Anyway, I have also been having some problems with getting the guest additions to work as flawlessly as they do with Windows (both OS 10 64 bit Pro and 7 32 bit Pro) on my installations of Linux. I have up to now tried Ubuntu 64 bit 18.04 LTS, Mint Mate 32 bit 18.3 and Black Lab Mate 64 bit 11.60, and Manjaro KDE 64 bit 17.1.10.
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From what I have gathered from this (and a few other threads) so far as best I can tell here is what I have been able to gather for virtual box guest additions to work.
First and foremost, the versions of VBox and its Extension Pack and the Guest Additions must all be the exact same on both the host machine and the virtual guest machines for them to work (of course) - they are meant to all work in a "set"as far as I understand.
Second, for Linux in particular two things are needed before attempts at installing the Guest Additions take place: the "linux headers"matching the linux kernel in use must be installed and in place, and they must be in the state of ëssential build". (One poster above suggested that the 4.13 kernel had problems in general with VBox Guest Additions and solved it on his Linux install by upgrading to the 4.14.15 kernel [this was in January of this year] and tinkering a bit with it....)
There is also mention of the difference between the Guest Additions officially released by a Linux distro (I believe they were called "forks") and the additions released by VIrtualBox ... not quite sure of the exact differences other than that they are different and can interfere with each other, so it is suggested to remove the fork Guest Additions and install the VBox ones.
In some of the posts above there were commands given for getting the proper linux headers and essential build for one's kernel:
sudo apt-get install dkms build-essential linux-headers-$(uname -r)
There were also given the commands for making sure that the packages one has installed on the Linux Guest were ïn order", as a Linux install having problems with packages can gum up the works:
sudo apt-get -f install
sudo apt-get update
Once these were all in a row, it was suggested to reinstall the Guest Additions (presumably from the virtual drive that can be mounted from Virtual Box itself). One thing I did not know was that a message I have seen come up that caused concern was not actually an error:
****Verifying archive integrity... All good. Uncompressing VirtualBox 5.2.11 Guest Additions for Linux........ VirtualBox Guest Additions installer Removing installed version 5.1.26 of VirtualBox Guest Additions... Copying additional installer modules ... Installing additional modules ... VirtualBox Guest Additions: Building the VirtualBox Guest Additions kernel modules. VirtualBox Guest Additions: Running kernel modules will not be replaced until the system is restarted VirtualBox Guest Additions: Starting. VirtualBox Guest Additions: modprobe vboxsf failed <<<< This is NOT an error You may need to restart the Window System (or just restart the guest system) to enable the Guest Additions. Press Return to close this window...
On the Black Lab Linux Mate 11.60 machine (which I believe is still based off of the Ubuntu MATE 16.04.3 release) I recently followed the four step pattern of:
sudo apt-get install dkms build-essential linux-headers-$(uname -r)
sudo apt-get -f install
sudo apt-get update
and then reinstalling the Guest Additions from the Virtual CD. That was actually the first time the terminal showing the process of the install did not show the "false error" highlighted in red in the quoted text above.
The usb printer and ext drive attached to the host machine show up. The printer is usable, and with a little tinkering I can move files to and from the virtual machine via usb drives and so on (though I have to unmount the drive from the host machine, plug it in, and then it shows up on the guest machine).
The bidrectional clipboard also works plenty fine for simple text.
The host's folder I set for mounting on start up in the linux guest shows up now, but it is unbrowsable. The bidirectional drag n drop does not work (although it worked on the virtual windows machines). Seems both of these issues are more related to permissions on the host machine and may be more of a Mac OS issue than the VBox Additions?
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With all that said ... the first question is regarding the general outline of things to check for VBox Additions to correctly work on a Linux Guest machine. Are there things I missed? Or that I phrased incorrectly or outright misunderstood?
The second question is related to the mounted folder and the drag n drop functions not working. Does that indeed sound much more of a Mac OS permissions issue or are there some things I missed somewhere in the VBox installation as a whole (I know that is a broad question, but I am moreso hoping for some general feedback of where I could begin to approach it).
Finally, it has been about 4 months or so since the poster mentioned the compatibility that kernel 4.13 apparently had with Guest Additions (of that time). The Black Lab install I am using atm, for example, has the 4.13 kernel.
[1]: ModEdit; question split from "Problem with Guest Additions".
