Post by cjm on Feb 13, 2017 19:19:27 GMT
This type of guide often has a limited life as it traverses a number of programs, developed by different people.
In a short time, it could be completely out of date.
At time of writing, I got my personal system working (again - after a long time), executing the steps below. No guarantees or assurances of any nature given though.
As with most of my scribbles here, I try to make someone else's life a bit easier by documenting my struggles with certain Ubuntu issues.
This commentary covers Ubuntu 16.04 (host) and Windows XP (guest) running on Oracle VM 5.1.14 – both on the same PC.
For various reasons it can be useful passing files directly between the two systems on the same PC
There are a few guides explaining how to set this up on a Windows host, but not the other way round.
It is assumed in what follows, that the Windows XP guest is up and running. If not, here is a guide to get it up and running.
The next thing to do is to ensure that Guest Additions have been added to the Windows XP virtual machine.
Next we read the Oracle VM instruction manual (under Help).
The following is from the VM instruction manual. I edited it heavily to make the current issue as simple as possible:
" 4.3. Shared folders
With the "shared folders" feature of VirtualBox, you can access files of your host system from within the guest system. ...
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. ...
To share a host folder with a virtual machine in VirtualBox, you must specify the path [this is a breeze as you browse and select] of that folder and choose for it a "share name" that the guest can use to access it. Hence, first create the shared folder on the host; then, within the guest, connect to it. [When you create the shared folder on the host, do have a look at Permissions in its Properties -right click on the shared folder to get the menu item to Properties - and make sure that you have access and editing rights. The tab in Properties called Local Network Share can be left alone].
There are several ways in which shared folders can be set up for a particular virtual machine:
1. ... [This option did not work for me]
2. If a VM is not currently running, you can configure shared folders in each virtual machine's "Settings" dialog.
3. ...
There are two types of shares:
1. VM shares which are only available to the VM for which they have been defined;
2. ...
Shared folders have read/write access to the files at the host path by default. To restrict the guest to have read-only access, create a read-only shared folder. This can either be achieved using the GUI ...
Starting with version 4.0, VirtualBox shared folders also support symbolic links (symlinks), under the following conditions:
...
4.3.1. Manual mounting
...
4.3.2. Automatic mounting
Starting with version 4.0, VirtualBox can mount shared folders automatically, at your option. If automatic mounting is enabled for a specific shared folder, the Guest Additions will automatically mount that folder as soon as a user logs into the guest OS. The details depend on the guest OS type:
With Windows guests, any auto-mounted shared folder will receive its own drive letter (e.g. E:) depending on the free drive letters remaining in the guest. [ The shared folder will appear in the guest Windows XP under My Computer/Network Drives (scroll down if necessary). Some guides talk about finding it in My Network Places but it is not there on my system]
If there no free drive letters left, auto-mounting will fail; as a result, the number of auto-mounted shared folders is typically limited to 22 or less with Windows guests.
...
Note
Access to auto-mounted shared folders is only granted to the user group vboxsf, which is created by the VirtualBox Guest Additions installer. Hence guest users have to be member of that group to have read/write access or to have read-only access in case the folder is not mapped writable.
To change the mount directory to something other than /media, you can set the guest property /VirtualBox/GuestAdd/SharedFolders/MountDir.
To have any changes to auto-mounted shared folders applied while a VM is running, the guest OS needs to be rebooted. ... "