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tonnz

Member

Registered: 2015-08-02

Posts: 38

Common Virtualbox shared folder hang/bug - has anyone found a fix?

Hello!

There's apparently a recurring bug in Virtualbox, that affects shared folders and sometimes even USB drives forwarded
to the guest OS. In a nutshell, when doing writes or reads to the shared folder / USB drive, it will eventually get stuck,
the guest OS will remain connected to the drive, but it is not possible to read from or write to the medium.

tl;dr : Does anyone know a permanent fix?
Long version:

I have found several other people having the same issue, with different guest OSs, some of these issues are as old as 6 years:
https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=35930
http://superuser.com/questions/666646/v … n-guest-os
https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2181408
http://askubuntu.com/questions/490663/m … ders-hangs

This happens with or without the Extension Pack, with or without custom kernels + dkms, on several host linux distros, with several guest OSs.

Some people suggest using USB drives to transfer file between Host and Guest instead.
- Works for some people, not for everyone. For me, USB drives are affected by the same problem.
Some people suggest generic "fixes", like reinstalling Guest Additions (if present) or rebooting.
- No, works wonders for a few people, but as expected, doesn't change much for others.

I experienced this bug in every VM so far: Win7, Arch, and even the Clonezilla ISO (when forwarding a USB drive to guest) is affected.

My workaround:
Tediously share folders from my Host OS over Samba, and connect to the share using the Guest OS's own capabilities;
not using Virtualbox's share/usb forwarding features at all.

What strikes me the most is, not everyone is having this issue !
That would suggest that that there's an issue with the setup, kernel incompatibility or something similar.
But i have not found any working solution (not counting workarounds)!

Has anyone here encountered similar problems, and more importantly - does anyone know a decent, permanent solution?

Last edited by tonnz (2016-08-30 10:15:53)