Share folders from the host Mac OS to a guest Linux system in VirtualBox

How do I go about sharing a folder between the host (Mac) and the guest OS (Ubuntu) in Virtual Box?

Solution

You’ll need the latest version of VirtualBox (4.3.10) with Guest Additions installed in Ubuntu.

With the Virtual Machine powered off and selected in VirtualBox, go to: Machine > Settings ... > Shared Folders
For “Folder Path”, click the icon to browse for the folder you want to share.
For “Folder Name”, enter a name to describe the share.
Click “OK” and start the virtual machine again.
Create a mount point which is basically an empty folder.
Fire up the terminal and type: sudo mount -t vboxsf folder_name path_to_mount_point folder_name is the name you typed in earlier to describe the share
You should be able to browse the shared folder now.

In case of difficulties mounting the same, such as the following error:

mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on mydata,
   missing codepage or helper program, or other error
   (for several filesystems (e.g. nfs, cifs) you might
   need a /sbin/mount.<type> helper program)
   In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try
   dmesg | tail  or so

perform the following steps:

sudo rm /sbin/mount.vboxsf
sudo ln -s /opt/VBoxGuestAdditions-4.3.10/lib/VBoxGuestAdditions/mount.vboxsf /sbin/mount.vboxsf