[Users] ET(K) VirtualBox image and shared folders, revisited

[Scott Hawley]

I'd love to understand why moving the directory somewhere else and
immediately back had a positive effect...

etk-os:~> sudo mount -t vboxsf shawley /home/etk-user/shawley

/sbin/mount.vboxsf: mounting failed with the error: Protocol error

etk-os:~> mv shawley/ shawley.O
etk-os:~> sudo mount -t vboxsf shawley /home/etk-user/shawley
/sbin/mount.vboxsf: mounting failed with the error: No such file or
directory
etk-os:~> mv shawley.O shawley
etk-os:~> sudo mount -t vboxsf shawley /home/etk-user/shawley
etk-os:~>



...and now it works.  That should not happen.    I won't complain for now.


I still have to mount it manually.  It seems that rc.local is not being
run, despite the execution bits being set.
I'll add a logging line to investigate further, but this is good enough
for now.


Thanks.

-Scott





On 7/7/12 5:23 PM, "Scott Hawley" <scott.hawley at belmont.edu> wrote:

>Ian,
>  Thanks for your resonse.p
>
>
>>
>>Do you mean that you had everything installed and configured, and you
>>have now run VirtualBox again and it is no longer working?
>
>
>Yes
>
>
>>Or do you mean that you are trying to recreate the setup that you had
>>before, and this is unsuccessful?
>>
>>> I had, in /et/rc.local on the VM, the line...
>>> 
>>> mount -t vboxsf /Users/shawley /home/etk-user/shawley
>>> 
>>> I've tried this ... with and without "sudo" first, and with and without
>>> full path specification.
>>
>>You don't need sudo, as rc.local is run as root.
>
>
>Correct.  And as I said, even without, it doesn't mount.
>
>  
>>  /Users/shawley is in the place of the "share name".  As far as I can
>>tell, this is a name which you choose, not the host filesystem folder
>>location (you have chosen it to be the same, but the system doesn't know
>>this).  In the VM configuration, you need to share this folder
>>explicitly, and you can give it any name.  I think your home directory is
>>shared in virtualbox by default, but with the name "shawley".  So you
>>probably want:
>>
>>	mount -t vboxsf shawley /home/etk-user/shawley
>
>
>This was in fact the original specification I had in rc.local, which quit
>working.  Thus began my "exercise" today.
> 
>
>>Is your home directory configured as shared in the virtualbox settings
>>for this VM, and if so, with this name?  The /home/etk-user/shawley needs
>>to be a full path, as you have it.
>
>
>Yes. I mispoke: 'The "Auto Mount" flag was checked in "Settings" for this
>folder in the VirtualBox VM's
>"Shared Folders" window.
>
>
>>
>>> The "Auto Mount" flag was checked in "Settings" for the VirtualBox VM's
>>> "Settings" window.  Some web forums threads suggest turning that off...
>>
>>I don't see why you would need "auto mount" as well as having a manual
>>mount command in rc.local, but I'm not familiar enough with virtualbox to
>>be sure.
>
>Nor do I.  I have been trying a variety of possible solutions.
>
>>
>>> Either way, I can no longer get my directory to be shared.
>>
>>What do you mean exactly by this?  Do you get an error message?  Does the
>>folder not mount (i.e. show up in the output of the "mount" command)?
>
>
>The folder simply does not mount.
>
>Virtual Box documentation on shared folders said that shared folders get
>mounted to /media on Linux guests.  The only contents of /media  are
>"cdrom" and "cdrom0"
>
>
>> Does it mount but you can't access it, for example for permissions
>>reasons?  Are you a member of the "vboxsf" group?  Have you tried running
>>the mount command manually from a terminal?
>
>It gives me a protocol error:
>
>% sudo mount -t vboxsf shawley /home/etk-user/shawley
>/sbin/mount.vboxsf: mounting failed with the error: Protocol error
>
>Web forum-reading suggests that the combination of "Auto-Mount" being
>checked and trying to mount from the command-line will produce the above
>protocol error.  Shutting down the VM, unchecking Auto-Mount and
>rebooting, I get the same error.
>
>  
>>
>>Have you installed the virtualbox guest additions?  You can't use shared
>>folders without them.
>
>Yes.
>
>>
>>In case there is something useful in it, here is a link to the virtualbox
>>shared folders documentation:
>>
>>	http://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch04.html#sharedfolders
>
>
>Thanks.  That was the first thing I read, before trying any of this. ;-)
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>Users mailing list
>Users at einsteintoolkit.org
>http://lists.einsteintoolkit.org/mailman/listinfo/users
>