Using VMWare Fusion shared folders with a Linux guest

VMWare Fusion has a “shared folders” feature which allows you to seamlessly share folders on the host Mac system with the virtualised guest OS. With a Linux guest, vmware-tools will install the “Host-Guest File System” (hgfs) driver and add an entry to /etc/fstab to automagically mount all shared folders under /mnt/hgfs.

This is great, but unless your user id in the Linux guest happens to match your user id OS X, you will not be able to access the mounted directories as a regular user. Luckily, you can get the hgfs driver to mount the shared folders as your user. Edit /etc/fstab as root:

$ sudo vi /etc/fstab

and look for a section like:

# Beginning of the block added by the VMware software
.host:/ /mnt/hgfs vmhgfs defaults,ttl=5 0 0
# End of the block added by the VMware software

Add options for uid and gid:

# Beginning of the block added by the VMware software
.host:/ /mnt/hgfs vmhgfs defaults,ttl=5,uid=1000,gid=1000 0 0
# End of the block added by the VMware software

The values I’ve used, 1000 for uid and gid, are the defaults for the first user created on an Ubuntu desktop install. To find the correct values for your user, run the id command in the guest OS:

$ id
uid=1000(mrowe) gid=1000(mrowe) groups=...