{"id":1574,"date":"2018-12-24T13:49:27","date_gmt":"2018-12-24T12:49:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.speich.net\/articles\/?p=1574"},"modified":"2022-10-30T15:18:27","modified_gmt":"2022-10-30T14:18:27","slug":"virtualbox-6-how-to-enable-symlinks-in-a-linux-guest-os","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.speich.net\/articles\/en\/2018\/12\/24\/virtualbox-6-how-to-enable-symlinks-in-a-linux-guest-os\/","title":{"rendered":"VirtualBox 6: How to enable symlinks for shared folders"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>For security reasons, creating symbolic links in a shared folder is disabled in the guest OS (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.virtualbox.org\/ticket\/10085\">ticket 10085<\/a> and manual <a href=\"https:\/\/www.virtualbox.org\/manual\/ch05.html#sharedfolders\">5.3 Shared Folders<\/a>). If you trust your Linux guest OS, you can enable symlinking from the host OS with the following command:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<pre><code class=\"language-bash\">~ $ VBoxManage setextradata \"VM_Name\" VBoxInternal2\/SharedFoldersEnableSymlinksCreate\/Folder_Name 1<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n<p>Replace <em>VM_Name<\/em> and <em>Folder_Name<\/em> with your own names. To get a list of names of your virtual machines, execute in the host console:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<pre><code class=\"language-bash\">~ $ VBoxManage list vms<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n<p>You can also list information about a specific machine with:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<pre><code class=\"language-bash\">~ $ VBoxManage showvminfo \"VM_Name\"<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n<p>Now you can start your Linux guest OS and create the symbolic link, in my case&nbsp; I wanted to point my shared folder to the apache directory \/var\/www\/html, e.g.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<pre><code class=\"language-bash\">~ $ sudo ln -s \/media\/sf_Websites \/var\/www\/html<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n<p>Note: On a Windows host you need to enable symlinks also on the OS level for the current user, otherwise you have to run VirtualBox with administrator rights, @see <a href=\"https:\/\/superuser.com\/questions\/124679\/how-do-i-create-a-link-in-windows-7-home-premium-as-a-regular-user#125981\" data-type=\"URL\" data-id=\"https:\/\/superuser.com\/questions\/124679\/how-do-i-create-a-link-in-windows-7-home-premium-as-a-regular-user#125981\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">How do I create a symlink in Windows<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For security reasons, creating symbolic links in a shared folder is disabled in the guest OS (ticket 10085 and manual 5.3 Shared Folders). If you trust your Linux guest OS, you can enable symlinking from the host OS with the following command: ~ $ VBoxManage setextradata &#8220;VM_Name&#8221; VBoxInternal2\/SharedFoldersEnableSymlinksCreate\/Folder_Name 1 Replace VM_Name and Folder_Name with your &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.speich.net\/articles\/en\/2018\/12\/24\/virtualbox-6-how-to-enable-symlinks-in-a-linux-guest-os\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;VirtualBox 6: How to enable symlinks for shared folders&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[315],"tags":[54,92],"class_list":["post-1574","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-linux","tag-linux-mint","tag-virtualbox","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.speich.net\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1574","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.speich.net\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.speich.net\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.speich.net\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.speich.net\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1574"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.speich.net\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1574\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1967,"href":"https:\/\/www.speich.net\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1574\/revisions\/1967"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.speich.net\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.speich.net\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.speich.net\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}