hey guys
so I have virtualbox installed, and arch set up as the guest OS
now i have made my home folder shared folder with the guest OS
but at first my arch couldnt read my home folder
i realized the permission setting for the home folder is set as rwx to myself, and nothing to everyone else
so i chmod -R 755 to everything
and that seemed to have solved the problem
now i want to make my home folder readonly to my guest OS
do i just do chmod -R 744 to my home folder?
i already messed up something when i set 644 to everything in my home folder, as my dropbox stopped working
so im afraid of something like that happening to me again, otherwise i d love to experiment

another question is, are .so files supposed to be executable?
I googled it, and it seems they dont have to be
But my dropbox stopped working after the .so files in /home/myhomefolder/.dropbox got assigned 644 D:

You need to make a difference between files and directories. A directory requires the read and execute bits to be set if someone is to have access to it.
A file on the other hand only requires read bit set assuming it is not to be executed or able to be changed.

As for:
As these are libraries I would have said they do not have to be executable but should be able to be read.
My guess here is that you used -R again and changed a file that should still be executable.

Maybe throw file (command) at each file in .dropbox directory and see which ones come back saying they are executables then don't change them to 644

oh yes, actually there is one executable file in /.dropbox, that got assigned to 644
thank you very much