virtualbox.org

Running 3.2.8

Win 7 Ultimate x64 Host. CentOS 5.5 guest with gnome GUI.

I followed the manual instructions for installing guest additions to the letter. (Had to add only one step: creating /usr/src/linux as a symlink so the additions could find the kernel source.)

The good news: mouse integration now works, and the guest window is now larger. Haven't done much with it, but the integrations seemed to work OK.

The bad news: The guest now boots in x-windows.

How do I get my gnome back?

I have installed the guest additions in CentOS a lot and have never had to create the symlink and never had the DM change. It must be something that you changed in CentOS during the install. Look at the logon window and make sure that Gnome is selected.
Hint: Click on session in the lower left of the logon window

Look at the logon window and make sure that Gnome is selected.
Hint: Click on session in the lower left of the logon window

The Sessions list gives a choice of:
Last Session
Default System Session
Failsafe Terminal

Which of these are you recommending?

I have installed the guest additions in CentOS a lot and have never had to create the symlink

# yum install dkms
(produced an error, package not found anywhere)
Installed dkms from an rpm instead, downloaded using wget in the guest from http://linux.dell.com/dkms/
Then:
# yum install gcc
# yum install kernel-devel

Worked fine.
yum installed the source at:
/usr/src/kernels/2.6.18-194.11.1.el5-i686

Then:
# sh ./VBoxLinuxAdditions-x86.run
The installer complained it could not find the source.

Manual says " if you have built your own kernel, /usr/src/linux should point to your kernel sources"
Sure enough, when I created this path as a symlink to the path shown above, everything built and installed ok.

Where am I going wrong?

Don't know what to tell you. Are you sure that Gnome was installed before you installed the guest additions? From the looks of it Gnome is missing on your install.

And I have never had to create a symlink to get the guest additions to install on any OS that I have and I have a lot. Usually when I see that warning I have not installed everything that I needed to get it to work properly. I then fix that and the GAs install properly.

See screen shot.
This is the install command I use for CentOS, Fedora,and Redhat to prep the OS for the guest additions.

Problem resolved.

@Perryg:
Thanks for your help. I used your yum install line this time. That may be relevant to the fact there was no need for the symlink this time. Not sure why.

I left out the dkms install this time, as a reread of the doc seemed to imply that is optional.

Another factor is that this time I scrupulously followed the instructions to use yum update first (brutally slow here with Comcast), and to reboot before installing the additions. I could have eliminated a lot of the update time by first killing the OpenOffice apps, but I had done that on the previous failed installs and was afraid maybe removing those apps was also removing some gnome dependency. I will kill those later and see if the gnome issue comes back.

Having changed several variables, not sure which was the culprit.

I'm having the same exact problem. Guest install expanded window size, etc, etc...but lost my GNOME session, and just drops me to an x-window term. Any way we can try to recreate the steps that were taken to resolve this? let me know if anyone needs more info...

host: Windows 7 Enterprise (64bit)
guest: CentOS 5.5
kernel (uname)= 2.6.18-194.26.1.el5