Virtualbox shared folder mounting issue: Missing module on opensuse 10.3

The Version combination for this scenario..

This problem was encountered with the following combination:

• Virtualbox 1.6.4
• Host OS: windows XP service pack 2
• Guest OS: OpenSuSE 10.3

A shared virtual folder was defined for the opensuse virtual machine like this:

In the guest OS, a mount point was defined like this:

linux-jo4o:~ # mkdir -p /ddrive

Now when the mount of the shared folder was attempted, this error was received:

inux-jo4o:~ # mount -t vboxsf d_drive /ddrive
/sbin/mount.vboxsf: mounting failed with the error: No such device

An unlikely solution…

It seems that a critical module required for shared mount points was not loaded in memory. Here, we can see that only one module with the vbox pattern in it’s name is loaded:

linux-jo4o:~ # lsmod | grep vbox
vboxadd                56232  3

So lets load the vboxsvfs module into memory:

linux-jo4o:~ # modprobe vboxvfs

After that, we can verify that it is really loaded:

linux-jo4o:~ # lsmod | grep vbox
vboxvfs                38184  0
vboxadd                56232  4 vboxvfs

Now, let us mount the shared folder:

linux-jo4o:~ #  mount -t vboxsf d_drive /ddrive

Awesome! That was smooth. Lets check if the shared folder really got mounted or not:

linux-jo4o:~ # mount
/dev/sda2 on / type ext3 (rw,acl,user_xattr)
proc on /proc type proc (rw)
sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw)
debugfs on /sys/kernel/debug type debugfs (rw)
udev on /dev type tmpfs (rw)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,mode=0620,gid=5)
/dev/sda3 on /home type ext3 (rw,acl,user_xattr)
/dev/sr0 on /media/VBOXADDITIONS_1.6.4_33808 type iso9660 (ro,nosuid,nodev,uid=0)
d_drive on /ddrive type vboxsf (rw)
linux-jo4o:~ #

Yippee!

I can share files with my windows laptop now. Now that was some adventure, eh

To make this more permanent, there has to be a way of loading this module automatically. Maybe I can put the modprobe command in /etc/rc.d/boot.local file, but then maybe there is a better way. I leave that to you to figure out.