Guest Additions shared folders broken with 5.1.20 on RHEL 7

[cknz]

Blogged at ​http://distracted-it.blogspot.co.nz/2017/04/virtualbox-5120-bug-with-shared-folders.html

After installing GA for 5.1.20, shared folders no longer mount:

# mount host_home mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on host_home,

missing codepage or helper program, or other error

In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try dmesg | tail or so.

# dmesg | tail ... [ 334.616717] vboxsf: Successfully loaded version 5.1.20 (interface 0x00010004) [ 343.413650] sf_read_super_aux err=-22

Looking around the problem is caused by a broken symlink to mount.vboxsf

# updatedb

# locate mount.vbox /opt/VBoxGuestAdditions-5.1.20/lib/VBoxGuestAdditions/mount.vboxsf /usr/sbin/mount.vboxsf

# ls -l /usr/sbin/mount.vboxsf lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 49 Apr 26 10:04 /usr/sbin/mount.vboxsf

-> /opt/VBoxGuestAdditions-5.1.20/other/mount.vboxsf

Aha, it seems that mount.vboxsf is a broken link; the following are not the same:

/opt/VBoxGuestAdditions-5.1.20/lib/VBoxGuestAdditions/mount.vboxsf <--- available /opt/VBoxGuestAdditions-5.1.20/other/mount.vboxsf <--- pointed at

Bit of a quicky fix:

# rm -f /usr/sbin/mount.vboxsf

# ln -s /opt/VBoxGuestAdditions-5.1.20/lib/VBoxGuestAdditions/mount.vboxsf \

/usr/sbin/mount.vboxsf

# ls -l /usr/sbin/mount.vboxsf lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 66 Apr 26 10:16 /usr/sbin/mount.vboxsf

-> /opt/VBoxGuestAdditions-5.1.20/lib/VBoxGuestAdditions/mount.vboxsf

Moment of truth:

# mount host_home

$ mount ... host_home on /home/ckerr/host_home type vboxsf (rw,nodev,relatime)