virtualbox.org

Hi,

Searched the forum and found only one post covering the topic. That post essentially describes searches the guest VM's disk removing 'vbox*' files. That post does not seem to include information about windows guests. Is it OK to use the control panel to uninstall ?

Here is the post I found:
http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?t=7839

That post was quite some time ago ... and I am unsure if the information in that post is still relevant or valid.

Is there any documentation that someone can point me to that outlines the process for removing guest additions? The versions I need to remove are 2.x, 3.1.x (only one guest is using 2.x ... so that's not too critical).

Thanks,
Joe

When you update the GA, the previous version should be uninstalled automatically. If you are not sure about that, then you can remove it using the Control Panel way, or the start menu > programs > Guest Additions > uninstall. Both are essentially the same, as it calls for the same uninstall program.

Wow ... that was super-fast response.

That sounds good. As it turns out ... in re-reading my original post ... I neglected to indicate that a number of my guests are *nix variants (openSuSE, Fedora, RedHat, etc) and one openSolaris guest.

Would you have any suggestions on the process to follow to remove guest additions in those guests?

One of the biggest reasons to remove the guest additions is the need to install the 3.2.x GAs as a result of upgrading from an earlier release of VBox.

As I said, installing newer GA should uninstall the previous one. I have several Linux VMs and installing the new version never caused a problem. The new modules are put in the same folder with the same name as the previous version, so there is no way that the OS loads the old one on a reboot.

If you do wish to remove the GA, then there is an uninstall parameter now. I'm not sure if it works for differencing versions, but if the installer is the same version as the modules, it should work.

One addition:

On OpenSolaris and Solaris you remove the current guest addition before installing the new one. Commands below.

Remove guest additions Install guest additions

What about GA that aren't named after Sun?

Just updated my Solaris and OpenSolaris the other day (3.2.6) and the commands are the same.
It would have to do with the Guest though and not the GAs as the naming convention is on the Sun OS.
AFAIK they have not released an Oracle Solaris or Oracle OpenSolaris since they took over.

The pkgrm SUNWvboxguest is the Solaris command like apt-get remove is to Ubuntu.

I thought that "SUNWvboxguest" was the package name, hence my question for other branding. Like the new GA version would be "ORACLEWvboxguest" or something. Apparently not.