Ubuntu Desktop 12.10 Guest Additions on Virtualbox

I had the unfortunate annoyance of trying to get Ubuntu Desktop 12.10 Guest Additions working on VirtualBox 4.24, which have a strong desire to NOT install linux kernel headers. Here’s the steps. Don’t be annoyed. I hope this finds you quickly.

I’m like you. I like my VM to scale when I change dimensions of the window, I like to copy/paste between the host/guest, and I expect that to work. Out of the box, it doesn’t. I assume this will be fixed shortly, but in the meantime, do this and you’ll be good to go.

For what it’s worth, I’m on Windows 7 64-bit Ultimate host, with the newest Ubuntu Desktop 12.10 .iso from ubuntu.com installed onto VirtualBox 4.24.r81684.

sudo apt-get remove virtualbox-guest-additions

from terminal and be done with it.

This command makes your Guest Additions install so happy it actually succeeds:

sudo apt-get install linux-headers-generic

Run that in a terminal. That’s it.

Now, shut down the VM and restart it. When it boots back up, in the VirtualBox guest window click on Devices -> Install Guest Additions and follow the prompts. This should succeed.

Shut down the VM and restart, and your VirtualBox VM should resize dynamically like you’re used to, and be able to copy/paste between host and guest and vice versa.

Something funky is going on with xserver and the way the dependencies are resolving during Ubuntu 12.10 installation. I’m sure this will get smoothed out (it is pretty recent release) but still annoying.

Enjoy.

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