March 19, 2009 · General ·

Sponsored Link
When you try to install Guest Additions in Ubuntu 9.04 alpha6 . After executing the installer

sudo sh ./VBoxLinuxAdditions-x86.run x11

You might see similar to the following error

Warning: unknown version of the X Window System installed. Not installing
X Window System drivers.

One possible explanation to this is that the 2.1.4 vbox video drivers do not yet support Xorg version which ships with Alpha 6.

Work around for this problem

Mount the VirtualBox Guest Additions CD. You can do this from Devices > Install Guest Additions

Applications > Accessories > Terminal and enter the following command to enter in to you cdrom

$cd /media/cdrom/

Extract the the installer

sudo ./VBoxLinuxAdditions-x86/amd46.run --target /vbox

Note:- Select your hardware architecture file to extract i.e x86/amd64 and vbox is sample directory you can choose where ever you want to extract.

Now you need to edit the install.sh file (Inthis case i am in vbox directory)

sudo gedit install.sh

In Line 415 change

1.5.99.* | 1.6 )

to

1.5.99.* | 1.6.0 )

Save and exit the file

Note:- This is needed, because the version that is returned by X -version is 1.6.0, not 1.6.

Now run your installer using the following command

sudo ./install.sh

After completing installation Reboot your system.

That's it enjoy your virtualbox

Source from Virtualbox forum

Sponsored Link

31 Comments to “Ubuntu 9.04(Jaunty) and Virtualbox video driver for X(Guest Additions)”

  1. Why not just install virtualbox-ose-guest-utils package?

  2. Vadim P. says:

    Aha, thanks Alberto, your comment has been way more useful for my OSE edition than all these duplicated posts for the PUEL version.

  3. Morten Andresen says:

    Hi
    Have been struckling with this since the first releases of 9.04 alpha….. Your solution works just fine – just solved the problem for Xubuntu 904 alpha 6 – THANKS !

    Morten

  4. Hi,

    This is not valid for the new VirtualBox version 2.2.0 Beta1 (http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/2.2.0_BETA1/). There is a “1.6.*” instead “1.6” inside the install.sh but the Guest Additions produces the same error on ubuntu 9.04..

  5. Ian says:

    This works, solved my problem with Ubuntu 9.04 Alpha 6.

    Daniel, I would tend not to run a beta Vbox with an Alpha OS, it really would be hard to decide what was not working!

  6. DK says:

    I got same like Daniel .. any ideas ? plz repost

  7. C Chester says:

    Hey thanks for the tip but I can’t extract the VBoxLinuxAdditions-x86.run file so I can edit it. I tried your command and use the file that I had but the program just runs again.

    Can you help me out on this? Thanks.

  8. Ron says:

    excellent solution, thanks

  9. Neil says:

    @ C Chester.

    Be very careful of your typing here, especially the two dashes and *no space* before the word target. This doesn’t show quite right in a blog post for boring typographical reasons…

  10. DK says:

    OK there is solution. 2 days ago sun lunched additions beta 2 which works fine winth ubuntu 9.04 … but im wondering why nobody mention about this .. about this release ?

  11. Sasquatch says:

    Everyone with issues installing the GA, read the source. Second page has a fix for the 2.2 beta2 GA. Also made by me.

  12. gosc says:

    Great solution. Thank U 🙂

  13. frenchmustard says:

    C Chester. The problem is that the command as written simply changes the directory for the temporary files. It till runs and then deletes the files. You should use the following command ,

    sudo ./VBoxlinuxAdditions-86.run –target ./vboxtmp –keep –noexec

    this will

    1) create a subdirectory called vboxtmp under the current directory and will unpack all the files into that directory.
    2) Keep them by not running the cleen up routine.
    3) Not execute the install.sh script

    You can now go into ./vboxtmp and edit the install.sh file. I would change 1.6 to 1.6.* just in case.

    Note that the run file name may be different depending on your target architecture. Mine was obviously 32 bit x86.

  14. C Chester says:

    Thanks for the reply frenchmustard.

    I copied and pasted your command in the terminal “sudo ./VBoxlinuxAdditions-86.run –target ./vboxtmp –keep –noexec” without the quotes and got command not found.
    I also tried “sudo ./VBoxlinuxAdditions-x86.run –target ./vboxtmp –keep –noexec” as well without the quotes and got the same error because I saw that was the name of the file.

    I did this in terminal mode but not inside the virtualbox do I need to be inside the virtual box to run the command?

    Thanks for any more help.

  15. Joao Milasch says:

    Amazing, everything is working… Thanks!!!

    Chester, what I did was to create a vbox folder under my user’s directory:

    mkdir /home/milasch/vbox

    Then I did:

    cd /media/cdrom (after mounting the cd of course)
    ./VBoxLinuxAdditions-x86.run –target /home/vbox -keep –noexec

    it was there… I think probably you aren’t mounting the additions cd correctly.

    So all you have to do is to click under Install Additions to Guest, and if ubuntu didn’t mount automatically for you you have to:

    sudo mount /dev/cdrom /media/cdrom

    Thats it!

  16. thierrybo says:

    With the official Jaunty release and Vbox 2.04 OSE running on my Intrepid host, the easiest way is to install virtualbox-ose-guest-utils package as stated in the first post. It simply works, no need to deal with extracting/editing anything.

  17. thierrybo says:

    oops, I spoke too soon. If the video problem is solved, the copy/paste between guest/host does not work anymore for me 🙁

  18. Winston says:

    Hey ya’ll,

    I used the following command in order to get the package to expand:

    ./VBoxLinuxAdditions-x86.run –target /home/winston/Desktop/GA/ –keep –noexec

    Where “/home/winston/Desktop/GA/” is the location of the folder where the extracted files were to go. I also had to enter the command as root (by entering “sudo su” in the terminal).

    Please let me know if I have misworded anything.

    Cheers!

  19. dude says:

    Thank you thank you! I wouldn’t have figured this out in a million years 🙂

  20. Winston says:

    Hey ya’ll,

    I forgot to mention that I am using the Ubuntu 9.04 *.ISO which I downloaded on the 24th of April, 2009.

    Also, when you are editing the “install.sh” file; I had to change the following: “1.6.*” TO “1.6.0” b/c my “X -version” said “1.6.0”.

    Hope this is helpful for anyone who was having similar issues.

    Cheers!

  21. greg says:

    Thank you, thank you, thank you.

    I love you and I want to have your babies (but will need a small operation first) 🙂

  22. Steve says:

    Thanks! Saved me hours of trying to figure out what happened after my upgrade from 8.10…

  23. David says:

    This is what worked for me, it had to be in the following order (/1 being the directory I created):

    sudo ./VBoxLinuxAdditions-x86.run –noexec –keep –target /1

  24. David says:

    Also,
    I’m using Virtualbox 2.1.4 on XP-SP3 as host with Ubuntu 9.04.
    Had some issues with Virtualbox 2.2.0 and had to not only un-install but had to do a system restore to the day I installed Virtualbox. Just noticed new version 2.2.2, this might fix the problem?

  25. Winston says:

    David,

    I am running VB 2.2.2 on Leopard. So I am not sure if upgrading to VB 2.2.2 will fix your problem or not; however, I am going to assume that it couldn’t hurt to upgrade to 2.2.2.

    Perhaps some other Members here can shed some better insight into your question.

    If you do happen to upgrade to 2.2.2—please let me know if that fixed your problem. Because, this summer I will be installing VB on my Windows box.

    Cheers!

  26. Garrett says:

    If you are running older than VB 2.2.2 you will get that error, you can then upgrade your VBox to 2.2.2 then reinstall the Vbox drivers using the .run without any additional commands (must sudo still), I had to remount the disk at the command line along with doing the normal install.

    after reboot everything was fine.

  27. threeRd says:

    Thanks! That did the trick!

  28. MAC says:

    ¡Thanks! worked fine!

  29. Loy75 says:

    This fallacy is often used rhetorically, so that the question limits direct replies to those that serve the questioner’s agenda. ,

  30. rock says:

    Great, it’s worked. Thank you.

Leave a Reply

  • Recent comments