Virtualbox (was Re: visualbox)

[Lorenzo Taylor]

Laŭ Karl Auer:
# On the host, copy the files from the USB stick to the shared folder, and
# they will be visible to the XP guest on the mounted drive. Once set up,
# this works while the guest is running too.

Actually, setting up /media as a shared folder did the trick for me. No need to 
copy files. They just show up on m: where I set /media as a networked drive on 
the guest. For more fine-grained control of which folders under /media are 
shared, just share each one you want to see individually. But that takes a lot 
more work if a new drive with a different label is connected later. Sharing 
/media will automatically show anything that is added as long as it's visible to 
the host and mounted in /media.  For example, I have a disk labeled "flash. It 
shows up on the Ubuntu host as /media/flash. On the XP guest, it automatically 
gets mapped to m:\flash. If I then connect an SD card labeled SD, even while the 
guest OS is running, I can see /media/SD on XP as m:\SD. I need to hit f5 on 
Windows Explorer to see the new folder, but it does update once refreshed, or if 
I'm not already showing drive m:, m:\SD will be there as soon as I open it. I 
also share my home folder, which works the same way if files or folders are 
added or removed on the host rather than the guest system.

Note that sharing /media also solves the problem of having to unmount the drive 
on Ubuntu before connecting the USB device to XP, thereby preventing data loss 
in case of forgetting to unmount first, since AFAIK, VB doesn't actually unmount 
a volume before disconnecting it from the host OS so that it can be used by the 
guest.

HTH,
Lorenzo
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