Sharing files between Windows7 host and Debian guest with VirtualBox —01 January 2013

With VirtualBox it is very easy to share files between the host and guest systems by using shared folders. In a Windows7 host and a freshly installed Debian guest I only needed a few steps:

• In the guest’s settings added a shared folder named “shared” and ticked the “auto-mount” box.
• In the guest: apt-get install linux-headers-486
• Reboot the guest

After reboot, the shared folder was visible at the path /media/sf_shared

The documentation mentions many more steps, I guess they may be necessary in other hosts or guests.