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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.