• 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)

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

• 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

Check the space available on the disks with df -h

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

# Execute the following commands as root

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

It's also a good thing to clean the journal (note: limiting the journal size probably has to be done only once)

# Execute the following commands as root

du -sh /var/log/journal
journalctl --disk-usage

# Edit the /etc/systemd/journald.conf file and add the following option
# SystemMaxUse=50M
# Then use the following command to restart the service and remove old journal entries

systemctl restart systemd-journald.service

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
  • If the CD icon appears on the desktop, but there is nothing in /run/media, right-click on the icon and select Mount volume
• 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

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

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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