Installing VBox Guest Additions in a minimal Oracle Enterprise Linux config

Here is a tip to help you to save some time next time you will install Oracle Enterprise Linux as a guest OS in a Virtual Box system.

If, like me, you like to install the minimum set of components and then add whatever is required at a later stage, you will soon find that you can not install the Virtual Box Guest Additions : the installation procedure will complain for missing packages.

Actually, the installation procedure is compiling source code, hence it requires some development tools and the kernel header files. None of these are installed by default when you choose a minimal installation.

First Step : add Oracle repositories to YUM configuration (as root)

cd /etc/yum.repos.d
wget http://public-yum.oracle.com/public-yum-el5.repo

Then ensure that the repositories are enabled, i.e. enabled=1 under [ol5_u5_base] and [el5_u5_base]

Second Step : install missing packages

sudo yum install gcc  make  automake  autoconf kernel-headers.i386 kernel-devel

Then you can proceed with normal VirtualBox Guest Additions installation.

Enjoy !

guestadditions, linux, oracle, tip, virtualbox

This entry was posted on 17/01/2011, 16:01 and is filed under Oracle. You can follow any responses to this entry through RSS 2.0. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

#1 by Mafat Laal on 21/01/2011 - 20:50

Thank you for this information. However, even after successfully executing the steps you have provided, I am getting the following error when I attempt to install VirtualBox Guest Additions:

Kernel panic – not syncing: Fatal exception

Any idea how to resolve this? Thank you.

Quote

#2 by sst on 22/01/2011 - 08:22

I have no idea. I would suggest to ask the question in VirtualBox Support Forums at http://forums.virtualbox.org/

#3 by Naruto on 14/09/2011 - 19:38

Mafat Laal :
Thank you for this information. However, even after successfully executing the steps you have provided, I am getting the following error when I attempt to install VirtualBox Guest Additions:
Kernel panic – not syncing: Fatal exception
Any idea how to resolve this? Thank you.

Edit grub.conf -> Change “default=0” to “default=1” and reboot

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