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How to uninstall Guest Additions in Ubuntu guest?

Posted: 10. Jul 2008, 23:12
by riobard
I installed Guest Additions in Ubuntu guest. Now I copied the Ubuntu guest to a real harddisk and used it on a separate machine, so I no longer need the Guest Additions. How do I uninstall it? Thanks in advance!

Posted: 10. Jul 2008, 23:33
by stefan.becker
Dont really know it exact.

Little Tip: Start the installer with "--help". That shows possible Parameters.

Posted: 11. Jul 2008, 07:49
by riobard
I tried --help option but it does not say anything about uninstallation

here is what I got:
-------------------------------------------------
Makeself version 2.1.4
1) Getting help or info about ./VBoxLinuxAdditions.run :
./VBoxLinuxAdditions.run --help Print this message
./VBoxLinuxAdditions.run --info Print embedded info : title, default target directory, embedded script ...
./VBoxLinuxAdditions.run --lsm Print embedded lsm entry (or no LSM)
./VBoxLinuxAdditions.run --list Print the list of files in the archive
./VBoxLinuxAdditions.run --check Checks integrity of the archive

2) Running ./VBoxLinuxAdditions.run :
./VBoxLinuxAdditions.run [options] [--] [additional arguments to embedded script]
with following options (in that order)
--confirm Ask before running embedded script
--noexec Do not run embedded script
--keep Do not erase target directory after running
the embedded script
--nox11 Do not spawn an xterm
--nochown Do not give the extracted files to the current user
--target NewDirectory Extract in NewDirectory
--tar arg1 [arg2 ...] Access the contents of the archive through the tar command
-- Following arguments will be passed to the embedded script

Posted: 11. Jul 2008, 21:54
by Sasquatch
All I know is that after a kernel upgrade you need to reinstall the GA if you want to have most things working again, like shared folders. That takes my assumption that it only installs a few kernel modules. A 'find' or 'locate' should give you some idea of where any virtualbox files might be and you can then remove them. Do not forget to modify your xorg.conf file if you haven't done so already for your mouse and video driver (video has to be, else you wouldn't have X).

Posted: 11. Jul 2008, 22:21
by riobard
I guess it is much more complicated than just deleting kernel modules. I even found a /dev/vboxadd :| any hints about this? Thanks! :)

Posted: 11. Jul 2008, 23:15
by TerryE
You are correct in that their isn't a proper remove utility but the vbox device drivers and the ubuntu forum give simple instructions on how to remove them.

You also need to remove the /etc/rc1.d/ entries. After the reboot, I think that you'll find all vbox entries are related to VirtualBox and can be removed

Problem solved

Posted: 13. Jul 2008, 10:03
by riobard
I tried the following lines and it turned out to be OK now. Thanks guys for your help! :)

Code: Select all

sudo find /etc -name "*vboxadd*" -exec rm {} \;
sudo find /etc -name "*vboxvfs*" -exec rm {} \;
sudo rm -r /usr/src/vboxadd-*
sudo rm -r /usr/src/vboxvfs-*
sudo rm /usr/sbin/vboxadd-timesync
sudo rm /lib/modules/`uname -r`/misc/vboxadd.ko
sudo rm /lib/modules/`uname -r`/misc/vboxvfs.ko
A little explanation:
1. All vboxadd* entries belongs to Guest Additions
2. All vboxvfs* entries are related to Shared Folder feature which is also part of Guest Additions

Re: How to uninstall Guest Additions in Ubuntu guest?

Posted: 27. May 2011, 13:58
by TheBigKahoona
for everyone how ends up here by googleing this matter:
/opt/[VboxAddonsFolder]/uninstall.sh

Re: How to uninstall Guest Additions in Ubuntu guest?

Posted: 7. Aug 2014, 22:37
by Z3Px
TheBigKahoona wrote:for everyone how ends up here by googleing this matter:
/opt/[VboxAddonsFolder]/uninstall.sh
Thanks!!!!

Re: How to uninstall Guest Additions in Ubuntu guest?

Posted: 21. Sep 2015, 18:00
by Jack@flowertown
Besides the unistall
/opt/[VboxAddonsFolder]/uninstall.sh
I also had to remove /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Re: How to uninstall Guest Additions in Ubuntu guest?

Posted: 10. Mar 2016, 13:23
by Dix mix
Jack@flowertown wrote:Besides the unistall
/opt/[VboxAddonsFolder]/uninstall.sh
I also had to remove /etc/X11/xorg.conf
Doing both the uninstall.sh and removing the xorg.conf file :

This solution Worked for me! :D :D :D

Re: How to uninstall Guest Additions in Ubuntu guest?

Posted: 24. Mar 2016, 22:54
by virtualbox-guest-remover
On an Ubuntu host that is not a VM, do:

aptitude purge virtualbox-guest-utils virtualbox-guest-x11

That stopped the messages for me.

Re: How to uninstall Guest Additions in Ubuntu guest?

Posted: 26. Jan 2017, 14:45
by jabbott2
virtualbox-guest-remover wrote:On an Ubuntu host that is not a VM, do:

aptitude purge virtualbox-guest-utils virtualbox-guest-x11

That stopped the messages for me.
Folks,
Thank you, thank you, thank you. This line , aptitude purge virtualbox-guest-utils virtualbox-guest-x11, removed the startup texts that plagued me each time I logged in. However, I have no idea what I did when I entered the line in the terminal.
Being slow I need an entry level step by step how to before I can get this kind of good stuff stuck in my gray matter. So I want to thank the person who added the post. Should I need help in the future I will heed this users posts.
God bless you.

Re: How to uninstall Guest Additions in Ubuntu guest?

Posted: 25. Feb 2018, 21:50
by sashsz
Hello all,

On fedora 26 I was missing /opt/[VirtualBoxAddons version] (deleted previously by hand) directory, so I did the following:

find / -iname "*vbox*" -exec rm -rf {} \;

and I needed:

dnf install elfutils-libelf-devel-static-0.169-1.fc26.x86_64

In order to re-install the new addons

Re: How to uninstall Guest Additions in Ubuntu guest?

Posted: 2. Dec 2018, 08:41
by TechMan99
TheBigKahoona wrote:for everyone how ends up here by googleing this matter:
/opt/[VboxAddonsFolder]/uninstall.sh
You are the real hero. Thank you.