Installing VirtualBox Guest Addition Ubuntu Server 14.04.3

Blake

Because my office is currently under construction I didn’t have access to my primary desktop machine that runs VMware Workstation. I needed to spin up a Ubuntu Server box to do some testing. It has been a few years since running VirtualBox but I decided to give it a go on my Mac Book Pro.

Installing VirtualBox is straight forward. Follow the on screen steps and you should be up and running. I setup a new VM with the minimum requirements for Ubuntu Server 14.04.3 LTS. All of my Digital Ocean servers run Ubuntu Server 14.04 LTS so I figured I would stick with that.

After installing and updating the new machine, I need to install the guest additions.

  1. Install the required build tools and dependancies.
    2. sudo apt install -y dkms build-essential linux-headers-generic linux-headers-$(uname -r)
  2. Restart VM.
    3. sudo shutdown -r now
  3. Mount the Guest Additions CD from the VirtualBox Menu.

    4. Devices -> Insert Guest Additions CD image

  4. Mount the CD in Ubuntu Server
    5. sudo mount /dev/cdrom /media/cdrom
  5. Change directory to CD
    6. cd /media/cdrom
  6. Guest Additions can now be installed
    7. sudo ./VBoxLinuxAdditions.run

    Ubuntu Server will give you an error about not finding X.org. Don’t worry about it. Guest additions get install anyways.

Restart the VM and that is it! VirtualBox Guest Additions have now been installed.

If you have any questions please let me know below!