Shared Folder permission with Host:OSX, Guest:UBUNTU

[tmptrsh]

This is a repost from the VB on Linux forum - somehow did not see the MAC forum when I made the original post - where it got a lot of views (which suggests that it is a common problem) but no replies (which suggests the answer is either painfully obvious or completely obscure)

Yes, I did read the HowTo on mounting shared folders. And have read what I could fined here searching on various permutations of share+folder.

Sadly, none of the suggestions have worked. Perhaps in large part because it was never clear to me which machine was being referenced in the mount command

HOST is Apple OSX Snow Leopard (so, as you may suspect, hand-holding will be needed. This is especially true as am new to BOTH MAC OS & Ubuntu (Windoz Refugee))

GUEST is Ubuntu 10.04 running in VirtualBox 4.0.4

The PROBLEM is that shared folders seem to "mount" in the VB but I do not have permission to open them

There are two folders which I wish to share from the MAC:
/Users/M/Desktop/vbox.shared
/Users/M/Pictures/pix

(Can folders in these places actually be shared, or must any shared folders be in some other location??)

Both of these folders are set in the MAC OS to "SHARE" and identified in the MAC OS as a "Shared Folder"

When setting up the VB I selected these two folders to share, and did install the vbox additions 4.0.4_70112, and did pick automount which they seem to do showing up in '/media' as sf_pix and sf_vbox.shared

However, attempting to access these folders from VB I am told that I do not have permission to do so (and they have an "X" on them)

Right clicking on either of these folder icons in VB '/media' brings up PROPERTIES|Shared

Attempting (in VB) to set this to "share this folder" brings up a msg box that "Windows Networks Sharing Service" needs to be installed (as well as a note that the sharename sf_vbox.shared is too long). Attempting to install this service fails with unable download files error. Unclear why Windoz is being referenced - except that there are Windoz computers on the wireless network?

Did rename 'vbox.shared' simply to 'vbox' but the only change was that the 'sharename too long' errormsg disappeared - but still unable to access these folders.

Have rebooted both the HOST and the Guest multiple times, with no resolution of this inability to access the shares

Assistance would be greatly appreciated!!!

[Perryg]

See Chapter 4.3 Shared folders in your VirtualBox users manual.
Add user name to vboxsf group then reboot the guest

[malcolm]

That does the trick. Now how do we access them?

I can find them on the command line but I cannot locate them using the file browser dialogs. What is especially confusing is that they are mounted under /media but this isn't visible on the command line. It's there, but it doesn't display with ls.

[Sasquatch]

What do you mean, you can't locate it or display with ls? When you browse to /media, you will see the shared folders mounted in folders called sf_sharename, where sharename is the name you gave the shared folder. Just type 'ls /media/sf_sharename' in the terminal or direct your file browser to the location and it should show the files you share.

[peturgretars]

Maybe this one helps. I struggled with getting other than root user to use the shared folder until I realized that the user needed to be a part of the vboxsf group. Check out this article:
http://www.oraclenerd.com/2011/03/virtu ... lders.html

[malcolm]

I discovered that my problem was that the VM is using Moon OS. It is based on Ubuntu but they are trying to emulate Mac OS X (??) and they have hidden the standard file structure.