Oracle VM VirtualBox provides the option to mount shared folders automatically. When automatic mounting is enabled for a shared folder, the Guest Additions service will mount it for you automatically. For Windows or OS/2, a preferred drive letter can also be specified. For Linux or Oracle Solaris, a mount point directory can also be specified.

If a drive letter or mount point is not specified, or is in use already, an alternative location is found by the Guest Additions service. The service searches for an alternative location depending on the guest OS, as follows:

• Windows and OS/2 guests. Search for a free drive letter, starting at Z:. If all drive letters are assigned, the folder is not mounted.

• Linux and Oracle Solaris guests. Folders are mounted under the /media directory. The folder name is normalized (no spaces, slashes or colons) and is prefixed with sf_.

  For example, if you have a shared folder called myfiles, it will appear as /media/sf_myfiles in the guest.

  The guest properties /VirtualBox/GuestAdd/SharedFolders/MountDir and the more generic /VirtualBox/GuestAdd/SharedFolders/MountPrefix can be used to override the automatic mount directory and prefix. See .

Access to an automatically mounted shared folder is granted to everyone in a Windows guest, including the guest user. For Linux and Oracle Solaris guests, access is restricted to members of the group vboxsf and the root user.