Introduction
This is an article available to show how to mount a folder in windows operating system in a Linux CentOS server. The server itself is a virtual server. Furthermore, that virtual server is running in a VirtualBox application. So, the mounting process is very important in order for the virtual server to access the folder directly. By mounting the folder available in windows, the folder is also available in the virtual server. This article will show how to mount the folder manually.
Steps for Mounting Windows Folder Manually from a running Virtual Server in VirtualBox Application
In order to achieve the purpose, there are several steps to follow. There is a prerequisite or a condition that is important to able to do it. The first condition is that the virtual server must install the VirtualBox Guest Additions. After installing it, there will be several steps for configuring the mount point of the windows folder. In the end of it, it is the mounting process of the mount point definition.
Preparation for Mounting Windows Folder Manually
For the preparation, the following are the steps to achieve the process :
1. Install the VirtualBox Guest Additions. In order to be able to install it, just read the article with the title of ‘How to Install VirtualBox Guest Additions in Linux CentOS 8 running in a VirtualBox via command line’ in this link.
2. Access the VirtualBox application as in the following image :
3. Select the CentOS-8 virtual server. Do not forget to access the Settings Window as follows :
4. Next step, access the Shared Folders tab as in the following image :
5. The available shared folders list above by the default is empty. The above image is a result of adding a new shared folders definition. Just click the plus sign in the right side and the following image will appear :
6. Do not forget to click or to check the checkbox with the label of ‘Make Permanent’. The shared folder definition will be available although there will be a restart process of the virtual server. So, in order to define the shared folder, just select the Folder Path, by selecting from the host operating system. As in the following image :
7. Just click the Other… link if there is a change on the folder. Additionally, by default at the first time, it will be useful for choosing the folder in the windows for further mounting process in the virtual server. The following is the display process of selecting the folder :
After selecting the right folder, just click the Select Folder button. It will redirect it to the Edit Share window dialog as in the previous step.
Mounting the Windows Folder Manually
This part is the actual execution for mounting the windows folder. The following are the sequence of those steps :
1. Try to access the virtual server by logging in to it. After logging in to the virtual server, either directly or remotely, there will be a mounted folder of the shared folder from windows. Remotely access the virtual server is available in the article with the title of ‘How to Remote CentOS Virtual Server running in a VirtualBox with a NAT Network using SSH’ in this link as reference.
Actually, the mount point with the label ‘temp’ will not available automatically. It exist as in the following output :
The above image is displaying the output of the command execution of ”mount’. It is a command to list all the available mount point available in the server. As in the above output, no ‘temp’ folder mount point is available. So, the mounting process must be manual although the mount point definition has exist.
2. Finally, in order to mount the defined mount point manually, execute the mount command pattern as follows :
mount -t vboxsf shared_folder_label_name mount_point
3. The following is the image of the above command execution. According to the above command pattern, the following is the actual command execution for mouting the ‘temp’ mount point definition label to a certain mount point path. In this context, it exist in ‘/media/temp’. Below is the actual output image :
The above process involving the following sequence of :
Creating a new folder with the name of ‘temp’ in the ‘/media’ folder. The command execution is :
sudo mkdir temp
After successfully create a new folder with the name of ‘temp’, execute the following command to mount the mount point :
sudo mount -t vboxsf temp /media/temp
4. Last but not least, just to make sure, the following is the image of the result displaying all the mount point including the mount point of the shared folders :
So, according to all of the above steps, the mounting process available in the shared folder definition of a virtual server in VirtualBox application is a success.