hgfs - VMware Host/Guest File System server mount -t hgfs [-r] [-o options] none mountpoint The Host/Guest File System (HGFS) server allows one to mount VMware Shared Folders as a file system. This makes it possible to access selected portions of the VMware host file system when MINIX is run as a VMware guest.

The above mount command will mount the hgfs file system onto the directory mountpoint. The -r mount option makes the file system read-only; note that shared folders may independently have been configured as read-only on the VMware host. The options field is a string consisting of comma-delimited key or key=value options. The following options are supported.

4 prefix=path This option sets a path prefix that will be prepended to all file system operations on the host system. When mounted without a prefix (the default), the root directory of an HGFS mount will contain all the names of the available shares. The prefix option can be used to mount one of those shares, by specifying its name as the prefix. Multi-component path prefixes are supported as well.

uid=number This sets the user ID used for all the files and directories in the file system, allowing a non-root user to be the owner. The value must be specified as a decimal number. The default is root (the number 0).

gid=number Likewise, sets the group ID for all files and directories. The default is operator (the number 0).

fmask=number This option sets the file permission mask of regular files. It is specified as an octal number. For example, a value of 600 makes all files readable and writable by the owning user (see the "uid" option). The default is 755.

dmask=number Likewise, sets the file permission mask of directories. The default is also 755.

icase This option tells HGFS to treat names as case-insensitive.

noicase This option, set by default, reverts the effect of an earlier specified "icase" option.

20 mount -t hgfs none /mnt # Mount the entire shared folders tree on /mnt

20 mount -t hgfs -o prefix=shared,uid=20,fmask=644,icase none /usr/shared # Mount the "shared" shared folder on /usr/shared

HGFS uses the first and original version of the VMware Shared Folders protocol to talk to the VMware host. That means that HGFS should work with all VMware products that support shared folders. However, this also imposes a number of limitations. For example, the first version of the protocol supports only regular files and directories (and not links), and does not have support for automatic case sensitivity handling.

Some file system operations may not behave as expected, because the behavior of HGFS is determined largely by the host. Other file system operations (in particular, using directories as mountpoints) are not implemented, because the file system structure as perceived by HGFS may change arbitrarily at any time, due to modifications on the host side.

mount (1), vbfs (8) David van Moolenbroek <dcvmoole@cs.vu.nl>