VirtualBox Shared Folder Fedora 18 Guest on OSX Host

In todays article we are going to review the steps required to share folders between two Operating Systems running VirtualBox (VB) on the same machine.

First what is VirtualBox?
VirtualBox (VB)is a very useful desktop virtualization tool from (previously) Sun Microsystems (and now Oracle).
To download VB you can go to https://www.virtualbox.org/ .

In our setup the Host OS is OSX 10.8 and the guest OS (running inside VB) is Fedora 18. Both are 64Bit OS in our case.

[[Note: The article assumes that you have a similar setup and that you have already installed VB and Fedora guest on top of the OSX host. If not, then for installation steps, go here for a text tutorial or here for a video tutorial before proceeding further.]]

We have a folder on our host (OSX) Desktop called 'documents' that we want to access from within the Fedora guest at a mount point directory called '/home/mrinal/doc_osx'

The first thing we need to do is to define the shared folder.
For that click the 'Devices' menu on the top of the VB window, and then click 'Shared Folders...'
This opens a popup where you define the host folder to share (in our case called documents) and the path for the same.

The next thing to do is to install the VBGuest Additions to the Guest OS (Fedora 18).
This is because the default installation of VB doesnt come with the necessary modules for sharing folders, mouse integration, display integration etc.

So, to do that open a terminal window on your Fedora guest and su - to root
$ su -
password:
#  yum install dkms binutils gcc make patch libgomp glibc-headers glibc-devel kernel-headers kernel-devel

This downloads and installs the necessary kernel modules and mounts the iso for the guest addition
In my case, the  Guest Additions were mounted under this path by default:


/run/media/mrinal/VBOXADDITIONS_4.2.6_82870/   

[[Note:  you should be able to see it in the output of mount / df -Th 
Also, the correct version of VBox Additional modules for Fedora 18 is 4.2.6.xyz ]]

So I went in that directory,
[root@fedora18 ~]# cd /run/media/mrinal/VBOXADDITIONS_4.2.6_82870/

And ran the shell script to install the Guest Additions as follows:

[root@fedora18 VBOXADDITIONS_4.2.6_82870]# ./VBoxLinuxAdditions.run 
Verifying archive integrity... All good.
Uncompressing VirtualBox 4.2.6 Guest Additions for Linux..........
VirtualBox Guest Additions installer
Removing installed version 4.2.6 of VirtualBox Guest Additions...
Removing existing VirtualBox DKMS kernel modules           [  OK  ]
Removing existing VirtualBox non-DKMS kernel modules       [  OK  ]
Building the VirtualBox Guest Additions kernel modules     [  OK  ]
Doing non-kernel setup of the Guest Additions              [  OK  ]
Starting the VirtualBox Guest Additions                    [  OK  ]
Installing the Window System drivers
Installing X.Org Server 1.13 modules                       [  OK  ]
Setting up the Window System to use the Guest Additions    [  OK  ]
You may need to restart the hal service and the Window System (or just restart
the guest system) to enable the Guest Additions.

Installing graphics libraries and desktop services componen[  OK  ]
[root@fedora18 VBOXADDITIONS_4.2.6_82870]# 

[[Ensure you didnt receive any errors or 'FAILED' status messages, if you do, then look at the log files under /var/log directory. The log file is vboxadd-install.log]]

Assuming all went well so far, now the only thing remaining to do is to mount the shared folder on your guest.
You can do that only as root (or sudo)

[[As Root]]
[root@fedora18 ~]# mount -t vboxsf -o rw documents /home/mrinal/doc_osx

[[As regular user mrinal via sudo]]
[mrinal@fedora18 ~]$ sudo mount -t vboxsf -o rw,uid=1000 documents /home/mrinal/doc_osx

Also:
Not recommended to automount in /etc/fstab as it hangs the guest at boot.
So if you reboot, you need to mount the share manually again. Perhaps you can automate via an init script in /etc/init.d directory.

Anyway, hope you found this article useful...

OEM vs ODM Explained..

Many have asked this question - What is the difference between an OEM and an ODM?

So here it is in a compact form

OEM and ODM are terms that we come across in the design and manufacturing industry and people remain unsure of the difference between both terms as they appear to be similar. These are in fact categorization for the manufacturing companies and the resellers. This article will help the readers in differentiating these terms by finding more about their functions and responsibilities.

OEM
Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) is a company which produces a product according to parameters given by another company. The product is sold to the company which gave order and then it is sold under a trade name given by the purchaser. OEM has the facilities to manufacture products, but it is not involved in Research and Development and manufactures products according to the specifications of the company which places the order.
Examples will be Quanta, FoxConn, Compal.

ODM
ODM is Original Design Manufacturer which refers to a company which conceives and manufactures the product. It sells the product then to another company which sells it under the own trade name. An ODM company can begin only if it knows the concept and the function of the product and it has the facility for research and development.
Examples will be Asus, Acer, Dell.

Now it is clear that an ODM company is the one which designs and manufactures products according to the ideas conceived by them, while the OEM Company works like a businessman who accomplishes the specifications of design given by another company. As ODM companies make their own products, they have of course more negotiating power and are able to ask for more prices than OEM companies.
An advantage which OEM gives to the business owner is that they get the ownership of a brand without setting up infrastructure for production because they get finished products from manufacturers. ODM is innovative and is involved in R and D and this is why they need to wait to get profits until their products are approved by industry and bought by the interested parties.