Virtual box shared folder access denied Fixed

I was looking to add shared folders to my Fedora VM but during mounting them there was an error. The error “access denied” appeared each time I attempted to mount the volume. This post explains why this happens and what you can do to fix it.

Fixing “Access Denied” when mounting the folder

I found out that this problem occurs when you don’t have rights to use the VirtualBox shared folders service. This is because the only users allowed to mount shared folders are those in the vboxsf group.

To fix this I can use usermod to add a new group to my user.

usermod -aG vboxsf chewett

Above I am using usermod to add a new group to the user. This adds the group vboxsf to the user chewett.

Once the new group has been added you need to reload the groups for that user. This can easily be done by logging out of Linux and logging back in. This will reload the group with the new permissions.

What if that didn’t work?

The most common cause of this not working is forgetting to reload the permissions by logging out and back in. If that doesn’t work I recommend restarting your computer. This should force the permissions to be reloaded.

I have written a little bit more describing how to a user to a Linux group that might also be helpful to read if you want to learn more about adding groups.