Permanently share a folder between host (Mac) and guest (Linux) OS using VirtualBox

This is mainly for my own reference, but here it goes.

1. Share a folder on the host OS

In VirtualBox, click your OS on the left and click on Settings.
Click on the Shared Folders tab.
Click on the folder with the plus on the right.
Browse to a folder of your choice in the folder path.
Enter a folder name with no spaces e.g. “Share”.
Check Auto-mount and Make Permanent, if available.
Click on OK.

2. Mount the folder in the guest OS

Create a folder in your guest OS that you want to share.
Open up Terminal.
Type in id and press ENTER— remember that ID.
Switch to the root user using sudo su and enter your password.
Browse to the etc folder using cd /etc.
Edit the rc.local file using vi rc.local.
Move your cursor right above exit 0 and press the letter “i” on your keyboard to insert text.
Type in the following: sudo mount -t vboxsf -o uid=1000,gid=1000 Share /home/username/Documents/Share
- 1000 should match the ID you noted down earlier.
- Share should match the folder name from step 1.
- username should match your Linux username.
- /Documents/Share should be the absolute path of the new folder you created.
Now hit “ESC”, type :wq and hit ENTER to save and quit the file editing.

After you restart the guest OS, your shared folder will be automatically mounted.

13 thoughts on “Permanently share a folder between host (Mac) and guest (Linux) OS using VirtualBox”

Dave July 10, 2015 at 2:00 pm

Thanks! This really helped me, too.

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suri December 10, 2015 at 1:28 pm

I went through everything you explained in 1. By 2 I got stuck. can anybody help me please??

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Chris February 3, 2017 at 10:27 am

Thanks for the instructions!

I needed to make 2 small changes in order to get shared folders to work with my Linux guest:

In VirtualBox VM shared folder settings, do not enable Automount.
As root on Linux guest, do chmod +x /etc/rc.d/rc.local without which the rc.local commands will not be executed.

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Ryan Sechrest Post authorFebruary 3, 2017 at 12:53 pm

Nice! Thank you for sharing that!

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Jun February 10, 2017 at 11:37 am

I followed every step correctly.

Where do i check if it shared in guest OS?

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Ryan Sechrest Post authorFebruary 10, 2017 at 1:32 pm

I believe it’s mounted as a disk, so you can use the file explorer that came installed with the guest OS.

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Paul March 14, 2017 at 2:35 pm

hello, i followed all the steps correctly but i still cant see me “shared” folder mounted anywhere what should i do?

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Sampath March 21, 2017 at 11:43 pm

Excellent writeup. Worked like a charm.
Thank you so much for the tip.

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Ram May 29, 2017 at 1:16 am

Very helpful. For those who might not see the files in the shared folder, try from terminal
ls /home/username/Documents/Share and now if you see the data but not in the file viewer, then go to /home/username/Documents/Share in the file viewer and on the top menu go to view tab and select reload folder or F5.

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Mikel June 9, 2017 at 1:38 am

If you want to add a user to a group in Fedora, do the following:

Open a terminal.
Enter su -, hit Enter.
Enter the root password, hit Enter.
Type in usermod -a -G vboxsf username, replacing username with the user you want to add to the group, hit Enter.
You may have to reboot to remount the share, the easiest way to do this is probably to reboot the VM.

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