Frustrations with shared Folders - OSX Host - ubuntu guest

[zabouti]

After having fought the good fight with Virtualbox, I got an evaluation copy of VMware Fusion 2 (version 2.0.4 (159196)) plus a little help from a friend of mine who lives nearby who uses it.

I was very pleased with the fact that I could clone VMs, network them together, etc. Beautiful!

I made some ubuntu 9.04 VMs (both server and desktop; both 32-bit).

I thought that sharing files between my Macbook Pro running OSX 10.5.7 would be a no-brainer!! As it was with Virtualbox.

Wrong! After a day or so of googling and looking thru the forums, I finally found Woody Z's patch of the VMware tools installer and I got the tools installed.

Now what? I read and reread the Fusion help (Oh, for a manual like Virtualbox's!), told my Mac to share a folder, told Fusion where the folder is and then - what?

By giving the command $ sudo mount /mnt/hgfs, I got the shared folder to show up. Ok, I can't write to it yet. But, yes, I got it to work a little.

So I thought I'd maybe share an ubuntu folder with OSX. Fusion's Sharing dialog box provides no way at all to even specify ubuntu directories, so how do I share them?

So my questions:

1. Where in ubuntu do I see the folders that OSX is sharing with it? Do I have to make my own mount points, manually mount them, etc? (Yes, I can use /etc/fstab).

2. How do I tell Fusion that I want to share an ubuntu directory with my Mac?

Thanks for your help!

-- ge, chapel hill, nc.

P.S. If I buy VMware Fusion, do I get any support besides these forums? I feel pessimistic about the answer....

[Alcares71]

If you go to the Settings of the WM you are running, you will manually browse into you Mac to the OSX folders you want to see in + +/mnt/hgfs.

Actually, I don't think you can share Ubuntu folders to Mac,but it's the other way around.

This is all you need to move files/folders back and forth.

Hopw this helps

[zabouti]

Thanks, Alcares71

When I reboot after specifying shared folders, I see them in /mnt/hgfs. However, the permisssions in OSX have to be set very carefully. I followed the instructions for shariing I found here: http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20090219133314985.

Now folders seem to mount. Unfortunately, I can't even read them. I think the problem is incompatibilities between linux' /etc/group & /etc/passwd - which are no longer used in OSX. So I need help with permissions. How do I find my UID/GID in OSX???

I guess this is for a different discussion. I can mount OSX folders in linux.

I suspect you are correct that linux can't share folders with OSX, despite what the docs say.

Thanks for your help,

ge

[playersons]

I don't know if you still have that problem, I have experienced the same thing with CentOS and Debian systems. I could work around the permissions issue only by sharing whole volumes in Mac OS X and setting the "ignore ownership" flag. After that I could read/write the mounted shares in the linux guest system.

HTH,

playersons

[WoodyZ]

Have a look at:

[zabouti]

Thanks a lot, Woody! I had read this already - and certainly used your wonderful installer script - but I hadn't noticed your reference to

... 's .

That has just the clue I needed to finally solve my problem. I had to change the entries in my /etc/fstab file to use the UID/GID in OSX (it took some searching to figure them out, too, since leopard no longer has them in its /etc files 😞

.host:/                 /mnt/hgfs               vmhgfs  defaults,ttl=5,uid=503,gid=504     0 0

After rebooting, I see two folders under /mnt/hgfs and am able to read and write them. (I did have to make the folders writable by all - 0777 - but I'm not too worried about that sort of security on my Macbook pro.)

Thanks to all who helped out here!

-- ge

[zabouti]

I want to add that I now have just one more test that I'll perform tonight after my day job is done: create clones of the VM that can talk to my Mac's file system. If cloning works, as it seemed to do before, I plan to go ahead and purchase VMware Fusion.

All the pain of getting linux working under VMware (an easy process with Virtualbox) is offset by the ease of cloning VMware VMs, something I've been unable to do properly with Virtualbox. With VMware - now that I've got sharing working - I can make a VM for just a database, another for Rails, etc., etc. I can experiment, mix and match, all without messing up my OSX environment.

-- ge