If you have a folder in the same directory as your mount directory that
has the same name as the VirtualBox shared folder name you will get a
'mounting failed with the error: Protocol error' error. Here's a
transcript that illustrates the problem -- the first mount works fine,
but the second (after creating a directory with the same name as the
shared folder) fails:
$ ls -l
total 4
drwxr-xr-x 2 srackham srackham 4096 2008-09-18 17:10 shared
$ sudo mount -t vboxsf -o uid=srackham,gid=srackham host shared/
$ mount -t vboxsf
host on shared/ type vboxsf (uid=1001,gid=1001,rw)
$ sudo umount shared/
$ mkdir host
$ ls -l
total 4
drwxr-xr-x 2 srackham srackham 4096 2008-09-18 17:14 host
drwxrwxrwx 1 srackham srackham 0 2008-09-18 10:16 shared
$ sudo mount -t vboxsf -o uid=srackham,gid=srackham host shared/
/sbin/mount.vboxsf: mounting failed with the error: Protocol error
I don't know if this is the right place for unsolicited praise but
a big thank you to everyone involved for this absolutely amazing piece
of software.
