mjhjmtu

I'm on Windows 7 and I run a Debian VM under Vbox. On my Windows 7 I've the c:temp folder that I want to share. I added it :

I had an hard time to permanently mount that folder with Virtual box (had to install Guest Additions, etc.. ) but now it is solved. What I need to do is edit /etc/fstab file and add the following line :

temp /home/my_usr_name/an_existing_folder vboxsf defaults, _netdev 0 0

Now, after each boot, my folder is correctly mounted. But here is my question
what and where is temp ?

because, from my understanding, the line I added in fstab does the following :

mount -t vboxsf temp /home/my_usr_name/an_existing_folder 

Right ? And as a matter of fact, it works, my folder will be correctly mounted if I use it. but normally, with mount you use a device ? like dev/cdrom for example. Here I can't find that temp anywere on my Debian VM. I understand that this is the name I gived when configuring the Shared folder of VM, but how it is handled by VBox ? and how Debian find it ?

Note : For some reason, I don't have any folder like /media/sf_sharedfolder, I don't care and I don't want to solve that.

with mount you use a device?

No. One provides a source, a.k.a. a "what" (alongside a "where" and a "vfstype", and some options). That does not have to be a block device name. It is something that only has meaning in conjunction with the type of filesystem.

In the case of vboxsf mounts, the "what" is the name of the shared folder that you have specified in the VirtualBox configuration utility. The driver installed into Linux by the VirtualBox Guest Utilities knows how to reference that name, using a private communications channel between the guest environment and the host.

It is not a network path. It is not something that you can locate in the guest operating system's filesystem.