Share data between guest and host

Why are shared directories useful?

A useful feature of the virtual machine (VM) concept is that you can share data between the host (your physical machine) and the guest (the VM). This way, you can use the software tools available on the VM for processing (radar) data that actually resides on your host machine.

How to create a shared directory?

The procedure of sharing a host directory with the VM contains two steps.

Step 1: Define shared directory

First, you need to define the shared directory, and the name under which it should be known to the VM. You can do this using the VirtualBox GUI.

• Power-off the VM
• In VirtualBox, right-click the VM, and select Settings
• Select the Shared Folders item, hit the Add folder icon
• Select the directory you want to share
• Under Folder Name, the folder will be known to the VM
• Use the check boxes to decide whether the folder should be read-only from the VM, and whether it should be shared permanently; generally, you should not check Auto-mount.

Step 2: Mount shared directory on the VM

Now start the VM again, log in, and execute:

$ sudo mount -t vboxsf -o uid=$UID,gid=$(id -g) sharedir mountdir

where sharedir has to be what you chose as Folder Name above, and and mountdir is the target directory in the VM’s file system which must already exist (otherwise, you ned to create it using mkdir).

For example, if your Folder Name from Step 1: Define shared directory was data2vm, you could execute the following on the VM (assume you are in the ~ directory):

~$ mkdir from_host
~$ sudo mount -t vboxsf -o uid=$UID,gid=$(id -g) data2vm ~/from_host
~$ ls from_host

The final line is just to verify that the mount was successful, and should show you the content of your shared directory on the host.