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Where on earth do you get Guest Additions?
Posted: 3. Feb 2018, 08:16
by ljames
I have scoured the web, I have read the manual and help, I have looked under every digital rock. All anyone or anything ever tells you is how to install them — assuming you have them. No one ever tells you where to actually get them. I definitely do not have them. And I definitely cannot find them anywhere. I feel like I am in an alternate universe. Are they a real thing? I can't do a lot of things without them, but there is absolutely no way to track them down. Are they illegal? Do I have to torrent them? This is just plain weird.
Re: Where on earth do you get Guest Additions?
Posted: 3. Feb 2018, 08:54
by andyp73
When you downloaded and installed VirtualBox it includes a file called VBoxGuestAdditions.iso. Mount it into the virtual optical drive of your guest OS and away you go. There are some limitations, of course, guest additions don't exist for all OS.
-Andy,
Re: Where on earth do you get Guest Additions?
Posted: 3. Feb 2018, 11:06
by mpack
ljames wrote:I have read the manual and help
Obviously not true.
The information on how to install the Guest Additions is rather unexpectedly hidden away in the user manual, in the obscurely titled section "4.2 Installing and Maintaining Guest Additions". So let's look at section 4.2.1.1, where it describes how to install them in a Windows guest.
In the “Devices” menu in the virtual machine’s menu bar, VirtualBox has a handy menu item
named “Insert Guest Additions CD image”, which mounts the Guest Additions ISO file inside
your virtual machine. A Windows guest should then automatically start the Guest Additions
installer, which installs the Guest Additions into your Windows guest. Other guest operating
systems (or if automatic start of software on CD is disabled) need manual start of the installer.
All very complicated perhaps.
Re: Where on earth do you get Guest Additions?
Posted: 3. Feb 2018, 11:08
by socratis
I was about to post the same thing, mpack is a faster typist...
I'll just leave my message to Andy then...
@Andy
It may not be easy to find the GAs that way. Yes, they're definitely bundled with VirtulBox, but it's not that easy on all hosts to track the ISO down. The way in the manual is the preferred one...
Re: Where on earth do you get Guest Additions?
Posted: 3. Feb 2018, 11:22
by andyp73
socratis wrote:The way in the manual is the preferred one...
I'll grant you that, but making pithy RTFM comments are probably best coming from the mods and admins rather than us great unwashed!
-Andy.