VirtualBox: mount.vboxsf: mounting failed with the

Question

I'm using VirtualBox with OS X as host and CentOS on the guest VM.

In OS X I created folder myfolder, added it as shared folder to the VM, turned on the VM, in CentOS created folder /home/user/myfolder and typing:

sudo mount -t vboxsf myfolder /home/user/myfolder

and have output:

/sbin/mount.vboxsf: mounting failed with the error: No such device

What I'm doing wrong?

UPDATED:

Guest Additions installed.

Answer 1

For me, on a mac, it turned out I had an old VirtualBox image stored on my machine that didn't have metadata, so it wasn't being updated to the latest version.

That old image had an older version of the vbguest plugin installed in it, which the newer vbguest plugin on my machine couldn't work with.

So to fix it, I just removed the image that my Vagrant was based on, and then Vagrant downloaded the newer version and it worked fine.

# Remove an old version of the virtual box image that my vagrant was using    
$ vagrant box remove centos/7 

You can find out which boxes you have cached on your machine by running:

$ vagrant box list

I had also upgraded my vbguest plugin in my earlier attempts at getting this to work, using the following process, but I don't think this helped. FYI !

# Get rid of old plugins
vagrant plugin expunge 

# Globally install the latest version of the vbguest plugin`
vagrant plugin install vagrant-vbguest 

If you find bring the box fails on guest addtions, you can try doing the following to ensure the plugins install correctly. This downloads the latest based image for your system (for me CentOS), and may resolve the issue (it did for me!)

$ vagrant box update

Answer 2

Below two commands works for me.

vagrant ssh
sudo mount -t vboxsf -o uid=1000,gid=1000 vagrant /vagrant

Answer 3

You're using share folders, so you need to install VirtualBox Guest Additions inside your virtual machine to support that feature.

Vagrant

If you're using Vagrant (OS X: brew cask install vagrant), run:

vagrant plugin install vagrant-vbguest
vagrant vbguest

In case it fails, check the logs, e.g.

vagrant ssh -c "cat /var/log/vboxadd-install.log"

Maybe you're just missing the kernel header files.

VM

Inside VM, you should install Guest Additions, kernel headers and start the service and double check if kernel extension is running.

This depends on the guest operating system, so here are brief steps:

1. Install kernel include headers (required by VBoxLinuxAdditions).

   • RHEL: sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install kernel-devel
   • CentOS: sudo yum update && sudo yum -y install kernel-headers kernel-devel

2. Install Guest Additions (this depends on the operating system).

   • Ubuntu: sudo apt-get -y install dkms build-essential linux-headers-$(uname -r) virtualbox-guest-additions-iso

     If you can't find it, check by aptitude search virtualbox.

   • Debian: sudo apt-get -y install build-essential module-assistant virtualbox-ose-guest-utils

     If you can't find it, check by dpkg -l | grep virtualbox.

   • manually by downloading the iso file inside VM (e.g. wget) and installing it, e.g.

     1. wget http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/5.0.16/VBoxGuestAdditions_5.0.16.iso -P /tmp
     2. sudo mount -o loop /tmp/VBoxGuestAdditions_5.0.16.iso /mnt

     3. sudo sh -x /mnt/VBoxLinuxAdditions.run # --keep

        Extra debug: cd ~/install && sh -x ./install.sh /mnt/VBoxLinuxAdditions.run

3. Double check that kernel extensions are up and running:

   • sudo modprobe vboxsf

4. Start/restart the service:

   • manually: sudo /opt/VBoxGuestAdditions*/init/vboxadd setup (add sudo sh -x to debug)
   • Debian: sudo /etc/init.d/vboxadd-service start
   • Fedora: sudo /etc/init.d/vboxdrv setup
   • CentOS: sudo service VBoxService start

Building the main Guest Additions module

If above didn't work, here are more sophisticated steps to fix it. This assumes that you've already VBoxGuestAdditions installed (as shown above).

The most common reason why mounting shared folder doesn't work may related to building Guest Additions module which failed. If in /var/log/vboxadd-install.log you've the following error:

The headers for the current running kernel were not found.

this means either you didn't install kernel sources, or they cannot be found.

If you installed them already as instructed above, run this command:

$ sudo sh -x /opt/VBoxGuestAdditions-5.0.16/init/vboxadd setup 2>&1 | grep KERN
+ KERN_VER=2.6.32-573.18.1.el6.x86_64
+ KERN_DIR=/lib/modules/2.6.32-573.18.1.el6.x86_64/build

So basically vboxadd script is expecting your kernel sources to be available at the following dir:

ls -la /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/build

Check if the kernel dir exists (symbolic link points to the existing folder). If it's not, please install them to the right folder (e.g. in /usr/src/kernels).

So vboxadd script can enter your kernel source directory and run make kernelrelease, get the value and compare with your current kernel version.

Here is the logic:

KERN_VER=`uname -r`
KERN_DIR="/lib/modules/$KERN_VER/build"
if [ -d "$KERN_DIR" ]; then
    KERN_REL=`make -sC $KERN_DIR --no-print-directory kernelrelease 2>/dev/null || true`
    if [ -z "$KERN_REL" -o "x$KERN_REL" = "x$KERN_VER" ]; then
        return 0
    fi
fi

If the kernel version doesn't match with the sources, maybe you've to upgrade your Linux kernel (in case the sources are newer than your kernel).

CentOS

Example fixing steps for CentOS:

$ sudo yum update
$ sudo yum install kernel-$(uname -r) kernel-devel kernel-headers # or: reinstall
$ rpm -qf /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/build
kernel-2.6.32-573.18.1.el6.x86_64
$ ls -la /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/build
$ sudo reboot # and re-login
$ sudo ln -sv /usr/src/kernels/$(uname -r) /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/build
$ sudo /opt/VBoxGuestAdditions-*/init/vboxadd setup

Answer 4

Okay everyone is missing a basic fact.

mkdir /test - Makes sub directory in current directory.

sudo mkdir /test - Make directory in Root.

So if your shared directory name is shared and you do the following:

mkdir /test
sudo mount -t vboxsf shared /test

It generates this error:

sbin/mount.vboxsf: mounting failed with the error: No such file or directory

Because the directory is in the wrong place! Yes that's what this error is saying. The error is not saying reload the VBOX guest options.

But if you do this:

sudo mkdir ~/test
sudo mount -t vboxsf shared ~/test

Then it works fine.

It really amazes me how many people suggest reloading the Vbox guest additions to solve this error or writing a complex program to solve a directory created in the wrong place.

Answer 5

My shared folder/clipboard stopped to work for some reason (probably due to a patch installation on my virtual machine).

sudo mount -t vboxsf Shared_Folder ~/SF/

Gave following result:

VirtualBox: mount.vboxsf: mounting failed with the error: No such device

The solution for me was to stop vboxadd and do a setup after that:

cd /opt/VBoxGuestAdditions-*/init  
sudo ./vboxadd setup

Answer 6

I have similar issue, check header if it's not match then run below command

CentOS: sudo yum update && sudo yum -y install kernel-headers kernel-devel