VirtualBox Share Folders with Guest Machine

VirtualBox has a nifty feature that allows you to share folders with your guest machines. This will make a specific folder of you host machine avaible to your guest.

Though the menu option is clearly visible its actually hard to understand how this all works, especially if (like me :D) you are expecting it to magicly appear on your guest OS.

The initial sharing operation is as simple as can be :

• Just jump to Shared folders menu option;
• Add a new Folder (choose if its temporary or not);
• Give the path to the folder and the share name.

Now the way you access this in your guest machine depends on the Operating System you are running. Mind that you will need to install the Guest Additions in order to share folders.

For windows guest the folder will be avaible automaticly but you will need to navigate to your network places and find “VirtualBox Shared Folders”. I had to go to Network Places -> Entire Network -> VirtualBox Shared Folders, and your share should be there.
For Linux Guest (works with Ubuntu and Fedora) you will need to mount the share in order for it to be acessible. So you will do the following :

1. Create a directory where you wish to mount your share (let’s name it myshare);
2. execute the command sudo mount.vboxsf MyShare /path/to/myshare.

Note that mount.vboxsf has no spaces. Above MyShare would be the name you gave your shared folder in the VirtualBox GUI. After that your share will be mounted on /path/to/myshare.

References :

• Virtual Box Shared Folder between WinXP host and Ubuntu guest
• VirtualBox Docs