virtualbox.org

Host: windows 7 Ultimate x64 SP1 with all patches
VritualBox 4.1.16
Guest: Windows 7 Ultimate X64 SP1 with all patches
No Domain -- Windows Workgroup Networking

I have:
Machine Folders
Shared V:\VirtualBox\Shared Full
Users V:\VirtualBox\Users Full

I have set the premissions on the real folders to Full Control for all Users.

In the guest I have mapped
S: ==> VBOXSRV\Shared
U: ==> VBOXSRV\Users

If I start Visual Studio 2010 and try and create a project on a folder on the S: drive Visual Studio starts the process and then aborts (windows restarts it after putting up the checking for solutions dialog box).

If I start Visual Studio 2010 and try and create a project on a folder on a drive mapped to a windows networked drive it works fine.

When I tried to check security settings I noticed that if I select the S: drive (or a folder on it) and right click and select properties the security tab is not there. It is there if I do the same thing to a folder on a drive maped to a Windows networked drive.

VBOXSRV mappings do not expose the underlying ACLs.

Is there a workaround for this?

Have you tried setting up true network shared folders? GA shared folders are convenient and quick to set up, also safer, but not as fully featured.

I'm not sure if permissions are relevant on host folders accessed using the GAs, since in that case they are being accessed by VBox, and hence by the user running VBox - they are not being accessed by a network.

I can't use network shared drives as the VMs are copied back and forth between my office desktops and my laptops.

The configuration is as follows:
Each real machine has a V: drive with a VirtualBox folder. All of the machine definitions, VDIs, etc are in folders under the VitualBox folder. The .VitualBox directory under C:\Users\<user name> is redirected to V:\VirtualBox\.VirtualBox. The VBOXSVR shared folders are under the V:\VirtualBox folder. There are two of them: Shared (for data, downloads, WIP, etc.) shared between VMs and the host mapped to the S: drive in each VM and Users for the My Documents folders for each of the users on the VMs to the U: drive in each VM. The structure for the Users directory tree is: V:\VirtualBox\Users\<Machine name>\<user name>\Documents. Thus each user in a VM sees their My Documents folder as U:\<machine name>\<user name>\Documents.

The above allows me to get to the all of the dynamic data used by any user in any VM and makes user data backups relatively simple -- the Shared and User folders on the real machine are backed up. Please not that I am the only user of all of the hosts and VMs. The VMs are used to simulate multiple environments and clients.

This also allows me to use RoboCopy to copy everything from one machine's V:\VirtualBox folder to another's. There are some network mapped drives that are only available on the desktop host (i.e. installation images, etc.) but any mapped drives in a VM that need to be used on both real machines must be mapped via VBOXSVR. Actually, the installation images, etc., are on 1TB Apricorn USB encrypted flash drives -- one on each of the desktops. That way if I need them when traveling I can simply pull the one that is on the backup desktop and take it with me.

To make a long story short I need to be able to use VBOXSVR shared folders.

If an application (in this case VS2010) in the guest cannot work with the limited funcionality of the shared folders and you cannot use "real" network shares then you would probabely need to implement some way to sync/copy your needed files from the shared folders to a local folder inside the guest and work from there.