Windows issue with symlinks in VBox shared folders

Question

I have an Ubuntu 17 VM on Virtual Box, and my host OS is windows 8.1. I created a shared folder between host and guest OS.

Now, because windows doesn't support symlinks, this prevents me from putting any symlinks in the shared folder. Unfortunately, I need to put a react project in the shared folder and the project contains symlinks in the node-modules sub-folder. How can I solve the problem ? can I put symlinks and tell windows somehow to ignore them or prevent ubuntu from sharing them?

Answer 1

In fact, Windows file system supports symlinks but with 2 restrictions:

1. Is disabled by default.
2. Is available only if you have administrative privileges

I use it with Vagrant on Windows 7 and Windows 10.

First you must enable symlinks feature in your VM like this:

VBoxManage setextradata MACHINE_NAME VBoxInternal2/SharedFoldersEnableSymlinksCreate/SHARE_NAME 1

Where MACHINE_NAME is the virtual box guest machine name and SHARE_NAME is the share name inside the box config. If you use Vagrant you can add this to Vagrantfile:

config.vm.provider :virtualbox do |vm|
    vm.customize ["setextradata", :id, "VBoxInternal2/SharedFoldersEnableSymlinksCreate/SHARE_NAME", "1"]
end

Next, you need to enable symlinks in Windows host machine:

1. Open Start > Windows Administrative Tools > Local Security Policy
2. Go to Local Policies/User Rights Assignment in tree view.
3. Add user name or user groups you belongs to, to entry Create symbolic links.
4. Restart.