Applications installed within CrossOver in Virtual Box do not print

To summarize and recap the issue experienced by one of our advanced users:

Running a Linux installation in Virtualbox
Not keeping Crossover apps on main disk - there's not enough space.

In the virtual machine, I mounted a shared folder called cxoffice on my external disk to /home/username/.cxoffice using the command:

sudo mount -t vboxsf -o uid=1000,gid=1000 cxoffice/home/<username>/.cxoffice
Permissions are set to 777, but in Crossover, printers weren't detected, nor were fonts, and new bottles could not be easily created.

The Crossover issues */only/* occur when the external .cxoffice folder is mounted using Virtualbox (that is, type is vboxsf), and /not /when it is mounted in other ways.

I stumbled into the fact that there is no such problem if the folder is a mounted Truecrypt file. This is true even if the Truecrypt file is housed in a mounted vboxsf device! So, my kludgy workaround was to create a Truecrypt file in a folder on my external device, share that folder with the virtual machine as before, and then to mount the Truecrypt file as the .cxoffice folder in the virtual machine. Voila!

All works beautifully. Details follow, in case anyone else might need this workaround.

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On the host, mount the partition or drive which you will be using to house Crossover programs.

On the host, add the folder that will be used to the VirtualBox "Share Folders" list. (I will call it cxoffice in this example.)

Create a truecrypt container of adequate size in that folder. (I named my container, "Crossover_VDisk.") This is just for convenience, not security, and so I set the password to "pw" - it's just a placeholder, really.

On the virtual machine, mount the host's folder as a subdirectory in the virtual machine's media folder at startup. To do this, in /etc/init.d/rc.local, add the following, just under "### END INIT INFO" :

sudo mkdir /media/cxoffice sudo chmod 777 /media/cxoffice sudo mount -t vboxsf -o uid=1000,gid=1000 cxoffice /media/cxoffice PATH=/sbin:/usr/sbin:/bin:/usr/bin

To automatically mount the truecrypt volume containing Crossover programs when the system starts (change locations as necessary and of course use your own username):

1. Create a script file entitled "Enable_Crossover.sh" with the following command:

truecrypt -p "pw" /media/cxoffice/Crossover_VDisk /home/username/.cxoffice

2. Put the script in /home/username on the virtual machine (or wherever you prefer), and add it to programs that run at login.

with thanks to R.Michael Anson for this amazing workaround