For the impatient or inattentive: the Debian installer currently detects when it’s executing in a VirtualBox guest VM and installs the guest additions for you during setup. If you think that your installation is bad for some reason, install the virtualbox-ose-guest-x11 package and you’re all set.
Beastie eating a striped apple ... get it?
So, you want to run Debian in VirtualBox at a screen resolution higher than 800×600. Admittedly, this is not a complicated problem to solve, which is precisely why this post is so short.
But first, note that Beastie is eating a striped apple in the image to the left and his tail is actually a Debian logo. This is not important and has virtually nothing to do with this post — I just think it’s funny.
About the environment
Pretty straightforward.
- Host OS: 2.6.39-ARCH GNU/Linux
- Guest OS: Debian Squeeze 6.0.1a
A few prerequisites
You’ll need these:
$ sudo apt-get update $ sudo apt-get install build-essential linux-headers-$(uname -r)
Note: Of course, if you haven’t set yourself up as a sudoer, become root and skip the sudo command.
The gotcha
The virtualbox-ose-guest-x11 is older than the current version in the repository. You know how this works … you use Debian. So you know that for the sake of stability, the bleeding edge version of packages are seldom in the repository. This means that immediately after bringing up your new Debian guest VM, it starts nagging you to upgrade your extensions.
A (the?) solution
Firstly, disable the loading of the guest extensions in the guest VM: Edit /etc/default/virtualbox-ose and set LOAD_VBOXDRV_MODULE to 0. Now, reboot. (Ah! Tiny resolution!)
Now, uninstall the OSE guest additions:
# apt-get remove virtualbox-ose-guest*
Lastly, mount the VBOXADDITIONS ISO and install guest additions from there:
# sh /media/cdrom/VBoxLinuxAdditions.run
![Screenshot-Squeeze Daily #9 [Running] - VirtualBox OSE](http://www.calebscreek.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Screenshot-Squeeze-Daily-9-Running-VirtualBox-OSE.png "Screenshot-Squeeze Daily #9 [Running] - VirtualBox OSE")
Debian testing (squeeze) with VirtualBox Guest Additions installed
Thanks – I know virtually nothing about linux and was able to fix my ubuntu running in VirtualBox
To run the .run script you need to prefix ‘sh’ like
sh ….run
BUT installing the guest addition inside debian is easier and gets the dependencies (build the kernel) automaticly and fixes the resulution, the run variant didn’t do that.
Confirmed, thanks. (And ridiculously obvious when I think about it!) Of course, these days, installing Debian >= 6.0 into a VirtualBox VM results in the guest additions being automatically installed for you. Cheers!