UNSOLVED: VirtualBox Guest Additions Not Working on elementaryOS -please help

[Meta Master]

I cannot get VirtualBox Guest Additions to work on my elementary OS in my VirtualBox program. I have tried just about all walkthroughs and tutorials online and they have become circular in their reasoning and keep leading me to dead ends insisting things should work when they do not.

This was working until I recently cleared the cache in the terminal. After restarting, the guest additions no longer works.

I just want to be able to resize the resolution but that requires VBox Guest Additions.

Please help with this.

Edit: I am on a Mac Mini 2018 model.

 

[Tolkem]

This was working until I recently cleared the cache in the terminal. After restarting, the guest additions no longer works.

Do you mean you cleared cache in the host or in the guest? What OS are you running in VBox? Linux? Windows? MacOS? Which one? Which VBox version? Also, VBox forum might a better place to ask for help since they know better than most people here https://forums.virtualbox.org/

 

[Meta Master]

Do you mean you cleared cache in the host or in the guest? What OS are you running in VBox? Linux? Windows? MacOS? Which one? Which VBox version? Also, VBox forum might a better place to ask for help since they know better than most people here https://forums.virtualbox.org/

I cleared cache in the guest, in elementary OS which is Linux, on my host macOS Catalina, in the latest version of VirtualBox.

 

[Tolkem]

I cleared cache in the guest, in elementary OS which is Linux, on my host macOS Catalina, in the latest version of VirtualBox.

I see. BTW, looks like I missed that you'd already mentioned the guest on the title as well as in your post, sorry about that. Did you install Vbox guest additions by selecting devices from the menu at the top of the VM window? Did you do it by some other means? Would you mind telling us how you did it? Sorry but I never used macOS, at least not in a regular basis and certainly haven't installed VBox in a macOS pc. Maybe someone else here on the forum has but untill they show up ... I do use VBox and been using for years. For instance, I posted this https://www.linux.org/threads/debian-netinst-in-a-vm.21971/#post-64711 a while ago, you can read it and see if it helps.

 

[Meta Master]

I see. BTW, looks like I missed that you'd already mentioned the guest on the title as well as in your post, sorry about that. Did you install Vbox guest additions by selecting devices from the menu at the top of the VM window? Did you do it by some other means? Would you mind telling us how you did it? Sorry but I never used macOS, at least not in a regular basis and certainly haven't installed VBox in a macOS pc. Maybe someone else here on the forum has but untill they show up ... I do use VBox and been using for years. For instance, I posted this https://www.linux.org/threads/debian-netinst-in-a-vm.21971/#post-64711 a while ago, you can read it and see if it helps.

I tried various methods for installing Vbox Guest Additions. The last method I tried was ejecting the VBox iso from VirtualBox, inserting an empty disc into VirtualBox in the optical drive, going through the various instructions for elementary OS involving get-apt, and that resulted in the disc being loaded with guest additions.

Currently, since it is inserted already, selecting "Insert Guest Additions CD Image..." from the Devices menu while elementary OS is open results in the error ""Unable to insert the virtual optical disk /Applications/VirtualBox.app/Contents/MacOS/VboxGuestAdditions.iso into the machine elementary OS." The VboxGuestAdditions.iso is registered by the VirtualBox program as already inserted. elementaryOS also registers it as inserted.

Upon going to the elementaryOS files menu and clicking under Devices on VBox_GAs_5.2.44 I receive the error "Error mounting volume VBox.GAs_5.2.44" which goes on to say "Error mounting /dev/sr0 at /media/meta/VBox_GAs_5.2.44: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sr0 missing codepage or helper program, or other error" with "meta" being my username.

However, this program was running just fine the day before yesterday so that error does not make sense.

 

[Tolkem]

I tried various methods for installing Vbox Guest Additions. The last method I tried was ejecting the VBox iso from VirtualBox, inserting an empty disc into VirtualBox in the optical drive, going through the various instructions for elementary OS involving get-apt, and that resulted in the disc being loaded with guest additions.

Currently, since it is inserted already, selecting "Insert Guest Additions CD Image..." from the Devices menu while elementary OS is open results in the error ""Unable to insert the virtual optical disk /Applications/VirtualBox.app/Contents/MacOS/VboxGuestAdditions.iso into the machine elementary OS." The VboxGuestAdditions.iso is registered by the VirtualBox program as already inserted. elementaryOS also registers it as inserted.

Upon going to the elementaryOS files menu and clicking under Devices on VBox_GAs_5.2.44 I receive the error "Error mounting volume VBox.GAs_5.2.44" which goes on to say "Error mounting /dev/sr0 at /media/meta/VBox_GAs_5.2.44: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sr0 missing codepage or helper program, or other error" with "meta" being my username.

However, this program was running just fine the day before yesterday so that error does not make sense.

Are you (your user) member of the vboxusers group? If you're not, add yourself to it

sudo usermod -a -G vboxusers your_username

Also, googling took me here https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=98972&p=480925&hilit=guest+additions#p480925 read and see if something there helps.

 

[Meta Master]

Are you (your user) member of the vboxusers group? If you're not, add yourself to it

sudo usermod -a -G vboxusers your_username

Also, googling took me here https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=98972&p=480925&hilit=guest+additions#p480925 read and see if something there helps.

Adding myself did not fix the issue. Following that solution still resulted in the "Error mounting volume VBox.GAs_5.2.44" which goes on to say "Error mounting /dev/sr0 at /media/meta/VBox_GAs_5.2.44: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sr0 missing codepage or helper program, or other error"

 

[Tolkem]

Adding myself did not fix the issue. Following that solution still resulted in the "Error mounting volume VBox.GAs_5.2.44" which goes on to say "Error mounting /dev/sr0 at /media/meta/VBox_GAs_5.2.44: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sr0 missing codepage or helper program, or other error"

You might try downloading guest additions https://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/5.2.44/VirtualBox-5.2.44-139111-OSX.dmg and see if that works. It's always a good practice to create snapshots of the VMs in VBox for and when things like this happens, so you can investigate the error before it does by reverting the VM to a previous working state. See here

and here https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch01.html#snapshots You could try qemu too https://wiki.qemu.org/Hosts/Mac

 

[Meta Master]

I already have that dmg. The VirtualBox forums failed me so I am going to quit using it for Linux and wait to buy a copy of Parallels in the future.

 

[Tolkem]

I already have that dmg. The VirtualBox forums failed me so I am going to quit using it for Linux and wait to buy a copy of Parallels in the future.

I meant to download it once again and try with that one.

 

[javabeangrinder]

It looks like this thread ended up dead in the water so I decided to enter the way I solved it.
I simply made the VBoxGuestAdditions.iso available on the local lan at the host (Mac OS Big Sur) by running python -m SimpleHTTPServer in the folder where the iso-file is at: /Applications/VirtualBox.app/Contents/MacOS/.
I then used the web browser in the guest os to fetch the iso-file to the guest-os (elementary os hera) http://10.0.2.2:8000 on my machine. Find the file and click to download.

I used netstat -rn to find the gateway ip to the host:

$ netstat -rn
Kernel IP routing table
Destination     Gateway         Genmask         Flags   MSS Window  irtt Iface
0.0.0.0         10.0.2.2        0.0.0.0         UG        0 0          0 enp0s3
10.0.2.0        0.0.0.0         255.255.255.0   U         0 0          0 enp0s3
169.254.0.0     0.0.0.0         255.255.0.0     U         0 0          0 enp0s3

Finally I mounted the iso-file in the guest os:

sudo mount VBoxGuestAdditions.iso /mnt/host_download_mountpoint -o loop

And ran the script:

/mnt/host_download_mountpoint/VBoxLinuxAdditions.run

Success!