Mounting VirtualBox shared folders on Ubuntu Server 16.04 LTS

This guide will walk you through steps on how to setup a VirtualBox shared folder inside your Ubuntu Server guest. Tested on Ubuntu Server 16.04.3 LTS (Xenial Xerus)

Steps:

1. Open VirtualBox

2. Right-click your VM, then click Settings

3. Go to Shared Folders section

4. Add a new shared folder

5. On Add Share prompt, select the Folder Path in your host that you want to be accessible inside your VM.

6. In the Folder Name field, type shared

7. Uncheck Read-only and Auto-mount, and check Make Permanent

8. Start your VM

9. Once your VM is up and running, go to Devices menu -> Insert Guest Additions CD image menu

10. Use the following command to mount the CD:

sudo mount /dev/cdrom /media/cdrom

11. Install dependencies for VirtualBox guest additions:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install build-essential linux-headers-`uname -r`

12. Run installation script for the guest additions:

sudo /media/cdrom/./VBoxLinuxAdditions.run

13. Reboot VM

sudo shutdown -r now

14. Create "shared" directory in your home

mkdir ~/shared

15. Mount the shared folder from the host to your ~/shared directory

sudo mount -t vboxsf shared ~/shared

16. The host folder should now be accessible inside the VM.

cd ~/shared

Make the mount folder persistent

This directory mount we just made is temporary and it will disappear on next reboot. To make this permanent, we'll set it so that it will mount our ~/shared directory on system startup

1. Edit fstab file in /etc directory

sudo nano /etc/fstab

2. Add the following line to fstab (separated by tabs) and press Ctrl+O to Save.

shared	/home/<username>/shared	vboxsf	defaults	0	0

3. Edit modules

sudo nano /etc/modules

4. Add the following line to /etc/modules and save

vboxsf

5. Reboot the vm and log-in again

shutdown -r now

6. Go to your home directory and check to see if the file is highlighted in green.

cd ~
ls

If it is then congratulations! You successfully linked the directory within your vm with your host folder.

Bonus:

How to point apache's web directory to our folder in the host.

1. Remove apache's old html directory (WARNING! Backup your data if necessary)

sudo rm -rf /var/www/html	

2. Add a symbolic link in its place

sudo ln -s ~/shared /var/www/html