• Download the latest version of VB, and the matching VB additions file from the VirtualBox web site
• Execute the VirtualBox-NN1234-Win.exe installer
• 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
  • 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
• Do not forget to update the guest additions (see below)

• 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 update –disablerepo lsce

• Is there a cleanup step or a temporary directory to remove?

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, 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
  OpenGL shading language version string: 4.40 NVIDIA via Cg compiler
  OpenGL extensions:
• You can get some additional information (including the screen resolution) with the xdpyinfo
  xdpyinfo | less

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

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