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Showing posts with label mount vboxsf shared folder virtualbox opensuse modprobe. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mount vboxsf shared folder virtualbox opensuse modprobe. Show all posts

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.