[IAEP] Accessing the hard drive of the host machine from a Virtual Box Sugar ?

[Gary C Martin]

Hi Caroline,

On 5 Oct 2009, at 16:41, Caroline Meeks wrote:

> Hi Gary,
>
> Thanks, I made progress. Now I am getting
>
> I am getting "mount: unknown filesystem type 'vboxsf'"  any thoughts?
>
> http://screencast.com/t/oT7bZaKPpm0

Ah yes... Have you installed the Virtual Box guest additions into the  
virtual machine OS (Fedora)?

The guest additions help make the VM better integrate into the host  
operating system – things like shared folders, clipboard sharing for  
copy/paste, mouse sharing (though with Sugars hot corner Frame design  
mouse sharing is often better left disabled), window resizing, etc.

Some of the various Sugar images I've used had guest additions already  
installed, not so sure though for more recent builds – I'm loosing  
track somewhat as I've been working so much in a sugar-jhbuild  
environment.

You really need to read the documentation at this point... You can't  
put if off any longer ;-) Just go to the VirtualBox Help menu and  
select Contents to see the .pdf UserManual, and read the introduction  
to chapter 4, then 4.3 describes how to install the guest additions  
(basically you have to mount a CD like .iso that VB provides, run some  
more terminal commands to download the needed build GNU/Linux tools,  
then some more terminal commands to build the guest additions).

Sections 4.6 to 4.9 will describe the features this work gets for you.

Clearly this is not something a kid or teacher should be doing, in the  
past there were (experimental) SoaS images made that had this already  
built/installed. If VirtualBox is a serious target platform, then you  
may want to raise the need to start building in the Fedora guest  
additions for VB, as standard.

Regards,
--Gary

> On Sun, Oct 4, 2009 at 6:58 PM, Gary C Martin <gary at garycmartin.com>  
> wrote:
> Hi Caroline,
>
>
> On 4 Oct 2009, at 23:42, Caroline Meeks wrote:
>
> Does anyone know how to bring files from the host's hard drive (I am  
> on a Mac) into a Sugar running in Virtual Box?
>
> Sure. FWIW it's all in the VirtualBox help pdf (just go to the Help  
> menu, and the Contents...) The quick route is:
>
> 1) Make sure you're not running or saved the sugar VM (can't change  
> settings unless it's off)
> 2) Select your Sugar VM and open Settings
> 3) Select Shared Folders
> 4) Hit the + folder icon, choose a folder path (the pop-up has a  
> standard Mac dialogue if you click Other...)
> 5) Give it a name, say shared_with_sugar (I don't usually tick the  
> read-only as it is useful both ways)
> 6) You're done with settings, so launch your VM
> 8) In a VM Terminal window type
>
>        mkdir ~/shared_directory
>        sudo mount -o uid=500 -t vboxsf shared_with_sugar ~/ 
> shared_directory
>
> 9) You'll now see any shared files in here
>
> Next time you reboot the VM you'll need to just run the above mount  
> command again. You can obviously point this set-up anywhere, so you  
> could share ~/Desktop from your Mac to the VM somewhere, just  
> depends how you work. Personally I just have a Sugar folder with all  
> my Sugar related work.
>
> Regards,
> --Gary
>
>
>
> -- 
> Caroline Meeks
> Solution Grove
> Caroline at SolutionGrove.com
>
> 617-500-3488 - Office
> 505-213-3268 - Fax