VirtualBox Installation Tips

Installing VirtualBox is pretty easy, but there are a few steps that are now such straightforward or obvious.

First of all, you will not be able to run vboxmanage, VirtualBox's powerful command line interface, untill you append its path to Windows' System environment PATH variable. These are the steps:

• Open the Windows menu and right click on "Computer"
• Select "Properties"
• Select "Advenced system settings"
• Select "Environment variables"
• Select the "Path" variable and click Edit
• Append this: ";C:\Program Files\innotek VirtualBox" wighout the quotes

After you installed some Linux distro in a new VM, you better install the VirtualBox Additions, which will improve the mouse and keyboard integration between the host and the guest, among some other performance enhancements. These are the steps:

• A couple packages are required to build the Additions program: linux-headers for your current kernel version (check with "uname -a") and the C compiler gcc.
• Mount the Additions installation CD in your guest OS desktop: in the VM window menu select Devices > Install Additions
• cd /media/cdrom
• (as root run) sh ./VBoxLinuxAdditions.run
• That's it, that simple!

Lastly, remember that whenever you install an updated version of VirtualBox, your VMs' settings have to be updated also, using the command line: vboxmanage updatesettings