Elementary OS Luna
Elementary OS is a great distro in the Ubuntu family of linux distros that offers a mac like look and feel on the desktop.
Install Guest Additions. This is the sticking point. Without the Guest Additions installed, copy and paste will not work. I'm going to walk you through the process of installing the Guest. Guest Additions provide additional capability to a guest virtual machine, including file sharing. Guest Additions means: software installed on a guest virtual machine; software from a third party (Oracle), not open source and not installed in the usual fashion for the guest OS; Guest Additions are distributed on their own CD image (.iso file.
It features a completely new desktop environment called Pantheon that is built atop GTK libraries. Office 2011 standard for mac.
The desktop itself looks very stylish but very user-friendly and intuitive at the same time. And it looks great on laptops.
When I click the device menu, Guest additions line I get “Unable to insert the virtual optical disk C: Program Files Oracle VirtualBox VBoxGuestAdditions.iso into the machine Old Windows. Could not mount the media/drive ‘C: Program Files Oracle VirtualBox VBoxGuestAdditions.iso’ (VERRPDMMEDIALOCKED). Install Guest Additions for a better VirtualBox experience. A new way of thinking thanks to virtual machines. Although the Guest Additions tool has been covered already, if you've tried using Windows 7 in VirtualBox you will have most likely encountered some issues. The main issue is that Guest Additions isn't supported. Mac OS X guests: VirtualBox does not provide Guest Additions for Mac OS X at this time. What you are trying to run is the script for Linux distributions. That does not work on OS X due to numerous differences in the system, despite a similar-ish base. From the content of this, I wouldn't hold out for such support in VirtualBox any time soon.
For the time being I tried it on virtualbox where it works flawless, except that you need to install the virtualbox guest additions like every distro.
Install Virtualbox guest additions on elementary OS
The steps to install the virtualbox guest additions on elementary OS are exactly the same as ubuntu or debian. Just install the kernel headers and compile the guest additions from the disc image built inside virtualbox.
However also know that there is a guest additions package that is available in the ubuntu repositories too.
Guest Additions For Mac
So you can install from either of the 2 places. Just that the repository version would generally be older or outdated. And the one that's inside virtualbox is the latest version.
1. Install the kernel headers and build tools
The first thing you need to do is prepare your system to be able to compile kernel modules like virtualbox guest additions.
For this you need to install the correct kernel headers for your distro. These are readily available in the repositories.
The above command should download around 9MB of packages from the repository. After it finishes, run the m-a command to prepare the kernel headers
2. Compile virtualbox guest additions
All essential packages to build the virtualbox guest additions are not installed.
Click Devices > Install guest additions from virtualbox window, or press right Ctrl + D. This will 'insert' the guest additions cd into elementary. But we need to mount the cd to use it.
To mount the cd, open the file manager and click on the cd icon on the left under the 'Devices' section.
It should be named 'VBOXADDITIONS'.
It will open the cd contents and also mount it. The mount directory is located in the /media directory.
If you wish to mount it from the terminal, then first use the lsblk command to find the device and then mount it somewhere in your home directory.
Now open a terminal and navigate to the directory where the guest additions cd is mounted and run the linux installer.
And it should start the installation, take a few minutes and finish successfully. Here is the actual output you should see if the compilation succeeds.
Check the line that mentions 'Building the VirtualBox Guest Additions kernel modules ..done.' It must show 'done' and not failed, for the compilation to succeed.
Unmount the guest additions cd image from the file image or from the terminal.
Guest Additions For Oracle Virtualbox
After the installation completes, restart elementary OS. Or simply issue the command 'sudo reboot'.
3. Verify that guest additions are working
After reboot, the virtualbox guest additions should take effect. The screen resolution should now adapt to the size of the virtualbox window, the mouse scroller should now work inside elementary.
The virtualbox guest additions load as kernel modules that can be verified using the command shown below.
The modinfo command shows that the installed version of virtualbox guest additions is 4.3.10
4. Configure shared folders
The process to access shared folders inside elementary OS running as guest, is same as other linux distros. First create a shared folder from 'Devices > shared folder settings' option in virtualbox window and give it a distinct name.
Then create a directory inside elementary and mount the shared folder using either of the following one of the following commands.
Known Issues
Some versions of Virtualbox have a bug where the mount command fails to mount the shared folder. Both 'mount.vboxsf' and 'mount -t vboxsf' would fail in such cases. Here is an example
Virtualbox Guest Additions For Mac Os
The problem is caused because the mount.vboxsf command does not exist inside /sbin directory or points to a wrong path.
To fix this issue we need to use the correct path for the mount.vboxsf command.
In most cases the mount.vboxsf command is located at the following path
The above command should be able to mount the shared folder and make it accessible from within elementary OS.
Alternative method - Install from repository
The compilation steps shown above can be skipped entirely and the virtualbox guest addons can be installed with a package from the repository.
However, the guest additions available in the repository would be outdated most of the times compared to the latest version of virtualbox available.
There might as well be a conflict with the virtualbox version and the guest addons from the repository.
Conclusion
Following the above mentioned steps you should be able to install the virtualbox guest additions in elementary os.
If you have any feedback or questions, let us know in the comments below.
To install VirtualBox Guest Additions, follow these steps:
Stop the virtual machine.
Edit the virtual machine settings and from the “System” tab, add a new CD-ROM device to the machine.
Restart the virtual machine.
Check the current kernel version:
Install some needed dependencies as shown below. Remember to replace the VERSION placeholder with the kernel version from the previous command. packages with the proper kernel_version shown by the previous command:
Restart the virtual machine:
From the virtual machine menu, select the “Devices -> CD/DVD Devices -> Choose a virtual CD/DVD disk file” option. Select the VBoxGuestAdditions.iso file. This action simulates inserting a CD-ROM that includes the tools.
The VBoxGuestAdditions.iso file is usually located in the /usr/share/virtualbox/ directory on Linux, in the C:Program FilesOracleVirtualBox directory on Windows and the Contents/MacOS directory of the VirtualBox package on Mac OS X.
Mount the CD-ROM and install the VirtualBox Guest Additions:
You can safely ignore the error below if it appears during the installation process:
Once the process is complete, check that the output resembles that shown below. If it does, the VirtualBox Guest Additions have been successfully installed.