Note that you have to give this filepath without any shortcuts or symlinks (i.e., ‘~/Shared’ will not work). ‘/home/josh/Shared’ is the absolute path to the folder you created in step four (my username is ‘josh’).‘Shared’ is the name you gave as “Folder Name” in step two.
Assuming this is a personal install and you created only one non-root user account for yourself, user 1000 in group 1000 will be you, however if you’ve got multiple user accounts or have set up weird group privileges, you may need to look up the group and user id that apply to you -o is the options flag, which is there so we can invoke the option to make the folder writable for the users in the group with the number 1000 (gid=1000) and the particular user with id number 1000 (uid=1000).-t is a flag specifying the type of thing to be mounted, which is a Virtual Box shared folder (‘vboxsf’).sudo is obviously to invoke administrative privileges, which are needed to mount the folder.# sudo mount -t vboxsf -o gid=1000,uid=1000 Shared /home/josh/Shared This is an example of the command to run, which I’ll explain subsequently: Momentarily, we’ll automate this process, but before we do it’s a good idea to make sure everything’s working correctly. Test the availability of the shared folder by manually mounting it.I usually create this folder in my home (~) directory and, for consistency, name it the same thing I named the folder on the host OS, which is also the same “Folder Name” name I gave when identifying it in the VM settings. Create a mount point in Arch for the shared folder. By this, I mean create a folder in Arch where you want the contents of the shared folder on the host OS to appear.Log in with your normal user account (i.e., not as root). When you’ve filled out the form and clicked ‘OK’ your new folder-to-be-shared should appear in the “Settings > Shared Folders” window under the list of “Machine Folders”. Finally, check “Make Permanent” to have the folder available every time the Arch guest is booted. Also, leave “Auto-mount” unchecked-there’s an alternative configuration in which you leave this checked, but for present purposes it shouldn’t be. “Read Only” should be left unchecked, assuming you want to be able to add files to the shared folder from within Arch. For simplicity’s sake, I also usually make this name the same as the name of the folder I created in step one. For “Folder Name”, if it’s not autofilled, enter a name for the folder to identify it to the Arch Linux guest-to avoid dealing with escape characters and so forth later on, I generally make this something simple, like “Shared”, and avoid spaces or special characters. Select the folder you created on your host OS in step one. For “Folder Path” open the dropdown menu and select “Other…” to launch your host OS’ file browser.
Click the folder icon with a plus on it to add a shared folder. I’ve found that on OS X, creating a folder either in the ~/Public folder ( Shared Folders”. There’s some weirdness to this, as it appears to be about more than just the permissions assigned to a particular folder. Note that this folder has to be in a location that’s not “owned” by a particular user of your host OS. Create a folder on your host OS to be shared with your Arch Linux guest.These instructions assume that you’ve done so already. Note that before you can begin, you need to have installed and configured the VirtualBox Guest Additions in Arch. The Arch guest OS is running Guest Additions packages from the Arch community repository, the version numbers for which are virtualbox-guest-utils 4.2.6-1 and virtualbox-guest-modules 4.2.6-3.
The instructions in this guide were executed on a 13-inch MacBook Pro (early 2011 model) running Mac OS X 10.7.5 (Lion) and VirtualBox 4.2.6. The SystemĮveryone hates outdated instructions, so I’m going to include the version numbers I’m working with. These instructions should work for other Linux distros used with VirtualBox as well, but the usual disclaimers apply-this worked for me, but your mileage may vary and there’s no warranty here express or implied. Here’s how I’ve configured shared folders on my own VirtualBox install of Arch Linux. I wasn’t going to get around to writing this up for a while, but a question came up about it in a discussion on the Arch forums, so I ended up doing it sooner than later. In my previous post on installing Arch Linux in VirtualBox, I’d mentioned that I’d eventually add information on sharing folders and files between Arch and the host operating system.