While working inside debian, which is installed inside a VirtualBox and shares a folder with it’s host machine, I repeatingly got errors while creating symlinks. (I use “os x 10.7” as host and “debian wheezy” as guest os.)
Until now I accepted it but today I got tired of creating these symlink in the host system.
Here’s the solution I found:
1. Shut down the virtual machine. Debian in my case.
2. You need to close the VirtualBox GUI.
3. Type this into your preferred command line.
VBoxManage setextradata DEBIAN VBoxInternal2/SharedFoldersEnableSymlinksCreate/FOLDER_SHARE 1
4. Reboot your virtual machine.
5. Enjoy the stunning power of symlinks again*
* You ask why again ? Because this was possible by default prior to VirtualBox 4.1.8. It has been added for additional security.