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I've got a question regarding sharing files between a Windows7 host and a guest Ubuntu running inside virtualbox. The question was asked here with no answers:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/11565446/oracle-virtualbox-mounting-windows-7-host-folder-into-guest-ubuntu-12-04-direct

I've searched but not found an answer... thought I might have to install virtual box guest additions, but where do I get this from???

The question is reproduced here for your convenience:


I know this is not strictly a question about programming but I need to mount the shared folder in order to continue my coding...

I've got a Windows 7 OS with a guest Ubuntu 12.04 OS inside VirtualBOX.

I have been trying to mount a shared folder created in VirtualBox. The virtual folder is basically the C:\ file system on Windows 7. In VirtualBox the shared folder appears as:

Folder Path: C:\

Folder Name: Windows7 sudo mount -t vboxsf Windows7 /windows7

But the VirtualBox shared folder filesystem type is not recognized by the "mount" command. The error I get is:

mount: unknown filesystem type 'vboxsf'

Conversely, if I try it from the DOS prompt I also get an error after a long pause:

net use x: \vboxsvr\Windows7

(the error which is in my locale basically says: it is impossible to find the network path).

So, what should I do. I've been able to do this operation in the past a previous version of Ubuntu and VirtualBox by installing something called "guest additions".

Could someone please shed some light on how to solve this problem?

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  • Guest Additions is now called 'VirtualBox Extension Pack', available on the downloads page. From there, install and see the HTML online manual for Shared Folders how to. Jul 21, 2012 at 20:29
  • Guest Additions are available here. Just choise your version of VBox and download VBoxGuestAdditions*.iso
    – Viktor K
    Jul 21, 2012 at 20:32
  • Also you can get access to some folder at your PC by setting it like network resource. Than configure as I remember it's called Virtual Box Host-Only network and than you can access to this folder from virtual os(ubuntu). If you need more info how to do this, ask here.
    – Viktor K
    Jul 21, 2012 at 20:37

1 Answer 1

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For shared folders functionality we need the following:

From my experience the naming of the shares is most prone to issues. Take care to use different names for the share and the mountpoint even if it may be tempting to use the same name.

A somehow easier way to share date from the host to the guest, and more importantly from the guest to the host we may also consider to use Samba for network file access.

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