Files in shared folder cannot be moved to trash in guest

[gbartlett]

Host: Windows 7 (with all updates) Guest: XUbuntu 14.04.1 (with all updates)

I have a shared folder set up and working. I can copy files into my shared folder from either host or guest, and see/use/edit them in the other. I can permanently delete them from both sides, and in the Windows host I can move them to the recycle bin.

However the XUbuntu guest is unable to move files from the shared folder to trash. When I try, XUbuntu comes up with a dialog "Unable to find or create wastebasket directory". Moving files in other directories to trash works OK though.

[gbartlett]

Correction: I'm running VirtualBox v4.3.20.

[Frank Mehnert]

That's not a bug. The shared folder implements only a limited set of features. The trash directory is a guest-specific folder where the trashed files are stored. I guess the same would happen if you would map an NFS directory and try to move a file from this NFS mount to the trash.

[gbartlett]

I disagree. The trash directory is *NOT* guest-specific.

Or to be more accurate, it could be in different locations for different guests, but in an entirely predictable way, as defined by the FreeDesktop standard.

​http://standards.freedesktop.org/basedir-spec/basedir-spec-0.6.html ​http://standards.freedesktop.org/trash-spec/trashspec-0.8.html

XUbuntu complies with that. If VirtualBox is not correctly meeting the FreeDesktop standard, that's got to be a bug.

One thing you may be hitting though is that XUbuntu does not define $XDG_DATA_HOME. By the standard, applications should look for $HOME/.local/share in that case. If VirtualBox isn't doing that correctly (or if it's missed it in this specific situation), it would cause exactly this problem when it tries moving the file to "/Trash/files" (which doesn't exist) instead of to "$HOME/.local/share/Trash/files" (which does).

[Frank Mehnert]

Again, please consider the VirtualBox shared folder as a remote service. VirtualBox provides a kernel driver which allows the guest to access host folders if they would be part of the guest file system. VirtualBox is not responsible for setting up any trash directory.