These instructions are for Ubuntu 13.04 using the Unity Desktop, running under VirtualBox 4.2.12.

They may be the same or similar for other version combinations, but I make no guarantee.

Sometimes, after installing updates, the VirtualBox Guest Additions stop working.

To get them working again, it is necessary to reinstall them.

1) Open the Dash by tapping on the Windows / Super key:

2) Type vboxadditions into the Dash query field:

3) Press Enter to open the VirtualBox Guest Additions Folder:

4) Click the Run Software button:

5) Click on Run:

6) Enter your password and click on Authenticate:

This will then uninstall and then reinstall the VirtualBox Guest Additions.

After rebooting your machine, everything should be working correctly again.

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This problem does not affect Ubuntu 12.04 running as a guest OS.

When the Problem has been Noticed

• VirtualBox is running on Windows 7 with SP1
• the guest OS is Ubuntu 13.04 (32-bit)
• only a single CPU is configured for the virtual machine
• the underlying hardware is an AMD Quad-Core A6-3400M

Resolving the Problem

In my case, I have been able to solve the problem by configuring the virtual machine to have more than 1 CPU.

Suspicions

Initially, I thought the problem might be the VT-x/AMD-V or Nested Paging settings which are only enabled when multiple CPUs are configured for the virtual machine, but enabling then with a single CPU did not resolve the problem.

My next suspicion is that Ubuntu’s use of LLVM Pipe to provide 3D rendering may be the cause of the problem, but I don’t have time or plans to reinstall Ubuntu 12.10 to test that hypothesis.

If you are running Ubuntu 11.04 or later, you can use this check to see if 3D hardware acceleration is being used.

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These instructions are for removing VirtualBox Guest Additions from Ubuntu 13.04 running under VirtualBox version 4.2.12.

They may be the same or similar for other version combinations and other Linux distros, but no guarantee is made.

Assumes you know how to open a terminal. Instructions for opening a terminal can be found here.

Uninstalling VirtualBox Guest Additions

1) Open a terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and enter the following commands:

cd /media
cd <username>
cd VBOXADDITIONS_4.2.2_81494
sudo sh VBoxLinuxAdditions.run uninstall

After entering your password, the VirtualBox Guest Additions will be uninstalled:

Ejecting the VirtualBox Guest Additions CD

Having uninstalled the VirtualBox Guest Additions, there is not much point in keeping the Guest Additions media installed.

1) Click on the Files icon on the Unity Launcher:

2) Click on the Eject icon next to the Guest Additions:

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These instructions are for Ubuntu 13.04 running under VirtualBox 4.2.12 on Windows 7 with SP1.

They should be the same or similar for other version combinations, but I make no guarantee.

These instructions are the same or very similar for many other Linux distros, however, the VirtualBox Guest Additions don’t work with all distros of Linux. As well, for some Linux distros, the installation does not happen automatically – you have to manually start it.

Why Install VirtualBox Guest Additions?

Installing the VirtualBox Guest Additions better integrates Ubuntu Linux with your system and gives you the following benefits (and more):

1. better video support – more resolutions, hardware acceleration, etc. This is important with Ubuntu because the Unity desktop expects to be running on 3D hardware accelerated graphics card. If it does not find 3D hardware acceleration, it emulates it using LLVM Pipe and performance is definitely on the sluggish side.
2. better mouse pointer integration
3. shared folders – useful for sharing data between OSes
4. seamless windows (instead of having an Ubuntu desktop and a Windows desktop, the two can be combined together. While neat, it is not quite perfect – though, I it is cool to see Linux and Windows applications running side-by-side on your Windows desktop)
5. shared clipboard

1) Click on on the Devices menu and then select Install Guest Additions…:

2) Click Run on the information dialog:

3) Enter your password and then click on Authenticate:

4) A terminal will pop up and begin the process of compiling and installing the Guest Additions – how long this process takes depends on how fast your machine is, but it is at least several minutes:

5) Go to the System Tools icon in the top right corner and select Shut Down:

6) Choose to either Shut Down or Restart the system (it doesn’t matter which):

The next time the virtual machine starts, the guest additions will be installed and integrated.

When Install Guest Additions… Doesn’t Autorun

Sometimes, Ubuntu doesn’t automatically start the install process after after Guest Additions have been added. One of these three techniques will allow you to manually start the installation process:

Method 1

1) Click on the VBOXADDITIONS disk near the bottom of the Unity Launcher – it’s just above the trash can:

2) Click on Run Software and then continue from Step 2) above:

Method 2

1) Click on the Files icon on the Unity Launcher:

2) Click on the VBOXADDITIONS… entry under Devices:

3) Click on Run Software and then continue from Step 2) above:

Method 3

1) Open a terminal and enter the following commands:

cd /media
cd VBOXADDITIONS_4.2.12_84980
sudo sh VboxLinuxAdditions.run

It will then go through the process of compiling and installing the Guest Additions:

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These instructions are for Ubuntu 13.04 running under VirtualBox 4.2.12 on Window 7 with SP1.

The instructions are probably the same or similar for other version combinations but no guarantee is made.

1) Install VirtualBox Guest Additions. Full instructions can be found here.

2) Shut down the virtual machine.

3) Right-click the VirtualBox machine you want to enable 3D hardware acceleration on and select Settings…:

4) Click on Display:

5) Slide the Video Memory slider all the way to the right and give yourself 128MB of video memory; check the Enable 3D Acceleration checkbox; click on OK:

6) Start your VirtualBox machine and 3D hardware acceleration should be enabled.

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These instructions are for removing VirtualBox Guest Additions from Ubuntu 12.10 running under VirtualBox version 4.2.2.

They may be the same or similar for other version combinations and other Linux distros, but no guarantee is made.

Assumes you know how to open a terminal. Instructions for opening a terminal can be found here.

Uninstalling VirtualBox Guest Additions

1) Open a terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and enter the following commands:

cd /media
cd <username>
cd VBOXADDITIONS_4.2.2_81494
sudo sh VBoxLinuxAdditions.run uninstall

After entering your password, the VirtualBox Guest Additions will be uninstalled:

Ejecting the VirtualBox Guest Additions CD

Having uninstalled the VirtualBox Guest Additions, there is not much point in keeping the Guest Additions media installed.

2) Click on the Home Folder icon on the Unity Launcher:

3) Click on the Eject icon next to the Guest Additions:

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These instructions are for VirtualBox 4.1.18 running on Windows 7 with Service Pack 1 with Ubuntu 12.04 (running the Unity Interface) as the guest OS.

I believe the instructions are the same (or very similar) regardless of which host OS and guest OS combination you are running, but I make no guarantee.

Sometimes you want to (or need to) directly access a USB device, like a memory stick, or a printer, or camera.

Normally, VirtualBox does not provide access to these devices, however, it is possible to allow the guest OS to directly access the USB device.

(I needed to allow Linux to directly access a SD card so I could use the dd command to copy a OS image. This turned out to be very slow. I am not sure if this was because I was accessing it via VirtualBox or because dd is inherently slow writing to flash cards.)

Installing the VirtualBox Extension Pack

1) Go to the VirtualBox Downloads page. It can be found here.

2) Click on the All Platforms link beside the VM VirtualBox Extensions Pack:

3) Click on Open if you get the following confirmation request in Windows 7:

4) Click on Install:

5) Read the license agreement (or, at the very least, scroll all the way to the end) and the click on I Agree if you accept the licensing terms (if you don’t agree, then you will not be able to install the extensions):

VirtualBox will then proceed to install the extensions pack. This will take a few minutes.

6) Observe that the installation was successful and click on OK:

Enabling a USB Device in VirtualBox

1) Plug in the USB device you want to share. Let it be detected and recognized by Windows.

2) Start VirtualBox.

3) Right-click on the virtual machine you wish to configure the USB device for, then select (left-click) Settings…. You could also left-click on the virtual machine and then press Ctrl+S:

4) Click on USB in the left side panel:

5) Check the checkbox Enable USB 2.0 (EHCI) Controller:

6) Click on the tiny USB icon with the green plus sign (it is found on the right side of the dialog):

A menu containing the plugged in USB devices will appear:

7) Click on the USB device you want (this might be tricky because the displayed name may not be obvious – for example, the Unknown device is a webcam):

This will add the device to the list of USB devices available to the virtual machine (again, your list will likely be different):

The first time you start the virtual machine with newly attached USB device, VirtualBox will: (1) disconnect the device from your machine and (2) create a VirtualBox USB device to connect to the device (for which Windows will automatically install the necessary device driver). When this is done, you should get the following notification:

When you log into your guest OS, the USB device will be attached to it.

In the image above you can see several attached drive locations. These are the slots in a card reader I had attached to the computer.

You can also see that the memory card in question was mounted as sdb

If you have attached a different USB device (printer, scanner, camera, etc), the guest OS (in this case Linux) may have limited or no support for the device.

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These instructions are for Ubuntu 12.04, with the Unity interface, running under VirtualBox 4.1.12_77218. They should be the same or similar for other version combinations, but no guarantee is made.

Sometimes, when Ubuntu updates are applied to your system, the VirtualBox Guest Additions stop working. Symptoms may include: (1) screen resolution reverts back to the default setting, (2) shared folders no longer work.

Trying to fix it by selecting Install Guest Additions… does nothing (and it won’t because Guest Additions are already installed).

The fix is to rerun the Guest Additions installation program. There are three ways to do this.

Method 1

1) Locate the VBOXADDITIONS disk icon (it is probably the only disk icon) located near the bottom of the Launcher (it is most likely just above the trash can icon) . Click on the disk icon:

2) Click on Open Autorun Prompt:

This will uninstall the Guest Additions and then reinstall them. The rest of the procedure is exactly the same as for installing VirtualBox Guest Additions.

Method 2

1) Open Dash by tapping the Super key (usually, this will be the Windows key on your machine). Alternately, you can click on the Dash icon at the top of the Launcher.

2) Type vbox into the dash query field. This will bring up the VBOXGUESTADDITION… folder:

3) Press the Enter key. This will open the VBOXGUESTADDITIONS… folder. Alternately, you can select the folder by either using your mouse or navigating to it using the arrow keys:

4) Double-click the VBOXADDITIONS icon:

5) Click on Open Autorun Prompt:

This will uninstall the Guest Additions and then reinstall them. The rest of the procedure is exactly the same as for installing VirtualBox Guest Additions.

Method 3

1) Click the Folder icon on the launcher:

2) Click on File System, then double-click on the media folder:

3) Double-click the VBOXADDITIONS icon:

4) Click on Open Autorun Prompt:

This will uninstall the Guest Additions and then reinstall them. The rest of the procedure is exactly the same as for installing VirtualBox Guest Additions.

The post Ubuntu 12.04 – Virtualbox Guest Additions Stop Working after Update appeared first on Complete, Concrete, Concise.

This tutorial is for adding shared folders to Ubuntu 12.04 running under VirtualBox 4.1.12 on Windows 7 with SP 1.

The instructions should be the same for the same for other version combinations, or even for different OSes on which VirtualBox runs, but no guarantee is made.

1) Start VirtualBox:

2) Right-click on the virtual machine you wish to add a shared folder. This will bring up a context menu. Left-click on Settings…:

3) Left-click on Shared Folders in the left pane:

4) Left-click on the Add Shared Folder icon:

5) Select Other… from the Folder Path: dropdown box:

6) Navigate through the Directory Browser until you find and select the folder you want to share. Click on OK:

7) Click on the Auto-mount checkbox to enable it. Then click on OK

8) Verify the folder has been added. Click on OK:

You can always add additional folders by clicking on the Add Shared Folder icon.

You can remove a shared folder by selecting it and then clicking on the Remove Shared Folder icon (this is the folder icon with the minus sign on it).

You can edit the shared folder by selecting it and then clicking on the Edit Shared Folder icon (this is the folder icon with the dot on it).