VirtualBox Guest Additions won't install on Ubuntu Server 12.04

Question

I am trying to install VitrualBox's Guest Additions on Ubuntu Server 12.04, but keep getting an error. I am using the following command sudo ./VBoxLinuxAdditions.run --nox11 and get the following error:

Answer 1

I had the same problem when running the installer from the vbox additions iso, but running sudo apt-get install virtualbox-guest-utils worked fine. I did an apt-cache search virtualbox to verify the name of the package before attempting the install.

I did however, run the command suggested by Gregory above (as I was trying to get the installer to work from the iso, which it never did), but that may or may not have had an impact.

Answer 2

I had the same issue. Install some additional packages and every thing will be fine:

sudo apt-get install build-essential linux-headers-$(uname -r)

Answer 3

I had a similar problem and unfortunately none of the previously suggested solutions helped. What I did in the end was uninstall VirtualBox & install the latest version. This also meant that my version of the Guest Additions went from v4.1.18 to v4.2.4. Once I restarted my Virtual Machine created with the previous VirtualBox version, I was able to mount the guest additions ISO & run the VBoxLinuxAdditions script. You still get the error with the Window System drivers but that's to be expected with Ubuntu Server.

So I suggest giving an update of VirtualBox (and therefore the Guest Additions ISO) a try as well.

Answer 4

I got that same error message, and installed the some dkms packages. I use Synaptic for package management, so I searched for dkms, and found dkms, virtualbox-guest-dkms, and virtualbox-ose-guest-dkms.

I don't remember which ones were already installed, but I have all of those installed currently. After installing them, I reran the guest additions installation successfully.