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VirtualBox

Updated Nov 22, 2023 ·

Installation​

VirtualBox releases updates every couple of years so it's best to rely on the official documentation on how to install VirtualBox.

For more information, please see Download VirtualBox

Mounting a Fileshare to VMs​

Steps:

  1. Open VirtualBox and select the VM in the VirtualBox Manager.

  2. Go to Settings > Shared Folders > Click the `+' to add a folder.

  3. Specify the folder path, foldername, and mount point.

  4. Click OK > OK

  5. Check if you can find it listed using this command:

    sudo VBoxControl sharedfolder list

    Output:

    Oracle VM VirtualBox Guest Additions Command Line Management Interface Version 5.2.42_Ubuntu
    (C) 2008-2020 Oracle Corporation
    All rights reserved.

    Shared Folder mappings (2):

    01 - vagrant
    02 - fileshare

  6. If so, create directory and mount.

    mkdir /mnt/fileshare
    mount -t vboxsf fileshare /mnt/fileshare

  7. If step 4 did not returned the shared folders, you can install virtualbox-guest-dkms.

    sudo apt-get install -y virtualbox-guest-dkms
    sudo usermod -aG vboxsf $(whoami)
    sudo VBoxControl guestproperty \
    set /VirtualBox/GuestAdd/SharedFolders/MountDir /add/your/fileshare/here

  8. Restart VM then check if you have any vb folders mounted.

    mount | grep vboxsf

    Output:

    /vagrant on /vagrant type vboxsf (rw,nodev,relatime,_netdev)
    fileshare on /mnt/fileshare type vboxsf (rw,nodev,relatime)
    fileshare on /mnt/fileshare type vboxsf (rw,nodev,relatime)
    fileshare on /mnt/fileshare type vboxsf (rw,nodev,relatime)

  9. If so, change ownership of /add/your/fileshare/here to yourself.

    sudo chown $(whoami):$(whoami) /add/your/fileshare/here

VirtualBox conflicts with WSL​

Reference: How to get VirtualBox 6.0 and WSL working at the same time [closed]

To run off hypervisor:

  1. Go to Control Panel > Programs and Features

  2. Click Turn Windows features on or off

  3. Uncheck the following features:

    • Containers
    • Hyper-V

  4. Check the following features:

    • Virtual Machine Platform
    • Windows Hypervisor Platform
    • Windows Sandbox

  5. Open Powershell with elevated privileges (Run as Administrator) then run:

    bcdedit /set hypervisorlaunchtype off

  6. Restart the Computer.

To enable WSL again and disable virtualbox:

  1. Run in Powershell:

    bcdedit /set hypervisorlaunchtype auto

  2. Restart the Computer.