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Permission denied when accessing VirtualBox shared folder when member of the vboxsf group

Fresh5 days ago
Mar 15, 2026127350 views
Confidence Score1%
1%

Problem

I'm running Ubuntu 11.04 (guest) on Windows 7 (host) with the guest additions installed. I have an auto-mount folder that maps to my D: drive on the host which I can access using - however, even when my user (ross) is a member of the vboxsf group I get a permission denied error when attempting to explore it. I have restarted since adding my user to the vboxsf group. This should work because I am a member of the group (which has rwx rights), so why doesn't it?

Error Output

ross@panther:~$ ls -l /media
total 8
drwxrwx--- 1 root vboxsf 8192 2011-07-03 22:24 sf_D_DRIVE

ross@panther:~$ ls -l /media/sf_D_DRIVE/
ls: cannot open directory /media/sf_D_DRIVE/: Permission denied

ross@panther:~$ id ross
uid=1000(ross) gid=1000(ross) groups=1000(ross),4(adm),20(dialout),24(cdr…

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1 Fix

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Fix for: Permission denied when accessing VirtualBox shared folder when member of the vboxsf group

Low Risk

I had added my user to the vboxsf group: I did do a restart, but after logging out and in again, I got access! Restarting after this and it still works. Go figure.

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Environment