a local folder which is on my NTFS system (my host windows user acct has full control)?

What else should I be doing?

[scottgus1]

Best place to start is your Virtualbox manual, PDF version: see the docs folder in the location where Virtualbox is installed (on a Windows PC, that defaults to "C:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox\doc"). The PDF is searchable (type Ctrl-F).

Try searching for 'shared folders'. As soon as you type 'sha' the first good link will appear. Follow the instructions to see if there is anything you need to do from the Virtualbox end.

One note to point out: the manual will tell you how to handle shared folders made via Virtualbox and the Guest Additions Shared Folders. GA Shared folders do not require a network. If you have set up a real network between host and guest, then you would solve/google as if there were two real PCs, one Windows and one Linux, networked, and you wanted to see the Windows shared folder on the Linux PC, and Virtualbox were not involved.

[SargeAnt]

I have the same problem, i.e. with Linux guest, namely Debian 10.0.7

I can see my shared folder in the /media folder but I cannot access this shared folder. It shows me my folder as an empty folder, 0 items. I added my linux user to vboxsf group. This did not help

I have read the PDF manual. There is nothing on this issue. Neither in the Shared Folders section, no in the Troubleshooting section of this doc.

Please help

[scottgus1]

Moving this to Linux Guests, as this appears to be a guest OS issue.

A zipped vbox.log, posted using the forum's Upload Attachment tab, will help the Linux guru who might know how to troubleshoot this.

[SargeAnt]

Thank you, the problem is with linux guest indeed.
I searched the log, and found these lines concerning our issue:

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00:01:31.799726 VMMDev: Guest Log: 00:00:00.082671 automount Error: vbsvcAutoMountWorker: Could not mount shared folder 'DATABASE' to '/media/sf_DATABASE': No sucFailed to register resizing support, rc=VERR_INVALID_FUNCTION
00:01:36.799153 VMMDev: Guest Log: Failed to register resizing support, rc=VERR_INVALID_FUNCTION

[mpack]

We will need the actual log, zipped, as instructed - not just an excerpt from it.

[SargeAnt]

here is the log

[mpack]

Notes in no particular order, picked up as I go through the log.

Win7 host and VirtualBox 5.2.44, both are getting a bit creaky.

Your first post mentions an Ubuntu 19 VM (presumably 64bit?). Why does the log show use of a "Debian (32bit)" template?

The VM might work better with 2 cores.

16MB is not enough graphics RAM for a modern desktop OS. Increase to 128MB.

Hopefully drive "D:\" has good performance, i.e. an internal drive or a USB 3.1 SSD, not an external USB2 drive.

The log shows that the shared folder service runs, creating a share called DATABASE. There may be additional config options you need to set in Ubuntu. I don't see a VirtualBox problem in this regard.

The log is truncated at this point. It looks like it was grabbed while it was still open for writing.

[mpack]

Also, can you please clarify: the title says that shared folders do not work "from login account". Does this mean that it works in one user account (i.e. the original installed account) but not in some other user account?

[SargeAnt]

Thank you,

Your first post mentions an Ubuntu 19 VM (presumably 64bit?). Why does the log show use of a "Debian (32bit)" template?

Because the first post was not mine. I have the same problem but with Debian 10.7.0 32 bit.

The log shows that the shared folder service runs, creating a share called DATABASE. I don't see a VirtualBox problem in this regard.

Yes, creating a share works. I can see my shared folder in the /media folder but I cannot access this shared folder. It shows me my folder as an empty folder, 0 items. I added my linux user to vboxsf group. This did not help

I see a VirtualBox problem here, because Help says that auto-mounted shared folders will be available to guest without having to mount them manually or any other mess. Also, what about those log errors

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00:01:31.799726 VMMDev: Guest Log: 00:00:00.082671 automount Error: vbsvcAutoMountWorker: Could not mount shared folder 'DATABASE' to '/media/sf_DATABASE': No sucFailed to register resizing support, rc=VERR_INVALID_FUNCTION
00:01:36.799153 VMMDev: Guest Log: Failed to register resizing support, rc=VERR_INVALID_FUNCTION

the title says that shared folders do not work "from login account". Does this mean that it works in one user account (i.e. the original installed account) but not in some other user account?

No, it does not work in any other user account. Actually, there is just one user in my Debian installation.

[fth0]

You seem to have two different versions of the VirtualBox Guest Additions installed: 5.2.0 + 5.2.44.

[SargeAnt]

Thank you, I uninstalled Guest Additions and installed them again. Virtual box version was 5.2.44
Got following error:

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VirtualBox Guest Additions: Kernel headers not found for target kernel 4.19.0-13-686. Please install them and execute  /sbin/rcvboxadd setup

As shown in this research https://askubuntu.com/questions/98416/e ... e-in-place, that usually means that kernel version is newer than expected by the installed version of Guest Additions

So, the latest version of VirtualBox should eliminate the problem. And it did. Thank you very much