Problem scenario: You have Oracle VirtualBox running on a Windows 7 computer as the host. You have a Linux CentOS guest supported by Oracle VirtualBox. You want to have a file share that does not rely on vboxsf. What do you do?
Solution
1. On the Windows host desktop, create a folder. For this example, we'll use "foobar" for the name.
2. Right click this new folder, go to "Properties" -> "Sharing" -> "Advanced Sharing..."
3. Check the box for "Share this folder" then click "OK"
4. Open a command prompt and run "ipconfig" to know the IP address.
5. Go to the Linux guest, install the Samba client (as root, run this command: yum -y install samba-client).
6. Run this command:
smbclient //192.168.1.1/foobar -U jdoe
# This assumes that "foobar" is the name of the folder created in step #1.
# This assumes 192.168.1.1 is the IP address found in step #4.
# This assumes jdoe is a username of the Windows host.
# Replace foobar, 192.168.1.1 and jdoe accordingly.
7. Enter the password for the jdoe user.
8. Now files you create in the folder in step #1 will be viewable in your Linux guest.
9. You are done. This "step" simply provides basic usage tips of the smb prompt. At the smb: prompt you can create directories that will appear on the Windows host. You can use get foo.txt to retrieve from the Windows host a file named foo.txt (assuming it is in the folder that was created in step #1). You can use put contint.txt to transfer a file named "contint.txt" from the Linux guest (assuming it exists in the directory you issued the command in step #6) to the Windows host (specifically to the folder that was created in step #1).