Guest additions not working after routine ubuntu host update

[dgpe]

I am running Ubuntu 11.04 and when I started the machine for the day, the update manager came up with a list of routine updates which it often does. After allowing it to install the updates, the VirtualBox guest additions no longer work on any of the VMs I have.

Digging around on Google I found a reference to the fact that if there are any updates to the Linux kernel, the guest additions have to be reinstalled, but the post was old and the instructions given didn't work - they involved running VboxAdd from a location that does not exist on my machine.

I tried removing the guest additions .iso from the storage section in settings and then re-adding it but that made no difference. I don't know how to completely remove the guest additions from the host and reinstall them.

This must be a routine thing but I can't figure it out. Can anyone help?

[dgpe]

OK I found a solution to this which may be useful for anyone else with the same problem:

1) Open guest

2) Uninstall guest additions. I did this by:

Going to /opt/ and then finding the Guest Additions folder
Opening a terminal session and running the uninstall.sh script which was in the Guest Additions folder
(This gave some messages that indicated that it was uninstalling dkms entries and some other things and then returned me to the prompt)
I had to use sudo to get this to work (that is, I entered: sudo sh uninstall.sh)

3) Reinstall guest additions

I am using the guest additions directly from an .iso file, so:
I went back to the terminal session and ran the VBoxLinuxAdditions.run file from the .iso
I did this by changing the directory to the relevant location in the .iso image by typing: cd /media/VBOXADDITIONS_4.1.6_74713
and then typing: sudo sh VBoxLinuxAdditions.run
This gave a bunch of messages indicating that it was installing the Guest Additions

After that everything was back up and running again.

One curious thing was that the original folder in /opt showed the previous version of the Guest Additions even though I had been using the .iso for the current version for some time. Not sure if this is a bug, or just that the Guest Additions need to be manually removed each and the new version installed each time there is an upgrade.

[2dfruit]

^^ Thank you!

This has been bugging me all morning. Works a charm.