Missing VBoxGuestAdditions.ISO?

[deleted]

WetGeek Mount the ISO in the drive.

WetGeek

[deleted] Mount the ISO in the drive.

How? Have you ever used VirtualBox? And what .ISO? The one that I can't successfully download from the link you posted? I quoted from the manual in the first message in this thread. It explains where the guest additions .ISO should be installed. That's supposed to be part of the installation of the product, and it always has been in the past.

[deleted]

WetGeek You can mount the guest additions ISO like you would any other disc image. Just that you can't open it with Ark tells nothing.

Also, here's the package history including details of every included and modified file within virtualbox packages, feel free to point out when the ISO has been removed: https://dev.getsol.us/source/virtualbox/history/master/

WetGeek

[deleted] You can mount the guest additions ISO like you would any other disc image.

No one so far has explained why this .ISO is not present in the VirtualBox installation folder, so VirtualBox can install it on guest OSs, except @EbonJaeger , who says it's not there because it's not in the package. The question then becomes, "why isn't it in the package"? It's supposed to be there, according to the VirtualBox documentation.

When it's been downloaded directly from virtualbox.org in the past (not a good idea, according to Solus), it's always been opened by VirtualBox after the download, and installed in its installation folder. This time, it was opened by default by Ark.

So, VirtualBox is not working the way it should, because it's installation is not putting the guest additions where they should be installed. It's not putting it anywhere.

WetGeek

[deleted] You can mount the guest additions ISO like you would any other disc image

Success, finally! After the first download of the guest additions .ISO file failed, and the default application to open it (Ark) failed the second time, I assumed it wasn't valid. But just to check for sure, I connected with my NAS, copied the .ISO file from the Downloads.Linux folder there to the Downloads.Windows folder, and mounted it in the Windows VM's DVD drive.

And I'm happy to say that it was able to successfully install those additions from the .ISO that appeared to me to be broken. It should have been opened by VirtualBox, and installed where VirtualBox could find it. I'm going to do that manually now.

I apologize if this thread has seemed adversarial at times. That was not my intention. In the current version of virtualbox.org, in the Downloads section, I could find no link to install the guest additions, as there was in the past. Thus, the only way I thought it could be installed anymore was via the host machine.

I'd STILL like to know where the VirtualBox installation folder is, so I can manually copy this .ISO there.

EbonJaeger

WetGeek I'd STILL like to know where the VirtualBox installation folder is, so I can manually copy this .ISO there.

/usr/lib64/virtualbox

The guest additions iso has definitely never been included by us; it's separate from the source tarball. Debian and the official Virtualbox package have a separate package for it which just downloads it and plops it in /usr/share/virtualbox/. Fedora and Arch also don't ship this file. If you want to make this easier to do with the package manager in the future, I would encourage you to file a package inclusion request.

WetGeek

EbonJaeger The guest additions iso has definitely never been included by us;

I realize that now. And I remember downloading versions of it from virtualbox.org in the past, after which VirtualBox was the default application to open it. That's apparently how it got installed in the same folder as VirtualBox, itself.

That didn't happen this time. I'm sorry for any stress I might have created in my attempts to get to the bottom of this. I suspect it may not have been installed on Solus together with VirtualBox is because the guest additions probably contains non-FOSS drivers and such. Thus, on systems that strive to be FOSS-only, VirtualBox can be installed without the additions.

Why the web site no longer includes a link to download the guest additions is a mystery I don't want to pursue. My Windows 10 VM is now a pleasure to use, and I thank everyone who was involved in making it so.

WetGeek

EbonJaeger I would encourage you to file a package inclusion request.

Done. I don't know how strongly Solus attempts to be 100% FOSS, so I don't know whether it can be installed by default with VirtualBox, but I figured it's worth asking. Perhaps it could be installed to the same location (per the user manual), but from a separate package that Solus provides? I don't think there's any ethical difference between that and requiring that users go somewhere else on the Internet and download it from there.

Both of the locations you mentioned have sub-folders, such that I'm not confident that I could get the .ISO in the right place -- the place where VirtualBox looks for it -- so I didn't copy it anywhere.

WetGeek

@EbonJaeger : I've discussed the problem with using VirtualBox VMs full-screen on a Wayland session. (Total lockup of the host and guest). I know I asked in the forum so I could find out whether anyone else could reproduce the problem, but I don't remember getting a confirmation.

I don't believe that I've written a bug report in Dev Tracker for this, and I couldn't find it there. But you've been able to locate entries before that I couldn't. Can you tell if such a bug authored by me is there? If so, what's its status? If a bug isn't there already, I'll create one now.

This seems to be a VirtualBox problem, but it needs to be investigated. I can use a Boxes VM at full screen in a Wayland session with no such problem. Doing that with a VirtualBox VM immediately causes a lockup.

ermo

The way I see it, @WetGeek, you're about an inch away from volunteering yourself to become the maintainer of VirtualBox on Solus.

WetGeek

@EbonJaeger : Please disregard my previous post. I DID file a bug for this problem, and it was assigned a normal priority and the project Wayland by TClark77. (ManiphestT10541) I searched again, using different terms, and found it.

Apparently nothing has been done yet - at least, no further comments have been added after mine.

EbonJaeger

WetGeek If I remember correctly, you discovered that it occurs on other distros as well, indicating that it's an upstream issue, which you'd have to wait for the VirtualBox devs (or whoever else it is) to solve. It's not shown in the issue, but I thought I read that in a forum post.

Also, please keep in mind that all of us have been very busy on various stack upgrades and package updates that we're finally catching up on from 3 or so months of downtime, plus a lot of other things that haven't been shared publically.

WetGeek

EbonJaeger If I remember correctly, you discovered that it occurs on other distros as well, indicating that it's an upstream issue

Yes, and I didn't know at the time whether it was an Oracle issue (for VirtualBox) or a KDE issue (for Wayland). My money is now on VirtualBox, because I've created a number of VMs with Boxes that do NOT lock up anything when used at full screen in a Wayland session.

WetGeek

I understand it's been what we used to call "crunch time" where I worked, and I can sympathize. I've slept at my desk a time or two.

If you talk to @ermo, please tell him I just finished reading "Prepare for Packaging" in the Help Center. He locked our discussion before I could reply to him. I have a good development workstation that's been getting lonely these last few years, and I've used tools like make and git at work. My ambition is to help with the packaging, but right now I need to make sure my ambition doesn't exceed my current ability.

I plan to set up a development environment on that workstation, and further evaluate the idea. Is there currently no packager for VirtualBox?

ermo

WetGeek If you talk to @ermo, please tell him I just finished reading "Prepare for Packaging" in the Help Center.

Thank You.

I have a good development workstation that's been getting lonely these last few years, and I've used tools like make and git at work. My ambition is to help with the packaging, but right now I need to make sure my ambition doesn't exceed my current ability.

FWIW, I personally view this as an extremely commendable attitude.

I plan to set up a development environment on that workstation, and further evaluate the idea. Is there currently no packager for VirtualBox?

In general, for complex software packages, it's better for everyone if the maintainer is someone who uses the software on a regular basis and is hence intimately familiar with both its features, its shortcomings and its corner cases.

Seeing as you appear to be using it extensively, on the face of it, you would appear to be an ideal fit for VBox plus its guest additions.

If you want to try your hand at packaging, I encourage you to join the -devel matrix room so you can get feedback and tips in real time from other packagers.

WetGeek

ermo If you want to try your hand at packaging, I encourage you to join the -devel matrix room so you can get feedback and tips in real time from other packagers.

I'm not sure how to do that. In fact, I have little experience with Mastodon, Fosstodon, etc. Do I get to matrix from there, or do I need to start from somewhere else, like dev.getsol.us?

I've finished all the steps in setting up my server for packaging, but when I tried to make virtualbox, I got an error message about "Failed to load package: open pspec.xml: no such file or directory", so obviously I must have missed a step, or didn't understand something.

It sounds like I need to get into the -devel matrix room to get some help with this.

ermo

WetGeek It sounds like I need to get into the -devel matrix room to get some help with this.

https://getsol.us/ <- in the top right of the header, there's a link to "Matrix". Click that and you'll be well on your way. 🙂