Permission denied when accessing VirtualBox shared folder when member of the vboxsf group

I'm running Ubuntu 11.04 (guest) on Windows 7 (host) with the guest additions installed. I have an auto-mount folder that maps to my D: drive on the host which I can access using sudo ls /media/sf_D_DRIVE - however, even when my user (ross) is a member of the vboxsf group I get a permission denied error when attempting to explore it. I have restarted since adding my user to the vboxsf group.

This should work because I am a member of the group (which has rwx rights), so why doesn't it?

ross@panther:~$ ls -l /media
total 8
drwxrwx--- 1 root vboxsf 8192 2011-07-03 22:24 sf_D_DRIVE

ross@panther:~$ ls -l /media/sf_D_DRIVE/
ls: cannot open directory /media/sf_D_DRIVE/: Permission denied

ross@panther:~$ id ross
uid=1000(ross) gid=1000(ross) groups=1000(ross),4(adm),20(dialout),24(cdrom),46(plugdev),112(lpadmin),120(admin),122(sambashare),1001(vboxsf)

ross@panther:~$ sudo ls -l /media/sf_D_DRIVE/
total 84
drwxrwx--- 1 root vboxsf  4096 2011-07-06 14:46 Development
# ...snip...
drwxrwx--- 1 root vboxsf     0 2011-05-25 19:13 Videos

Ross

Posted 2011-07-07T21:26:52.323

Reputation: 2 848

Answers

116

I had added my user to the vboxsf group:

sudo usermod -aG vboxsf $(whoami)

I did do a restart, but after logging out and in again, I got access! Restarting after this and it still works. Go figure.

Ross

Posted 2011-07-07T21:26:52.323

Reputation: 2 848

3This answer command has to be run on the GUEST machine! – KrisWebDev – 2016-04-02T22:08:22.227

Just tried this with Lubuntu 16.04, my user was created in the vboxsf group, however it was not checked... so was added but disabled. Checking the username and logging out/in or rebooting got it working. – rdtsc – 2016-06-02T14:01:43.680

2I tried a simple logout login but it didn't work. I had to restart. – Waqleh – 2017-04-21T15:40:24.653

1why is the need for a restart? – Praveen Sripati – 2011-10-19T02:15:35.800

Not sure, it just seemed to correct itself. – Ross – 2011-10-19T07:50:22.987

See here why a restart is required. A logout/login would do.

– Praveen Sripati – 2011-10-19T14:01:11.747

I followed this procedure: Check that your user account is in the vboxsf group. Click on the bird icon, select Users and Groups → Manage Groups → vboxsf → Properties. Your user account should have a checkmark next to it. Check it if it is unchecked. When prompted for a password, enter secret.

Then a restart on the virtual machine (Power of the Machine) and this allowed for the shared folder to work.

Jwoozy

Posted 2011-07-07T21:26:52.323

Reputation: 11

2What do you mean by "bird icon"? – Zelphir Kaltstahl – 2017-07-17T15:11:21.933