This article aims to guide you through the installation process of Guest Additions on your Linux Mint virtual machine. We will use the terminal for this task, providing a detailed step-by-step tutorial to ensure you can successfully install Guest Additions without any issues.
Guest Additions are designed to be installed on a virtual machine after the guest operating system is installed and include drivers and optimizations for better system performance and availability.
The virtual machine must have better video support (including hardware-accelerated graphics), a shared dashboard, drag-and-drop support between host and hosts, and shared folders when installing VirtualBox Guest Additions.
For example, in Fedora 29, which comes with the VirtualBox Guest Additions package installed by default, you can use VirtualBox 6.0 to change the size of the machine window and enable the shared board between the host and hosts.
Another example: When you install the VirtualBox Guest Additions repository packages in Ubuntu, you can synchronize the clipboard function between the host and guest computers. The drag-and-drop function will also be enabled to share folders between the host and guest computers.
It should be noted that using Ubuntu on a virtual machine, installing guest additions provided by the repository, and using the new VirtualBox 6.0 file manager should allow folder sharing between the host and guest computers.
How to Configure Guest Additions in Mint Virtual Machine
Select Devices> Insert Guest Additions CD image from the VirtualBox program’s menu. Then, run the following command on the terminal.
sudo /media/$USER/VBox_GAs*/VBoxLinuxAdditions.run
If you plan to use shared folders (optional), add your username to the vboxsf group on the guest operating system.
Add the guest computer user name to the vboxsf group (on the guest machine) for shared folders to work:
sudo usermod -aG vboxsf UserName
Without this, you cannot access the shared folder’s contents on the guest’s computer.
This operation is not required to use the new VirtualBox file manager but only for the existing VirtualBox shared folder function.
Now, you should be able to use all the available features of Guest Additions!