Site logo
Stories around the Genode Operating System RSS feed
Josef Söntgen avatar

Download Debian VM and the VirtualBox Guest Additions


Since most of the previous launchers but a few vital ones are gone and superseded by the index mechanism, the download_debian package is now located in Depot → cnuke → Virtual Machines → download_debian. As Debian's guest-additions packages might target a newer VirtualBox host version it is now recommended to install them in a different way to properly match the currently supported host version.

THIS POST IS SUPERSEDED BY https://genodians.org/jws/2019-07-08-download_debian-guest-additions-reloaded.

To download Debian's netinst.iso file, the download_debian package needs access to a file system (called target) on which to store it. The file system in question that should be selected is the vm_fs. This file system, or rather chroot for that matter, points to the <default-fs>/vm/debian directory that is also used by the vbox5-nova-sculpt package.

After the download_debian package has been run, the .iso was downloaded

- the progress log window can now be resized! - the package may be removed from the system and Debian can be installed as always.

Now, to enjoy the proper VM integration features, it is necessary to install the guest-additions. Previously, we relied on Debian's backport packages to provide the support. Those, however, might target a newer VirtualBox host version then we have on Genode (at the time of writing this is still 5.1.x), let us better make sure to use matching additions. We do that by installing the matching ones directly from the VBoxGuestAdditions.iso downloaded from the VirtualBox website from within the Debian VM:

$ su -
# apt update
# apt install --no-install-recommends linux-headers-amd64 make
# wget https://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/5.1.38/VBoxGuestAdditions_5.1.38.iso
# mount -o loop VBoxGuestAdditions_5.1.38.iso /mnt
# sh /mnt/VBoxLinuxAdditions.run
# umount /mnt
# reboot

After the guest-additions are installed and the guest system was rebooted you should have working shared-folder, dynamic-resolution and mouse-pointer-shape (that is, if you have routed the shape report to the themed_wm) support.