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Trouble with shared folders in Ubuntu 8.10  
  

Trouble with shared folders in Ubuntu 8.10

Nov 15, 2008, 01:30 AM
#1  

schwartz
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Posts: 51
Trouble with shared folders in Ubuntu 8.10
I can't seem to get shared folders to work in Ubuntu 8.10. I can see the folders in /media/psf. they appear to be owned by me and the permissions are open so I should be able to cd into them but i get a permission denied message

I can even use chmod on the folders from within the vm on the folder and it makes the change to the folder in both the vm and the Mac host as it should.

I've tried removing and re installing the parallels tools a few times with no luck either.

Looking for tips to get this working.

thanks,
Bill
Nov 20, 2008, 08:46 PM
#2  

bryankate
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Join: Nov 2008
Posts: 1
I have the same problem on Fedora 9. When I try to ls in /media/psf/Home I get a permission denied error. The folder on the Mac has 755 permissions and it is accessible via root in the guest.

Any ideas on how to get this to work for regular users?
Nov 23, 2008, 02:14 AM
#3  

schwartz
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Posts: 51
Has anyone found a solution to this?


Would really like to get my Ubuntu session working.

thanks,
Bill
Nov 24, 2008, 08:50 PM
#4  

smarks
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Join: May 2007
Posts: 1
I'm on Parallels 4 build 3540 and Ubuntu 8.10, and I have this problem too. And so do the posters in another recent thread here:

http://forum.parallels.com/showthread.php?t=31213

Unfortunately the workaround mentioned in that thread didn't work for me. I saw another tip (not in the Parallels forums, but somewhere else on the internets, maybe in an Ubuntu forum) that said to change the last entry in /etc/fstab from this:

none /media/psf prl_fs defaults,share 0 0

to this:

disk0s3 /media/psf prl_fs defaults,share 0 0

This didn't really work for me either, but it did cause the icon for psf to show up on the desktop. (In practice I found that the first word on the line could be anything and it would have this effect.) But it wouldn't let me access files.

Strangely, it would get the sizes of the directories right. If I did an "ls -l" on a known good pathname to a file, it would actually give the proper listing for that file. However, I could never get a directory listing to work, nor could I ever get the contents of any file (e.g. by running "cat" on a known public-readable file).

I've gone back to Ubuntu 8.04 where the folder sharing seems to work just fine.

If you really want to stick with 8.10 you might try the NFS-mount hack I used to use in Parallels 3. Basically you enable NFS service on your host Mac, and then add some entries to NFS-mount those filesystems in your guest. It's a bit tricky but not too bad, if I recall. You have to add the file /etc/exports on the host Mac (and then reboot, or start nfsd manually). Then you have to run the portmapper and add the NFS mounts in your guest, e.g. by editing entries into /etc/fstab. I haven't tried this in Parallels 4 + Ubuntu 8.xx, but this used to work great in Parallels 3 and Ubuntu 7.04 which I used to run.

Seems like a step backwards compared to the shared folder stuff though.
Nov 25, 2008, 07:42 PM
#5  

mbelov
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Join: Oct 2008
Posts: 8
schwartz, smarks, bryankate
Please create e-mail support tickets with the problem description here: https://www.parallels.com/support/desktop/
Dec 11, 2008, 07:39 PM
#6  

dtw
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Join: Nov 2007
Posts: 13
Hello

I am also having trouble with shared folders in Ubuntu 8.10 Desktop 64-bit edition.

I stopped the VM, went to configure -> shared folders, choose my folder, checked Enabled. I then restarted the VM. The little hand in the bottom right hand corner confirms the shared folder (check mark) and also Connect All is checked.

When I open a terminal and "ls /media/psf" the result is nothing. (There is no "/mnt/psf" directory).

Any suggestions for how to resolve this issue?

Thanks

dtw
Dec 13, 2008, 04:45 AM
#7  

dtw
Junior Member


Join: Nov 2007
Posts: 13
Hello

I noticed that:

sudo mount -a

produces the message:

mount: unknown filesystem type 'prl_fs'

I do have Parallels Tools installed and it appears to be working - for example automatic mouse capture. Anyone know how to get mount to recognise 'prl_fs'?

Thanks

dtw
Dec 14, 2008, 04:13 AM
#8  
John@Parallels's Avatar

John@Parallels
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Please submit report from Parallels Desktop - Help menu -selecting Report a Problem, and post here report ID
Dec 14, 2008, 05:21 AM
#9  

dtw
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Hello John

21816.

dtw
Dec 14, 2008, 11:28 PM
#10  
John@Parallels's Avatar

John@Parallels
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Quote:
Originally Posted by dtw View Post
Hello John

21816.

dtw
I submitted case to developers
Dec 19, 2008, 06:15 PM
#11  

elanvital
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Join: Dec 2008
Posts: 2
I discovered two things along this line:

1. Shared folders are accessible to the root user. So if you 'sudo -s' in a terminal, you can cd to folders in /media/psf

2. If you remove the word 'shared' from "defaults,shared" in the /etc/fstab entry, the folders become accessible to the user accounts without needing to use sudo.
Dec 19, 2008, 08:23 PM
#12  

elanvital
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I have to amend my last post a bit... removing 'shared' only gives users the ability to see the files, sudo still seems to be required to edit the files unless permissions are wide open in the mac filesystem.

A way around that aspect is to add the word 'users' after 'default' in the /etc/fstab.

This gives a user account the ability to mount and unmount the filesystem. So, where the system is unmounted (or unmount it ahead of time), and then using a terminal of the desired user, issue the command:

mount /media/psf

And this will mount the filesystem as the user and give that user the ability to edit the files.
Dec 28, 2008, 04:02 PM
#13  
John@Parallels's Avatar

John@Parallels
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top dtw

mount: unknown filesystem type 'prl_fs'

this message means that prl_fs driver is not loaded,
please check it via 'lsmod' command on host.

If driver is not loaded -- try to load it.

I suppose that guest kernel was updated.
In this case all kernel drivers should be re-build too.
Dec 29, 2008, 12:00 AM
#14  

dtw
Junior Member


Join: Nov 2007
Posts: 13
Hi John

'lsmod' does not list 'prl_fs'.

'modprobe prl_fs' returns 'FATAL: module prl_fs not found.'

Can you recompile prl_fs for us?

dtw
Dec 29, 2008, 01:48 AM
#15  
John@Parallels's Avatar

John@Parallels
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You need to reinstall Parallels Tools, it will recompile the drive
We cannot, as every kernel update will require this
Dec 29, 2008, 02:32 AM
#16  

dtw
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It works! Thanks for the help.

dtw
Jan 1, 2009, 04:31 AM
#17  

cvhyphus
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Posts: 2
Still Can't Access Subdirectories of /media/psf/
I checked for prl_fs being loaded after reading this thread, and found it to be loaded as it should have been. I reinstalled Parallels Tools, and had no change with the problem this thread addresses: I still cannot access subdirectories of /media/psf/ with an ordinary user account. I have no problem accessing it from root, however.

The permissions of my /media/psf looks like this:

drwxrwx--- .... 1 .. 4294967295 .... root ............... 306 2008-12-26 01:30 Ext. Shared
drwxr-x--x .... 1 .. root ............... root ................1156 2008-12-31 17:40 Home
drwxrwxr-x ... 1 .. 4294967295 .... 4294967295 .. 1394 2008-12-21 19:27 Host
dr-xrwx--- .... 1 .. 4294967295 .... root ................ 680 2008-12-24 13:49 Backup
drwxr-x--x .... 1 .. 4294967295 .... root ............... 340 2008-12-25 21:50 Users

The actual permission bits, except for Host and Backup, which are whole hard drives, are the same as the bits for the Mac OS X directories I'm trying to share. Ext. Shared and Users are both owned by root on Mac OS X (is root's uid 0xFFFFFFFF on Mac OS X instead of 0?), but Home is owned by an ordinary non-administrative user.

Am I the only one here still having a permissions problem?

In the course of trying to write this up I discovered another problem with Parallels Tools: my shared clipboard is not working between Ubuntu and Mac OS X! Mouse capture and release has been perfectly fine, however.

Thanks,
--Santhema

For the record, I'm using Parallels Desktop 4.0.3540 on Mac OS X 10.5.6 to run Ubuntu Linux 8.10, which I think is what everyone else here is using...
Jan 2, 2009, 03:51 PM
#18  

mfreidel
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Join: Dec 2008
Posts: 20
Quote:
Originally Posted by cvhyphus View Post
I checked for prl_fs being loaded after reading this thread, and found it to be loaded as it should have been. I reinstalled Parallels Tools, and had no change with the problem this thread addresses: I still cannot access subdirectories of /media/psf/ with an ordinary user account. I have no problem accessing it from root, however.

The permissions of my /media/psf looks like this:

drwxrwx--- .... 1 .. 4294967295 .... root ............... 306 2008-12-26 01:30 Ext. Shared
drwxr-x--x .... 1 .. root ............... root ................1156 2008-12-31 17:40 Home
drwxrwxr-x ... 1 .. 4294967295 .... 4294967295 .. 1394 2008-12-21 19:27 Host
dr-xrwx--- .... 1 .. 4294967295 .... root ................ 680 2008-12-24 13:49 Backup
drwxr-x--x .... 1 .. 4294967295 .... root ............... 340 2008-12-25 21:50 Users

The actual permission bits, except for Host and Backup, which are whole hard drives, are the same as the bits for the Mac OS X directories I'm trying to share. Ext. Shared and Users are both owned by root on Mac OS X (is root's uid 0xFFFFFFFF on Mac OS X instead of 0?), but Home is owned by an ordinary non-administrative user.

Am I the only one here still having a permissions problem?

In the course of trying to write this up I discovered another problem with Parallels Tools: my shared clipboard is not working between Ubuntu and Mac OS X! Mouse capture and release has been perfectly fine, however.

Thanks,
--Santhema

For the record, I'm using Parallels Desktop 4.0.3540 on Mac OS X 10.5.6 to run Ubuntu Linux 8.10, which I think is what everyone else here is using...
Here is what I had to do to get everything working in 8.10:

1. Modify /etc/fstab so that the "defaults,shared" says "defaults, users,uid-1000,gid=1000" (use your UID and your GID - mine are both 1000).

2. Make the name of the shared filed in the VM setup something without spaces and other characters (I made mine "Mac") - I note that it looks like you have at least one directory in there with a "dot" in the name which is usually a problem. Also get rid of spaces (two word directory names) for the initial directory that Linux will see. In my case, the path is now /media/psf/Mac

See if this works.

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Martin E. Freidel
Jan 5, 2009, 09:03 PM
#19  

mfreidel
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Build 3810
I note that the install of PTools from Build 3810 works perfectly and all of the shared directories come up without a problem.

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Martin E. Freidel


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