Updating VirtualBox

Important reminder: VB host: the machine and operating system where the VB program is running. VB guest: the operating system running inside VB.

Updating the VirtualBox program on the host

Download the latest version of VB, and the matching VB additions file from the VirtualBox web site

Execute the VirtualBox-NN1234-Win.exe installer

Execute VB and download and install the updated VirtualBox Extension Pack if VB tells you that a new pack is available

Do not forget to update the guest additions (see below)

Note about the manual update of the extension pack

It is also possible to manually install the updated extension pack, but there is a risk of losing the settings

Double click on the Oracle_VM_VirtualBox_Extension_Pack-NN1234.vbox-extpack extension pack and follow the instructions

WARNING! VB seems to go back to its default settings during the update (since version 4.3.22?), resulting in an apparent disappearance of the VB after the update!

1) Restore the preferences by hand, as specified in installing_vb_on_a_windows_host

or 2) Go to the directory where the VM is installed (e.g. E:\VirtualBox\VirtualBox VMs\Fedora Core 20 CLIM_ESTIMR) and double click on the XXXXX.vbox setting file located in this directory

Updating the Linux guest system

Updating Linux

Become root in a window: sudo su -

The command to use depends on which network the computer running VB is connected. In both cases, type y at the Is this ok prompt

On the LSCE network: yum update

Outside LSCE: yum --disablerepo lsce update

Cleaning up things

It may be a good idea to clean the yum cache from time to time

du -sh var/cache/yum/
yum clean all
du -sh var/cache/yum/
yum update
du -sh var/cache/yum/

Updating the guest additions

The guest additions are extensions of the guest system that will allow a better integration of the guest and the host:

use the graphics card of the guest instead of the much slower software rendering

better handling of the mouse, the time inside the guest

copy/paste between the host and the guest systems

improved resizing of the guest window

accessing some of the host disks from the guest (ie directory sharing)

many other subtle things...

You have to update the guest additions when you update the Linux guest or you update the VB program running on the host

In the VB window (the one where the guest is running), select Devices->Insert Guest Additions CD Image....

Click on Force unmount in the popup Window, if a previous virtual CD is still present

Click on Cancel if you get a popup window displaying This medium contains software intended to be automatically started. Would you like to run it?

Become root in a window: sudo su -

Check where the CD image has been installed: df -h
The CD should be available in /run/media/your_login/VBOXADDITIONS_NNNN

Go to the additions' directory: cd /run/media/your_login/VBOXADDITIONS_NNNN

Run the installation script: ./VBoxLinuxAdditions.run

Reboot: shutdown -r now

Virtually eject the CD image by selecting in the VB window, Device->CD/DVD Devices->Remove disk from virtual drive

Note: click in Force unmount in the popup Window, if necessary

After rebooting, if you get a smaller VB window and you get a notification telling you that the graphics are running in software rendering mode (and that was not already the case before updating), and when you open a terminal and move the window around, the window is moving more slowly than before, see the note below to check if the guest additions are running or not

Note: you can check the status or force the re-installation of the guest additions with

Status (running or not): /etc/init.d/vboxadd status

Starting manually the guest additions service: /etc/init.d/vboxadd start
Use the setup line below to reinstall the guest additions if you get an error message when trying the start command

Install: /etc/init.d/vboxadd setup

Note: if you want some details about how the graphics are handled by the current installation of you VB (i.e. is your VM using the graphics card of the Windows host or is it running is it use the sloooow software mode?), you can use the following commands

glxgears: if things work correctly, you will get a window with smoothly rotating gears (you can make the window fullscreen and check that it is still working) and the terminal will display some frames per second statistics

You may get some warning and error messages, but you should be good if the gears are rotating smoothly

You can run the glxinfo command and you should see a reference to your graphics card if the video is indeed using it
glxinfo | \grep -i opengl
OpenGL vendor string: Humper
OpenGL renderer string: Chromium
OpenGL version string: 2.1 Chromium 1.9
NVIDIA card => OpenGL shading language version string: 4.40 NVIDIA via Cg compiler
Intel HD Graphics xxxx card => OpenGL shading language version string: 4.00 - Build 10.18.10.3993
OpenGL extensions:

You can get some additional information (including the screen resolution) with the xdpyinfo
xdpyinfo | less

In case of weird graphics problems...

There seems to be some problems linked to some combination of:

Using VB

Using Fedora Core

Support of OpenGL and Mesa

Intel Graphics cards

The Cinnamon desktop

If Cinnamon reports crashes or errors at startup (eg Cinnamon just crashed. You are currently running in Fallback Mode): the errors seem to be related to the graphics acceleration, so try disabling it for the current virtual machine: Settings->Display->Video->(uncheck) Enable 3D Acceleration

https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/12746#comment:11

https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/12941

In case of weird complete crashes, also increase the Video Memory: eg use 32 Mb instead of the minimum limit

[ PMIP3 Wiki Home ] - [ Help! ] - [ Wiki syntax ]