virtualbox guest additions problem, ububtu-17.04

[Liam Proven]

On 14 September 2017 at 03:06, Stuart McGraw <smcg4191 at mtneva.com> wrote:

>
> Turns out (I think) that the VirtualBox Guest Additions for
> my version of VirtualBox (5.1.10)

Is there a particular reason that you're running an out-of-date version of VBox?

I suggest either running the version from your distro's repos -- this
is what works best with Vagrant, for instance -- or the current
version.

> I still don't understand what all the virtualbox-guest-*
> packages in the Ubuntu repositories are for but other
> than curiosity it is moot for me at this point.

The VBox hypervisor is now fully open source.

There used to be 2 editions -- a FOSS edition, VBox OSE, and a
proprietary freeware one which had some more advanced functionality
such as USB2 support for guests.

Later, the proprietary parts were moved into the VBox Extension Pack
and the main product became entirely FOSS. That's why it's now in the
Ubuntu repos, for instance.

So the hypervisor is FOSS, but the extension pack isn't. However, you
can run without the extension pack if you choose.

As it says on https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads ...

«
VirtualBox 5.1.26 Oracle VM VirtualBox Extension Pack  All supported platforms
Support for USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 devices, VirtualBox RDP, disk
encryption, NVMe and PXE boot for Intel cards. See this chapter from
the User Manual for an introduction to this Extension Pack.
The Extension Pack binaries are released under the VirtualBox Personal
Use and Evaluation License (PUEL).
»

The extension pack is different from and separate from the guest additions.

See here for more on the guest additions:

https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch04.html

The FOSS version had its own guest additions. These too are in the
repos and have been for years.

The direct-download version too has its own additions.

It is recommended to keep the host hypervisor and guest additions
versions the same.

Before, when there were 2 editions, it was convenient, if you were
running the FOSS edition, to run the FOSS additions inside a FOSS
guest, because then they are automatically updated along with the
guest OS -- same as the hypervisor would be automatically updated with
a FOSS host OS. However, they did work with the direct-download
hypervisor too.

Now, it doesn't matter which edition's guest additions you use, so
long as you keep them current. However, it's convenient to use the
FOSS additions since they're right there in the repos if you're
running a FOSS guest.

Many FOSS OSes include the additions pre-installed to facilitate
installing and running in a VM. For example, desktops which require
OpenGL acceleration to render the display (Unity, GNOME 3, Cinnamon)
do not run well inside a VM, but the guest additions enable rendering
to be passed over to the host's GPU, making them perform reasonably
well -- at a slight compatibility risk, e.g. of display corruption.

Summary:

[1] run the latest VBox: either the latest one with your OS, or the
latest downloadable version.
[2] keep the guest additions current, too.

Corollary to these points:

[3] if you need something that's in a more recent version of the guest
additions, then you probably ought to upgrade the host hypervisor as
well.


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