First Time user, share folder problem

[joe_aligned]

We've been using parallels and vmware, this software is good.

The only problem we're seeing is sharing folders and the clipboard. In the instructions below, it indicates the users should be part of a group that should exist. When I go in as root and try to add my username to the group, it says the group doesn't exist. Here is the documentation on shared folders that I referred to:

With Linux guests, auto-mounted shared folders are mounted into the /media directory, along with the prefix sf_. For example, the shared folder myfiles would be mounted to /media/sf_myfiles on Linux and /mnt/sf_myfiles on Solaris.

The guest property /VirtualBox/GuestAdd/SharedFolders/MountPrefix determines the prefix that is used. Change that guest property to a value other than "sf" to change that prefix; see the section called “Guest properties” for details.

Note
Access to auto-mounted shared folders is only granted to the user group vboxsf, which is created by the VirtualBox Guest Additions installer. Hence guest users have to be member of that group to have read/write access or to have read-only access in case the folder is not mapped writable.
To change the mount directory to something other than /media, you can set the guest property /VirtualBox/GuestAdd/SharedFolders/MountDir.

[mpack]

You talk about Linux guests, but it would be nice is you said explicitly what guest OS you are trying to use.

Assuming it is a Linux guest, did you install the Guest Additions (inside the guest)? That's a necessary step before GA shared folders will work.