Access shared host folders in a VirtualBox Ubuntu guest

• Install VirtualBox Guest Additions.
• Set up a shared host folder using VirtualBox.

Make sure Auto-Mount is off otherwise when mounting the shared folder after restarting the guest next time, we'll get this error:-

mount.vboxsf: mounting failed with the error: Invalid argument.

It seems it's caused by the shared folder has already been mounted to "/media/sf_mydata" which only allows "admin" to access.

• In the Ubuntu guest, use Terminal to run the following commands:-

sudo mkdir /mnt/mydata
sudo mount -t vboxsf mydata /mnt/mydata
ln -s /mnt/mydata $HOME/Desktop/mydata

• To auto-mount the shared folder,

gksudo gedit /etc/fstab

Then add the following line:-

mydata /mnt/mydata vboxsf defaults 0 0