Vbox thinks my network share is a local disk drive?

[SamirG]

When I try to run the installer EXE for QGIS 2.0.1 from a network mount, VBOX seems to think that it's stored on a local disk drive with the associated drive letter. So the installation fails and it returns an error.

The specified path does not exist.

E:\QGIS-OSGeo4W-2.0.1-3-Setup-x86_64.exe

Check the path, and then try again.

Here are some more details.

Systems
Host OS: Windows 7
Guest OS: Windows 7

Shared folder settings
Folder path: C:\Users\frog\VirtualBox VMs\win7_x64_sg2\Data Exchange Share
Folder name: Data_Exchange_Share
Read-only: no
Auto-mount: yes
Make permanent: yes

As the name suggests, I specifically use this to exchange data between the host and the guest OS. As we all know, VBOX doesn't Drag & Drop and it doesn't do Clipboard sharing. So I have to exchange data between the host and the guest OS one way or another, otherwise the VBOX is pretty much useless for my use case. So I have this shared folder mounted as drive E: on the guest OS.

Network share: \\VBOXSVR\Data_Exchange_Share
Mapped to: E:

So the file QGIS-OSGeo4W-2.0.1-3-Setup-x86_64.exe is stored in Data_Exchange_Share and when I double-click it in Explorer on the guest to run the program I get the error above. Well, of course, there is no such thing as E:\QGIS-OSGeo4W-2.0.1-3-Setup-x86_64.exe. That's just stupid to look for it there. So if I manually navigate to \\VBOXSVR\Data_Exchange_Share and double-click on the EXE file in there, the program starts.

What's the problem here? A bug?... maybe?...

[SamirG]

What's interesting is that I can copy files to and from the E drive but I can't run this particular file. Or at least not from E. I have to navigate to the shared folder on VBOXSVR and run it from there. I just downloaded the Firefox 27 installer file to the Data_Exchange_Share folder on the host OS. Then from the guest OS, I tried to open the E drive, and then double-click on Firefox Setup 27.0.1.exe and the program started.

So what do you make of this? I can run only some of the EXE files from this network location? It depends on the packager that was used for the EXE file maybe? Regardless, this seems like a bug to me. This is VBOX related. I can have this EXE file stored anywhere I want on the host OS, and it will run if I try to access it as a mapped drive from a remote machine.

[Martin]

Vbox shared folders are not designed to run applications from them.
It is a very simplified filesystem to copy files between host and guest.

[SamirG]

OK, I didnt' know that. I thought I could use the network and sharing features of the guest OS like on a real physical machine. Guess I was wrong then.

But it worked with the Firefox EXE file? So why wouldn't it work with any EXE file? Do you have an explanation for this?

Having to copy files over to the VM is not an ideal solution. You end up with two identical files in two places, one on the physical machine and one inside the VM. That's good for small EXE files like 25 MB or so for Firefox. You can always copy it to the VM and then delete the original. But having to install a software package that's maybe 4000 MB is different. You need twice the amount of storage space, before you can delete the original.

But surely, there must be something else to this than simply the shared folders feature of Vbox being too simplistic? Well I guess I will just have to learn to navigate to the network location directly, instead of using the E drive. Another Vbox feature bites the dust. At least I know now how not to use this feature.

[jorgensen]

Virtualbox shared folders does not support Windows file security system etc.
You can always share a folder the traditional way, even with NAT networking - just use the IP address instead of name to access the host.