Installing VirtualBox 2.2 Guest Additions on Fedora 10

Scenario: Run Fedora 10 as a guest OS in VirtualBox 2.2.0 on Windows XP.

Start with downloading the Fedora 10 Live CD from FedoraProject and boot it in a new VirtualBox VM. Once the Live CD has started, use the "install to disk" option on the desktop to, well, install it on the virtual machine's disk. This should run smoothly and leave you, after rebooting with the Live CD removed, with a usable Fedora system inside the Virtual Box VM.

Now the real work begins: In order to install the Guest Additions (VMware users, think VMware Tools), it is not sufficient to just run the installer from the disk, that is mounted for you, when you select [Devices] > [Install Guest Additions ...] menu of Virtual Box. Most likely, this will fail.

Several forum posts suggest, you need to install/update the kernel headers und sources, but even that is not sufficient.

For the next steps it is important that you work with root privileges. Open a Terminal and type su - to work as root (provide password when prompted).

What worked for me was to follow this post and add everything kernel to my Fedora: yum install binutils gcc make patch libgomp glibc-headers glibc-devel kernel-headers kernel-devel And then, like this fellow suggested, run yum update over your whole system (takes some time, updates a lot) and reboot.

After the reboot, just for thrills, run yum update kernel-headers and yum update kernel-devel – this should not result in any more updates!

By then it's time for another run at that install script: [root@fedoravm VBOXADDITIONS_2.2.0_45846]# sh VBoxLinuxAdditions-x86.run – which should run smoothly now, install all the guest additions and, after the reboot, reward you with smooth integration of the Fedora VBOX into your Windows. For example, resizing the VBOX window changes the screen resolution of Fedora inside the box. Clipboard integration also works; mouse pointer crosses border between real and virtual box without a bump.

If I wasn't so exhausted by the whole snafu, I'd be excited.

I am no Linux expert, but from what I glanced over, there seem to be some parts lacking in the Live CD setup that the Guest Additions need, like kernel headers and stuff like that. The yum install above partially takes care of that, but I think it needs the yum update to get everything into sync, so that the install script can find its way around.

Anyway, best of luck for those of you on the same endeavor!

(You might want to comment if you find one step missing in this. Please do! (If you're reading this of the blog's frontpage, click this post's heading to go to the single post view, where there's the comment function at the end.))