[Solved]How to you install guest additions on a headless VM?

[ToddAndMargo]

Hi All,

Guest: Windows server 2003
Host: CentOS 5.4 (Linux)

I have an rdesktop (Linux rdp connector) connection to a headless Windows 2003 Server at one of my customer's sites. I want to upgrade the Guest Additions. How do I do this?

Many thanks,
-T

[MarkCranness]

Attach the Guest Additions ISO to the VM before starting it and then, in the VM, navigate to the DVD drive letter and manually run the setup program.

Or (on the host) extract all files from the Guest Additions ISO to a Shared Folders or network share folder visible to the VM and manually run the install exe.
(The ISO is in the same folder as the VirtualBox executables on the host, and 7-Zip will open it like a ZIP file, or probably you can mount the ISO in CentOS.)

[ToddAndMargo]

Attach the Guest Additions ISO to the VM before starting it and then, in the VM, navigate to the DVD drive letter and manually run the setup program.

Or (on the host) extract all files from the Guest Additions ISO to a Shared Folders or network share folder visible to the VM and manually run the install exe.
(The ISO is in the same folder as the VirtualBox executables on the host, and 7-Zip will open it like a ZIP file, or probably you can mount the ISO in CentOS.)

I was afraid you were going to say that. I do not have remote access to the host and I will not be on site for two weeks (Thanksgiving holiday and all).

Thank you for the excellent directions.

-T

[MarkCranness]

If you have the ISO where you are now (you could always install VirtualBox locally to get the ISO), could you extract the files from it locally, upload them to rapidshare (or similar) then download them to the guest OS from rapidshare to a temp folder then run them?

Using 7-Zip to look inside the ISO now, it seems likely you would only need to upload/download one EXE file... <6MB.
With standard 10MB email size limits, you may be able to ZIP and email the EXE to an account that the guest OS can access.

[Sasquatch]

Or, grab the ISO from http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox from the Guest itself, extract the file you need and install it. No need to upload anything or email it to yourself.

[MarkCranness]

Sasquatch's suggestion is likely the best, but I've been thinking of alternatives... (my head has exploded )

Are you connecting to the RDP server built into VirtualBox on the guest, or are you connecting to the RDP server built-in to Windows Server 2003?

If the latter, and the server is configured to allow it, then you can (probably...) add a local folder to rdesktop as a redirected network share that should then be available on the guest.

Code: Select all

rdesktop -r disk:<sharename>=<path> ... 

... on the server, map a drive to a share named: <sharename>

[ToddAndMargo]

Code: Select all

rdesktop -r disk:<sharename>=<path> ... 

... on the server, map a drive to a share named: <sharename>

Hi All,

Got it done. Mark got me to thinking. Actually, Mark gave me one of those "duh" moments. I have several Windows VM's running on my local machine, so I went into Virtual XP, found the Windows guest additions .exe and copied it to my rdesktop shared folder on my host. I have a folder share set up on my host to use with rdesktop, shared the way Mark pointed out. I share a printer that way too. Then I rdesktop'ed to my customer's Terminal Server (TS) (also a VBox VM). I proceeded to copy a simple jpeg to the TS' desktop. (You have to copy from your local rdesktop share to a local drive on the TS the first time you copy, or you loose your shared drive connection. It is a bug in rdesktop. After you do that once, you can copy however you want.) So I copied the guest addition .exe from my rdesktop shared folder on my machine to the customer's "drivers" network drive on the TS. Now the guest additions was available the both VM's at my customer's site. From my rdesktop session, I VLNC'ed to the other server and installed the guest additions from the "drivers" share. And, I finished by installing the guest additions on the TS.

I made this all harder in my mind then I had to. Thank you all for helping me think this through.

-T