How to Mount a Windows Share Through VirutalBox on Linux

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Every time when you need to access a remote Windows network share from a Linux system running in VirtualBox here is a relatively easy way to mount that remote Windows network share in this scenario. For most people who are unfamiliar with Linux, even though there are so many ways of doing this, mounting a Windows share from a Linux isn’t as easy as you thought. There are just so many different Linux distributions with so many different command line utilities dedicated to this situation. Finding one that works for you isn’t so obvious.

Given the scenario, we can leverage the existing bridge VirtualBox to smooth out things.

First you need go to Devices > Share Folders >

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Select the Windows share you’d like to have access inside the Linux with the plus icon.

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Remember the name if you shared folder as we will use this name as the reference later once we boot into the Linux environment. Note that, the name of the folder isn’t the full path of the folder. When asked for Read-only, Auto-mount or Make Permanent, select the option that works for you. I always make sure Auto-mount and Make Permanent are checked.

Now start up your Linux VM, create a folder  <download> or whatever you want to call it under /mnt path.

sudo mkdir /mnt/download

You can mount the drive one-time by:

sudo mount -t vboxsf Downloads /mnt/download

But you probably want it mounted every time you boot Linux so with sudo and your favorite editor add this line to /etc/rc.local

mount -t vboxsf Downloads /mnt/download

That’s it vboxsf is a command only available through VirtualBox, so if you are running Linux outside VirtualBox this will NOT work for you. Also make sure your Linux has VirtualBox Guest Additions installed. This way you will have access to the command line to help you share the shares to your Windows directories. This will avoid any authentication issues you might come across, as long as this shared drive is accessible from your Windows. You can mount the shared directory inside your Linux.

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