Users have to be a member of this group for read/write access. Access to auto-mounted shared folders under Linux is granted via membership of the vboxsf group on the VirtualBox guest (which is created by the VirtualBox Guest Additions Installer).

If the VirtualBox guest is a Linux machine, when the shared folder is mounted, it will appear as a separate file system under a mount point of /media/sf_. Specify the folder path on the VirtualBox host to the folder and give it a folder name (same as a share name) that will be used by the VirtualBox guest to access it.Ĭheck the Auto-mount box so the shared folder will be available when the guest machine (re)starts and users log in. To share this folder with a VirtualBox guest, under the Shared Folders section of the Settings window for the VirtualBox guest, click the Add a New Share Folder Definition button. Just place the file in the shared folder directory on the VirtualBox host and it will be visible and available in the shared folder on the guest. This is also a very handy way of getting files on and off the virtual machine. This is where I place all my custom scripts I want to access from a VirtualBox guest (either Windows or Linux). The only requirement is that you must have the Guest Additions installed on your VirtualBox guest, and the VirtualBox guest needs to be one of Windows 2000 (or newer), Linux, or Solaris.įor example, I’m using a Windows host, so I’ve created a folder called shared on my C: drive in a folder called VirtualBox VMs.

The real trick here is it can be done without any type of networking configured. VirtualBox Shared Folders enable you to access files on your VirtualBox host from your VirtualBox guest.

Of course, the scripts need to be accessible from the guest VM but that’s not the best place to store them as I’m often destroying and rebuilding VMs and don’t want to lose any of my custom scripts. Some of these solutions require a significant amount of scripting to make them easy to set up and repeat. Mostly to test data replication solutions from an Oracle database to somewhere using Oracle’s GoldenGate, Dbvisit’s Replicate, or Dell’s SharePlex. I build a lot of VirtualBox virtual machines.

Virtualbox windows shared folder