Cannot create soft link in CentOS running in VBox 4.3.12

[Saqib Ali]

I have setup a VirtualBox (version 4.3.12) running on my MacBook Pro (OS X 10.9). This VirtualBox is running CentOS 6.5. I can successfully SSH from the Macbook to the CentOS VM by doing

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ssh saqib@127.0.0.1 -p 3005

Now I want to be able to access and edit the files on the (Guest) CentOS VM (under the /var/www directory) using the nice editors and tools I have installed natively on my (Host) MacBook. But I'm having trouble doing so.

I successfully followed the instructions here. Now I have a directory on the Guest OS called /mnt/my_share_name from which I can access files on the Host OS's file system. Great! But what I really need is the opposite. I want to be able to access files in the Guest OS's /var/www directory from the Host OS. How Can I do that?? I tried inserting a link in /mnt/my_share_name as shown below. But it didn't work.

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# From the CentOS VirtualBox
% cd /mnt/my_share_name
% sudo touch me
% ls
me
% sudo ln -s /var/www www
ln: creating symbolic link `www': Read-only file system

It seems I'm not the only person that has had this problem. People have talked about it int he VirtualBox forums. What is the solution here? How to use native GUI tools on my Host OS to manipulate files on the Guest OS?

As a hack, I even tried copying the whole Guest OS's /var/www directory into the share but even that failed because the source directory contains soft links within it

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% pwd
% /mnt/my_share_name
% sudo cp -r /var/www .
cp: cannot create symbolic link `./subdir1/subdir2/subdir3/linkdir

[noteirak]

There is only one solution : create a proper network share. Doing so has nothing to do with Virtualbox tho.
From guest to host, Virtualbox cannot help you directly.