New Machine - VBox Mgr can't see drives in 'Computor'

[Wildernis]

Hi,

I have searched and read many articles on the Forum but no one seems to have reported this problem before. I have a Linux desktop running VBox with Win 7 Guest and multiple drives which work fine.

My problem is with a new HP Envy 17" Laptop 64 bit: i7-6700HQ Quadcore processor, 12Gb RAM, Boot drive Samsung 250Gb M.2 SSD, HDD1 Kingston 480Gb SSD, HDD2 Toshiba 1TB sata.
Host Linux Mint 17.3 (64bit) VirtualBox 5.1.8 + Extension pack
Guest Win 7 Ultimate N (64bit) + Guest additions

I copied this Guest VM from my desktop and all the progs work fine and I connect to the net from the VM. 6Gb of RAM allocated to VM.

At first I thought my problem was a sharing issue as I was unable to see any drives other than the Linux partition when trying to add a share. 'Computor' had none of my additional 2 HDDs showing, or the other partitions on the M.2 boot drive.
However, when I try to create a new machine I have the same problem, so it seems the problem is in the host. Linux can see the 3 drives and partitions but Vbox can't. I wonder if there are any issues with M.2 drives?

Log file and a screen print attached.

Any pointers would be appreciated.

Thanks. Bob

[socratis]

User Manual, Ch. 4.3 Shared folders, 2nd paragraph:

Shared folders must physically reside on the host and are then shared with the guest, which uses a special file system driver in the Guest Addition to talk to the host.

[Wildernis]

Socratis,

Thank you for your prompt response.

I don't think the answer is as simple as that. My desk setup sees all the drives in the machine, of which there are also 3, and all their multiple partitions. I then choose which to share. I understand that they have to be visible to the host before they can be shared. My laptop on the other hand doesn't see the drives when at the initial stage of creating a new machine. This is the problem which also manifests when trying to create a share.

So the problem I need to solve is that VBox doesn't see all of the drives in the laptop at the New Machine creation stage.

Sorry if I didn't make myself clear in the original question.

Bob

[Perryg]

Is your user id in the vboxusers group on the new host?

[Wildernis]

Thanks again.

Just to make sure I ran the following command: sudo usermod -a -G vboxusers $bob
And then checked with: groups $bob,
which reported: bob@HP-ENVY ~ $ groups $bob
bob adm cdrom sudo dip plugdev lpadmin sambashare vboxusers

I rebooted and went to set up a new machine in VBox but it still doesn't see any other drives.

Bob

[Perryg]

What happens if you select the "/"? Partitions in Linux are usually a mount and mapped to a specific location. How were the partitions mounted?

[Wildernis]

It's the same as selecting 'bob' and just brings up the Linux partition.

[Perryg]

Post the results of df -h from the hosts terminal

[Wildernis]

Here are the results;
By way of explanation sda5 72Gb is the main Linux partition
sda6 105Gb is a spare partition where I am trying to place my VM

sdb1 is the 1TB sata Toshiba drive
480Gb drive temporarily removed

Hope this helps.

Bob


bob@HP-ENVY ~ $ df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
udev 5.8G 4.0K 5.8G 1% /dev
tmpfs 1.2G 1.8M 1.2G 1% /run
/dev/sda5 72G 62G 6.9G 90% /
none 4.0K 0 4.0K 0% /sys/fs/cgroup
none 5.0M 0 5.0M 0% /run/lock
none 5.8G 43M 5.8G 1% /run/shm
none 100M 24K 100M 1% /run/user
/dev/sda6 105G 60G 45G 57% /media/bob/51D8E1F77850A56C
/dev/sdb1 894G 463G 431G 52% /media/bob/TOSHIBA

[Perryg]

/dev/sda6 105G 60G 45G 57% /media/bob/51D8E1F77850A56C
/dev/sdb1 894G 463G 431G 52% /media/bob/TOSHIBA

I have highlighted your mount points. This is where you should see the drive/partitions.

[Wildernis]

PerryG,

I can't thank you enough!!!!!

Your last little post finally got through to me and the penny dropped! Problem solved.

What makes me embarrassed is that I must have done that when I set up my desktop machine, and yet I couldn't remember how or that I had even done it that way. That's what comes with old age I'm afraid.

Once again, thank you! You are a true star. I've been going round in circles with this for over a month and you've solved it in less than a day.

Cheers

Bob

[Perryg]

You're welcome Bob. Glad I could help to jostle you memory, and as for being old, you are only old when you stop trying. Take that from someone a day older than dirt.