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Easiest way to enable a firefox snap running on Ubuntu inside a VirtualBox guest to access an auto-mounted shared folder of the host?

cl flag

My setup:

  • Windows 10 host OS
  • Ubuntu 22.04.1 guest OS running inside VirtualBox 7.0.4
  • Several shared host folders auto-mounted on the guest in folder $HOME/Public
  • Firefox installed as snap inside the Ubuntu guest OS

Full read/write access to files inside the shared folders works for non-snap applications. Firefox, however, is unable to read/write files in the shared folders. I would like to enable this.

A solution exists for accessing files from other file systems when mounted as removable media in /media and /mnt: How to access files outside of /home in snap apps?

Another solution describes the use of the --bind option to mount, which allows mounting a file system under one of the accessible directories such as /home, /media or /mnt: How to give snaps access to /somedir

My use case differs from the above in that I use the shared folder functionality provided by VirtualBox to auto-mount several host OS folders inside $HOME/Public. This auto-mount functionality does not permit (as far as I can tell) the specification of mount options, specifically the --bind option that would probably solve my problem.

In case it's of interest, here are the relevant few lines from the output of snap connections firefox:

Interface                 Plug                            Slot                             Notes
home                      firefox:home                    :home                            -
personal-files            firefox:dot-mozilla-firefox     :personal-files                  -
removable-media           firefox:removable-media         :removable-media                 -

What is the best way to enable the Firefox snap to access my shared folders without going through extreme contortions?

mangohost

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