I manage a handful of small websites and have recently switched from Windows to Mint. I was using PortableApps to keep the sites separated, and for the moment want to do the same. I’ve set up VirtualBox with a cut down Windows 10 installation, and added the root folder of the websites as a shared folder, so Websites/Site1, Websites/Site2 etc. The root folder is still on an NTFS drive.

So far, everything works, except I can’t run the PortableApps suite from the shared folder in VirtualBox. PortableApps runs and updates, but the apps don’t work properly. Thunderbird is ok but has random glitches, Firefox launches but sites don’t load, and Chrome instantly closes. If I copy the folder for the individual site into the virtual machine though, it works perfectly.

I’m assuming that it’s a permissions problem, as the NTFS drive is owned by me but is in the root group, but copying the files to the virtual machine copies them to the vboxuser group, which I’m a member of. The fstab entry for the drive is:

UUID=BAB4BFE2B4BF9EF7 /mnt/Storage ntfs defaults,uid=tippon 0 2

but from what I can gather, it should have my UID and GID instead. The examples and questions I’ve found online have some extra details at the end with no explanation though, like dmask=022, fmask=133, and I don’t want to risk editing my fstab without understanding them.

So, to finally get to the question, if I replace uid=tippon with uid=1000,gid=1000 (my user and group), would that let me access the files from within VirtualBox, as well as whichever other programs I might want to use, and would it break anything?

  • Tippon@lemmy.dbzer0.comOPEnglish
    1·
    21 days ago

    Thanks for replying :)

    I think there’s some confusion though, none of the sites are hosted locally, PortableApps just lets me use a separate browser and email client for each website, effectively sandboxed from each other so that there’s no chance of accidentally editing the wrong site or posting from the wrong account. Each PortableApps instance has its own set of logins and bookmarks etc. to manage one website and the associated emails.

    I essentially just want to run a program in a Windows 10 VM that’s stored on the Linux host but on an NTFS drive. As far as I can tell, the permissions on the NTFS drive are interfering with that, as the files are in the root group on Mint, whereas I’m in the tippon and vboxuser groups. I’m not sure how to change that without risking breaking something, but the way the NTFS drive is mounted through fstab seems to be the answer.

    I think that changing fstab so that the drive is mounted under my user and group will fix it, but I don’t know how that will affect anything else on the drive, or any Linux programs that access those files. I’m stuck with NTFS for now as I occasionally need to dual boot, and need these programs available while I’m in Windows too.

    Ideally I’m going to move away from using PortableApps to manage the sites, but I haven’t found a better way yet.