19Oct/085
VirtualBox: Multiple Users Sharing One Virtual Machine (Guest OS)
Today I needed to allow multiple user accounts in Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy) to access one virtual machine, a guest installation of XP (using Virtualbox). Here are the steps necessary:
- Move the hidden .Virtualbox folder from your user folder to somewhere more accessible, for example /home/.VirtualBox
- Change the Group for the .VirtualBox folder to vboxusers and set Read and Write permissions (do this for all included files and folders)
- Then paste this command (modify it to suit your folder locations and names) in to the terminal:
ln -s /home/.VirtualBox ~/.VirtualBox - Add all the users that will be using Virtualbox to the vboxusers Group
- Reboot (important)
Once you have done this, log in to each of your user accounts in Ubuntu and run through the VirtualBox set up procedure but always point to the same .vdi file that you placed in /home/.VirtualBox
You should now be able to access the same guest OS from any Ubuntu user account on the same machine.
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December 20th, 2008 - 09:53
Thanks for this steps. I walked the path and am installing windowsxp now, in the hopefully shared virtual machine.
I?l let you know if it worked.
December 20th, 2008 - 11:02
It worked! Though I can’t mount images or cddrom-drives in the second userprofile, I can in the first and that’s good for me. Many Thanks!
By the way, using openSuse 11.1, freshly installed yesterday.
December 21st, 2008 - 14:29
Hi Andrewk,
I am glad to hear it worked. Not sure why you cannot mount images in the your second user profile, I have not encountered such an issue.
October 3rd, 2009 - 19:11
Good stuff… one correction… the directory for virtualbox is .VirtualBox (notice the caps).
Glenn
October 4th, 2009 - 10:20
Thank you for the correction Glenn, I had edited the post to reflect this.