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Monday, August 11, 2008

Virtualbox shared folder mounting issue: Missing module on opensuse 10.3

The Version combination for this scenario..


This problem was encountered with the following combination:

  • Virtualbox 1.6.4

  • Host OS: windows XP service pack 2

  • Guest OS: OpenSuSE 10.3


A shared virtual folder was defined for the opensuse virtual machine like this:

In the guest OS, a mount point was defined like this:
linux-jo4o:~ # mkdir -p /ddrive

Now when the mount of the shared folder was attempted, this error was received:
inux-jo4o:~ # mount -t vboxsf d_drive /ddrive
/sbin/mount.vboxsf: mounting failed with the error: No such device

An unlikely solution...


It seems that a critical module required for shared mount points was not loaded in memory. Here, we can see that only one module with the vbox pattern in it's name is loaded:
linux-jo4o:~ # lsmod | grep vbox
vboxadd 56232 3

So lets load the vboxsvfs module into memory:
linux-jo4o:~ # modprobe vboxvfs

After that, we can verify that it is really loaded:
linux-jo4o:~ # lsmod | grep vbox
vboxvfs 38184 0
vboxadd 56232 4 vboxvfs

Now, let us mount the shared folder:
linux-jo4o:~ #  mount -t vboxsf d_drive /ddrive

Awesome! That was smooth. Lets check if the shared folder really got mounted or not:
linux-jo4o:~ # mount
/dev/sda2 on / type ext3 (rw,acl,user_xattr)
proc on /proc type proc (rw)
sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw)
debugfs on /sys/kernel/debug type debugfs (rw)
udev on /dev type tmpfs (rw)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,mode=0620,gid=5)
/dev/sda3 on /home type ext3 (rw,acl,user_xattr)
/dev/sr0 on /media/VBOXADDITIONS_1.6.4_33808 type iso9660 (ro,nosuid,nodev,uid=0)
d_drive on /ddrive type vboxsf (rw)
linux-jo4o:~ #

Yippee!


I can share files with my windows laptop now. Now that was some adventure, eh :)

To make this more permanent, there has to be a way of loading this module automatically. Maybe I can put the modprobe command in /etc/rc.d/boot.local file, but then maybe there is a better way. I leave that to you to figure out.

8 comments:

  1. Thanks a lot Gaurav Varma. Great help.

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  2. Was missing the modules, so I ran the VBoxLinuxAdditions-*.run file another 2 times and then it worked great,

    thanks, cheers!

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  3. Thanks man ..
    That put me out of my misery!! .. :))

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  4. I too had the same problem on VirtualBox with Ubuntu 9.04. Thanks alot, solution worked ;)

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  5. Thank you very much....
    This is what I call a very helpfull and detailed explanation. Very usefull for a linux-beginner

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  6. Only one comment - it's not the operating system (eg SuSE vs Ubuntu) that's important here - it's the Linux kernel version. It would be nice if you mentioned the kernel version, above.

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  7. I had a similar problem after my vbox did an update - I had to reinstall vboxadditions using the auto install. After that, it worked fine again

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  8. Even tho it's been 17 months or more I have to say thanks, very good explanation for us noobs.
    Tony

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