virtualbox.org

I have installed Virtual Box 4.0.0 on Server: Mac OS Snow Leopard
Guest system Windows 2000 with guest additions: works fine

Guest system Linux Mint 10 with guest additions: Two problems:
1) Shared folders doesn't work with error message in the menue bar "virtual guest additions not available";
2) only 800x600 display resolution max in display setting GUI tool

When I installed virtual box via dpkg on linux and afterwards guest additions no error messages.

How can I verify that guest additions are correctly installed? Can it be problem with new 4.0 release of virtual box?

Any help is much appreciated.

Further information:
- server and guest were fully rebooted after installation.
- Virtual video RAM was increased to 64 MB to ensure that this was not the reason for low video resolution
- Virtual box 3 was included with Linux Mint 10 but I installed the 4.0 release manually to be consistent with server.
- I know that guest additions should work on guest in principle without installing Virtual Box there but I thought I needed it to install the guest additions.

Installing VBox in the guest can cause problems. You should remove everything VirtualBox from the guest and reboot. Then follow this: Howto: Install Linux Guest Additions

I have the same problem. But how to remove guest additions? In the VB User Manual it says:
sh ./VBoxLinuxAdditions-x86.run uninstall

But I can't open a shell prompt. Ubuntu stops responding as soon as it boots (and I suspect loads a driver that causes problems). What to do?

I have it working now. I unchecked the Enable PAE checkbox for this Ubuntu machine. The system booted fine. Then I re-installed the guest additions. Rebooted. Worked fine. Shut down. Re-checked Enable PAE. Started Ubuntu. So far so good for at least a few minutes!

Thank you for the info on disabling PAE. For good measure I dropped back down to 1 CPU and was able to log back in.

To the developers, I inadvertently ran the Linux guest additions install without switching to root (Ubuntu Natty). On reboot I ended up at Busybox/initrd.sys prompt with no clear means of correcting the situation aside from a multi-hour reinstall. Could you please script some tests and warnings into the install script that check for the presence of optimal prerequisites like dkms and whether current user is root. If not at least copy/paste http://forum.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.p ... 679#p65521 onto the install ISO so we have a better chance of avoiding a clear pitfall.

VirtualBox is an amazing project with some easily corrected sharp edges. Thank you for the incredible work thus far.

Fractal, there are already plenty of checks in it. It does check for root privileges, it checks if the kernel development packages are installed (like kernel-headers) and only when those requirements are met, it continues to install. Dkms is not a required package, it can do without but it is recommended to install it for clean install and smooth kernel upgrades.
As for including my howto in the install ISO, I don't know, it might not be that useful as it adds to the ISO size (though it will just be a few bytes) and things can always change. It's also written for a few distributions and if you want to include a manual like that, more systems should be included. It's also in constant change (not much, but things to change every now and then). It's fine how it is now. The User Manual already has a short install instruction in it.