98 Comments

1. Barry / January 9, 2013

   I am trying to install guest additions on CentoOS 6.3 running in VirtualBox on a Windows 7 64 bit host.

   Followed all the steps but get the following message in vboxadd-install.log after attempting to run sh ./VBoxLinuxAdditions.run. The only part that failed was the “Building the main Guest Additions module”.

   *** Error: KERN_DIR does not point to a directory.

   I have tried setting KERN_DIR to each of the following without success
   KERN_DIR=/usr/src/kernels/`uname -r`
   KERN_DIR=/usr/src/kernels/2.6.32-279.19.1.e16.x86_64
   KERN_DIR=/usr/src/kernels

   The /usr/src/kernels/2.6.32-279.19.1.e16.x86_64 does exist and has stuff in it. There is only the one directory in /usr/src/kernels

   Any suggestions?

   Reply
   • JR / January 9, 2013

     Hi Barry,

     Did you run export KERN_DIR?

     KERN_DIR=/usr/src/kernels/2.6.32-279.19.1.e16.x86_64 export KERN_DIR

     Reply
   • ken / January 18, 2013

     Make sure you reboot if you did the yum update kernel*.
     I had the same issue until I did.

     Reply
2. Barry / January 10, 2013

   Yes. and I had also run source on the .bashrc file.

   I found this site useful to get dkms installed
   http://saadbinakhlaq.wordpress.com/tag/install-guest-additions/
   Even though I still don’t seem to have guest additions installed properly, I am now able to resize to 1600×1200 resolution.

   Reply
3. Steve / January 10, 2013

   Thanks so much. I was totally stuck on how to get a Centos minimal vm to install the guest additions from bash and your instructions saved the day.

   Thanks!

   S

   Reply
4. kcivi / January 23, 2013

   Absolutely thanks, I have followed all the steps and worked. (Before this, the full screen option had not worked).

   Reply
5. Morgan / February 18, 2013

   For CentOS 6.3 KERN_DIR should be KERN_DIR=/usr/src/kernels/`uname -r`

   uname -m is not needed.

   Reply
   • JR / February 22, 2013

     Hi Morgan,

     And thank you for this note. I updated guide, now just CentOS 5 and RHEL 5 needs uname -m. :)

     Reply
6. Murphy / March 1, 2013

   Thanks for the article! I used to hate trying to install guest additions…

   Reply
7. mohand / March 3, 2013

   The output from terminal after having followed your howto to the letter:
   [root@mohand VBOXADDITIONS_4.2.6_82870]# ./VBoxLinuxAdditions.run
   Verifying archive integrity… All good.
   Uncompressing VirtualBox 4.2.6 Guest Additions for Linux……….
   VirtualBox Guest Additions installer
   Removing existing VirtualBox DKMS kernel modules [ OK ]
   Removing existing VirtualBox non-DKMS kernel modules [ OK ]
   Building the VirtualBox Guest Additions kernel modules
   Building the main Guest Additions module [ÉCHOUÉ]
   (Look at /var/log/vboxadd-install.log to find out what went wrong)
   Doing non-kernel setup of the Guest Additions [ OK ]
   Installing the Window System drivers
   Installing X.Org Server 1.13 modules [ OK ]
   Setting up the Window System to use the Guest Additions [ OK ]
   You may need to restart the hal service and the Window System (or just restart
   the guest system) to enable the Guest Additions.

   Installing graphics libraries and desktop services componen[ OK ]

   Is there a workaround?

   Thanks for your contribution.

   Mohand

   Reply
   • JR / March 3, 2013

     Hi Mohand,

     Could you post content of /var/log/vboxadd-install.log file?

     And output of following commands:

     rpm -qa kernel\* gcc dkms make bzip2   uname -a   lsb_release -a

     Reply
8. mohand / March 6, 2013

   Hi JR (Stetson and big smile?)

   Thanks anyway, I managed to solve the issue by updating dkms and everything is OK now with the guest additions.

   Reply
9. David Dyer-Bennet / March 21, 2013

   Fails on Centos 6.3 (running in VirtualBox on Windows 7). The mount command responds “you must specify the filesystem type”. (Specifying “-t autofs” or “-t iso9660″ give various other failures).

   Devices / Install Guest Additions may not be working right for some reason. It does un-grey the CD icon in the bottom of the window, though (whereas Devices / CD / Remove disk greys it out).

   This is not an initial installation, I’m attempting to upgrade what’s inside the virtual machine in case it matters, after upgrading to 4.2.10 externally.

   Reply
10. pookieman / March 25, 2013

    Very useful.. thanks for writing up!

    Reply
11. Art / April 20, 2013

    Thanks, needed to figure out what t was needed to get the virtualbox update on openSuse 12.3 so your part on:

    yum install gcc kernel-devel kernel-headers dkms make bzip2

    solved it

    used yast instead ( kernel-headers not needed)

    thanks

    Reply