Unable to Access Network Shared Folder From One Direction

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Old-School-BBSer
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Unable to Access Network Shared Folder From One Direction

Post by Old-School-BBSer »

Greetings once again friends,

While my VirtualBox/Mountain Lion/SheepShaver installation continues to work great, I am having a related issue.

Earlier today I discovered a problem with accessing one of my network shared folders. This particular folder resides inside Mountain Lion, which itself, as some of you will already know, runs as a VM inside of VirtualBox. Being as Mountain Lion is a guest system running inside of VirtualBox, it is treated as another volume by El Capitan on my machine, even though both VirtualBox and Mountain Lion run on this same machine.

Sometimes the shared folder works without a problem, and sometimes it doesn't. When it doesn't work, the on-screen error message I receive is the following:

"The operation can’t be completed because the original item for “[Shared Folder Name Here]” can’t be found."

What is odd about this is that if I click on the "Network" option under the "Go" menu on the El Capitan side, the network volume -- meaning Mountain Lion -- mounts in the Finder just fine, and I see the shared folder listed underneath it. However, whenever I double-click the shared folder in order to mount it on my desktop -- as it usually does -- that is when I receive the on-screen error message noted above.

Sometimes, all I have to do in order to correct this problem, is to remove the aforementioned shared folder from the list in the "Shared" preferences pane on the Mountain Lion side, close the "Systems Preferences" app, open "System Preferences" again, go to the "Shared" preferences pane again, and re-add the same shared folder.

This has worked until now. However, today I discovered that no matter how many times I remove and re-add the shared folder to Mountain Lion's shared folders list, I still keep getting the same error message, even though I can plainly see the shared folder in the list under "Mountain Lion" when I use "Go/Network" on the El Capitan side.

So this time I went even further. I shut down my Mountain Lion virtual machine, and I shut down VirtualBox as well. I then relaunched VirtualBox and started the ML VM again. Still no dice!

So, I really went to the extreme this time, and shut down every app on my computer, and then shut down my computer as well. I chose "Shut Down . . ." -- and not "Restart" so that I could get a cold start, in case my network had somehow become confused.

Despite doing all of that, and then relaunching VirtualBox and starting my Mountain Lion virtual machine again, the problem is STILL not resolved. Now I am getting this on-screen error message:

"The operation can’t be completed."

"An unexpected error occurred (error code 0)."

To make matters worse, in the latest episode of this bizarre behavior which began a few hours ago, while my network shared volume still mounts in the Finder when I use "Go/Network" under El Capitan, when I use the shared volume's disclosure triangle, the shared folder is no longer even being listed. Nothing appears under the "Mountain Lion" shared volume icon.

So, now I have gone into Mountain Lion, removed the shared folder from the list in the "Shared" preferences pane -- as before -- physically deleted the shared folder, made a new one, even giving it a new name, and re-added it to the shared folders list in Mountain Lion, and still nothing. It still refuses to show up under my network shared volume when I use "Go/Network" on the El Capitan side.

Here is the weird thing. From my Mountain Lion VM, I can access the shared folder which I set up in El Capitan without a problem; yet from the El Capitan side, I cannot access the shared folder that I set up in Mountain Lion.

So what gives here?

It is not a permissions issue, because I have both read and write permission for the shared folder that is on the Mountain Lion side, just as I do on the El Capitan side.

I should also note that I also temporarily turned off Little Snitch's network filter -- which did not help -- and I also restarted my wi-fi router, which also did not help.

I have run out of ideas. I don't know why it was working just fine until a day or two ago, and now it is not.

Any ideas what is causing this to occur?

Thanks in advance.

UPDATE #1:

Oh gosh . . . can things get any worse? Now I know that something is seriously wrong somewhere, and I don't even know how it happened! Have I been hacked?

Aside from the fact that I cannot access my network shared folder that I set up in Mountain Lion, I just discovered something new which has totally brought down my Hermes II BBS and my Hotline server.

• Whenever I click on my shell script in the Dock in order to start SheepShaver, I get the following in the Terminal:

can't open /private/etc/sudoers: Permission denied
sudo: no valid sudoers sources found, quitting


• Likewise, if I run "sudo ifconfig bridge0 destroy", I get the very same results as above.

So aside from the network shared folder issue, I can't even launch SheepShaver now.

• But that is not all. I thought, "Okay, I will run 'Repair Permissions' in Mountain Lion and see if that fixes it." No dice. Repair Permissions starts out fine, goes up to 3 minutes, then drops to about 1 minute, and about a minute later, the entire Mountain Lion setup freezes up -- including the system clock in the menubar -- and I am forced to use VirtualBox to do a Power Off of the entire VM.

What in the world is going on here?

UPDATE #2:

Well, after conducting some online research, I have been able to restore the "sudo" Terminal command.

It involved temporarily enabling the "root" user under Mountain Lion -- you will find instructions on the Apple website for doing this -- and then typing the following commands in the Terminal, as "root" user:

su [type your root password when prompted]
chmod g+x /
chmod g+x /private
chmod g+x /private/etc


Please note that the last two commands above may or may not be necessary. I typed them just to be safe, and to possibly save myself a step.

So now I can run SheepShaver, my BBS and my Hotline server again.

However, I STILL cannot access my networked shared folder on Mountain Lion from El Capitan, but I can access my network shared folder on El Capitan from Mountain Lion.

This one-way traffic is for the birds.

If anyone has a possible solution to this dilemma, I'd love to hear it.

Thanks again!
Bill Kochman
Armageddon BBS
Guam, Mariana Islands, USA
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adespoton
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Re: Unable to Access Network Shared Folder From One Directio

Post by adespoton »

That sounds really crazy. I don't think that I can help you with the shared folder under Mt Lion, but you can make a folder read/write under El Cap for easy two-way file transfers.

It doesn't sound like you've been hacked, just like you've got some file system issues.
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Old-School-BBSer
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Re: Unable to Access Network Shared Folder From One Directio

Post by Old-School-BBSer »

adespoton wrote:That sounds really crazy. I don't think that I can help you with the shared folder under Mt Lion, but you can make a folder read/write under El Cap for easy two-way file transfers.

It doesn't sound like you've been hacked, just like you've got some file system issues.
I am not absolutely certain, but I have begun to suspect that part of the problem is that for some reason, Mountain Lion is not updating/refreshing something somewhere, which is resulting in El Capitan throwing me the aforementioned error messages.

To test this theory, I created a new networked shared folder in the same location as my original shared folder, but I gave this new shared folder a different name. Next, I deleted the original shared folder from Mountain Lion's shared folders list in the "Sharing" prefs pane. Next, I moved all of the contents of the original shared folder into the new shared folder. Finally, I added the new shared folder -- which has a different name, mind you -- to Mountain Lion's shared folders list.

After all of that was done, I went to my El Capitan side, used the "Go/Network" option, and guess what happened?

Mountain Lion's shared volume icon appeared as usual, and after a few minutes, a shared folder bearing the name of the original shared folder -- which I had already deleted -- appeared under it. The newly-created shared folder with a different name did NOT appear. Well, actually, it did appear . . . after I had rebooted both my machine, as well as my wi-fi router.

So two issues:

1. it is taking a long time -- at least a few minutes -- before a shared folder appears under the shared volume icon.

2. Mountain Lion is not quickly refreshing something somewhere, and I don't know how to get it to do that, so that it displays the current shared folder.

That's all I can tell you for now. Other than that, everything continues to work fine.
Bill Kochman
Armageddon BBS
Guam, Mariana Islands, USA
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