Couldn’t Get Shared Folders in VirtualBox to work

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After installing VirtualBox and creating and Ubuntu virtual machine, I tried to get shared folders to work between the Windows host and the Ubuntu Guest, but it did not work.   Here was what I tried…

1. For the shared folders to work, you have to install the VirtualBox Guest Additions.  It says so when you go to Devices -> Shared Folder Settings …

So we do as it says.  In the Virtual Box window…

You won’t see anything happen.  At the prompt, type …

sudo mount /dev/cdrom /media/cdrom

If you “cd” to “/media/cdrom”, you will see a file VBoxLinuxAdditions.run.   Let’s run that file…

sudo sh VBoxLinuxAdditions.run

Then you need to reboot the virtual machine …

sudo reboot

2.  Log back in.  You are supposed to see the shared folder in /media/  However, it didn’t work for me.

No matter, instead of having to configure all these things myself, I’ll just use Vagrant to spin up a new virtual box that has everything configured for me (including shared folders).

 

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