Oracle VM VirtualBox – Installing Guest Additions

/ By / Category: Hardware

xubuntu_guest_additionsI upgraded my copy of Oracle VM VirtualBox this morning to the latest version, that being version 4.3.12. What I hadn’t banked on was having to install Guest Additions again after the upgrade completed, I remember doing this in the past and it being quite a simple process however I’d forgotten the steps required so I thought I’d document them here.

To set the scene I’m running Windows 7 and am using VM VirtualBox to boot into various Linux installs or guests, in this scenario Xubuntu.

  1. Boot into your guest as normal.
  2. In your VM VirtualBox select Install Guest Additions under the Devices menu.
  3. The Guest Additions ISO will mount on your guests desktop as a CDROM.
  4. Open a terminal and navigate to the CDROM, this was under /media/ for me but other systems may vary.
  5. Examine the content of the ISO directory and look for VBoxLinuxAdditions.run
  6. In your terminal window run sudo sh VBoxLinuxAdditions.run
  7. Reboot once installation is complete.
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sudo sh VBoxLinuxAdditions.run