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Mir Rahed Uddin
Mir Rahed Uddin

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VirtualBox cannot access shared folder items (permission denied) - Fixed

One of the common issues I have faced several times regarding Virtualbox's shared folder, that is even though a shared folder connected to the virtual machine, it's not accessible.

means in some cases after connecting your shared folder to the Linux virtual machine, when you try to access its contents, it will deny the permission and show "The folder contents could not be displayed" message.


Permission deny

Let's see how we can fix it

  1. Open your Terminal. Type sudo su then enter your account password.

  2. Write the following commands & execute it

sudo usermod -a -G vboxsf mir (*Instead of mir use your account name, which is located at the top-left corner of your terminal)

vboxsf

sudo chown -R your_account_name:users /media/your_share_folder_name/

Example sudo chown -R mir:users /media/sf_Linux_Application/

sf_linux_application

3 . Now reboot your Virtual Machine and check the Shared Folder again.

Watch on YouTube

Thanks for reading :)

Coffee https://www.buymeacoffee.com/rahedmir

Top comments (1)

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Nathan S.R.

Helpful Post. Thanks. By the way, I connect a Pen Drive usually, to any guest, to share files. For connecting pen drives in VirtualBox, its Extension Pack needs to be installed, priorly, just once.