Longtime Mac developer and I recently installed Win10 under Parallels to do some light development under a classic ASP project.

I have a synced directory on my Mac that I can browse to with Windows Explorer and can also access them directory in Visual Studio -- no problems.

What I'm curious about is if I can access that same directory via bash prompt? I installed the Ubuntu app from the Microsoft Store and that's all working great. I can see my local Windows files under /mnt/c/Users too.

What I can't seem to access is the files that Windows says is located at \MacHomeDocumentsProjects-myProjectFolder

Thoughts?

I found a way! In a nutshell, we mount an SMB share from the Mac inside of Windows (WSL) bash.

My setup:

• macOS 10.14.2


• Parallels 14.1.0 Pro


• Windows 10 Version 1803 (build 17134.472)


• WSL bash is Ubuntu 18.04.1 LTS (Bionic Beaver).

Enable SMB sharing on the Mac host

1. Open System Preferences.


2. Go to Sharing.


3. In the leftmost menu, enable File Sharing and click on it.


4. Click the Options... button on the right.


5. Check Share files and folders using SMB.


6. In the menu, enable your user name.


7. You may be warned that your password will be stored in a less secure manner. Put in your Mac account password and click OK.

Enable the Parallels Host-Only network

1. Open Parallels.


2. Hit Cmd-, to open the preferences.


3. Open the Network tab.


4. Select Host-Only in the left menu.


5. Check "Connect Mac to this network".


6. Open Mac system preferences.


7. Click on Network.


8. In the left menu with your devices, click the one that says "Parallels Host-Only #1" or similar. (If it's too long to see completely in the menu, you can check that you have the right one after you've clicked on it. Under "Status: Connected", in small text, there is a sentence that says "Parallels Host-Only #1 is currently active and has the IP address 10.37.129.2.")


9. Remember the value in the IP Address field. You can keep this window open.

Connect to the SMB share from Windows

1. Once Windows 10 has booted, open a Windows Explorer window.


2. In the left pane, right-click Network, and choose Map Network Drive.


3. Choose an available drive letter. I'll use Y:.


4. This next step will result in an error at first, but that is ok. Type in \ followed by your IP address, and hit enter.


5. Dismiss the error dialog.


6. Click Browse...


7. The IP should appear in the list. Expand it.


8. Type in your Mac username and password.


9. Choose a folder to mount and click OK. I chose my user folder.


10. Click Finish.

Mount the SMB share from WSL bash

1. 
   sudo mkdir /mnt/y (You can use whatever drive letter you chose earlier.)


2. sudo mount -t drvfs Y: /mnt/y


3. That's it! You are done!

Optional: Verify RW access to the SMB share

This section is optional, but is a nice sanity check.

1. The WSL bash prompt should be open.


2. 
   ls -l (You should see your files now. Don't worry that everything is owned by root. You can still write to the mounted share without sudo, and things will be owned by your user on the Mac side.)


3. echo hello > hi.txt


4. On the Mac, open a Terminal window.


5. cd into the directory containing your hi.txt file.


6. 
   cat hi.txt (You should see "hello".)


7. echo world > hi.txt


8. Switch back to WSL bash.


9. 
   cat hi.txt (You should see "world".)

Caveats

I realize that the password issue is suboptimal. I went this route because attempting to mount the regular Parallels-shared Mac folder didn't work. Here is what happened:

$ sudo mkdir /mnt/y

$ sudo mount -t drvfs '\MacHome' /mnt/y

$ cd /mnt/y

$ ls

ls: reading directory '.': Invalid argument

$ cd ..

$ sudo umount /mnt/y

$ sudo mount -t drvfs Z: /mnt/y

$ cd y

$ ls

ls: reading directory '.': Invalid argument

It looks like WSL and Parallels aren't working so nicely together, so I sidestepped Parallels a bit. I wish I didn't have to, and I'd love to see a better solution.