VirtualBox Guest Additions on Fedora, CentOS & RHEL

This is guide, howto install Oracle VirtualBox Guest Additions on Fedora, CentOS and Red Hat (RHEL). This guide should work with Fedora 26/25/24/23/22/21/20/19/18/17/16, CentOS 7.3/6.9/5.11, Red Hat (RHEL) 7.3/6.9/5.11.

VirtualBox Guest Additions is special software that can be installed inside Linux virtual machines to improve performance and make integration much more seamless. Among the features provided by these VirtualBox Guest Additions are mouse pointer integration and arbitrary screen solutions (e.g. by resizing the guest window).

Install VirtualBox Guest Additions on Fedora, CentOS and Red Hat (RHEL)

1. Change root user

Bash

su -
## OR ##
sudo -i

2. Make sure that you are running latest kernel

Update virtual machine kernel and reboot

Bash

## Fedora 26/25/24/23/22 ##
dnf update kernel*

## Fedora 21/20/19/18/17/16, CentOS/RHEL 7/6/5 ##
yum update kernel*

reboot

3. Mount VirtualBox Guest Additions

Click Devices > Install Guest Additions… on VirtualBox
VirtualBox Install Guest Additions

Mount VirtualBox Guest Additions device

Bash

mkdir /media/VirtualBoxGuestAdditions
mount -r /dev/cdrom /media/VirtualBoxGuestAdditions

4. Install following packages

On CentOS/Red Hat (RHEL) 7/6/5, EPEL repo is needed

Bash

## CentOS 7 and Red Hat (RHEL) 7 ##
rpm -Uvh https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-7.noarch.rpm

## CentOS 6 and Red Hat (RHEL) 6 ##
rpm -Uvh https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-6.noarch.rpm
 
## CentOS 5 and Red Hat (RHEL) 5 ##
rpm -Uvh https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-5.noarch.rpm

Install following packages

Bash

## Fedora 26/25/24/23/22 ##
dnf install gcc kernel-devel kernel-headers dkms make bzip2 perl

## Fedora 21/20/19/18/17/16/15/14/13/12, CentOS/RHEL 7/6/5 ##
yum install gcc kernel-devel kernel-headers dkms make bzip2 perl

If you have CentOS/RHEL 6.7 then check this comment. You need older kernel.

5. Add KERN_DIR environment variable

Bash

## Current running kernel on Fedora, CentOS 7/6 and Red Hat (RHEL) 7/6 ##
KERN_DIR=/usr/src/kernels/`uname -r`

## Current running kernel on CentOS 5 and Red Hat (RHEL) 5 ##
KERN_DIR=/usr/src/kernels/`uname -r`-`uname -m`

## Fedora example ##
KERN_DIR=/usr/src/kernels/2.6.33.5-124.fc13.i686

## CentOS and Red Hat (RHEL) example ##
KERN_DIR=/usr/src/kernels/2.6.18-194.11.1.el5-x86_64

## Export KERN_DIR ##
export KERN_DIR

6. Install Guest Additions

Bash

cd /media/VirtualBoxGuestAdditions

# 32-bit and 64-bit systems run following
./VBoxLinuxAdditions.run

Output looks like following:

[root@fedora VBoxGuestAdditions]# ./VBoxLinuxAdditions.run 
Verifying archive integrity... All good.
Uncompressing VirtualBox 4.1.6 Guest Additions for Linux.........
VirtualBox Guest Additions installer
Removing installed version 4.1.6 of VirtualBox Guest Additions...
Removing existing VirtualBox DKMS kernel modules           [  OK  ]
Removing existing VirtualBox non-DKMS kernel modules       [  OK  ]
Building the VirtualBox Guest Additions kernel modules
Building the main Guest Additions module                   [  OK  ]
Building the shared folder support module                  [  OK  ]
Building the OpenGL support module                         [  OK  ]
Doing non-kernel setup of the Guest Additions              [  OK  ]
You should restart your guest to make sure the new modules are actually used

Installing the Window System drivers
Installing X.Org Server 1.11 modules                       [  OK  ]
Setting up the Window System to use the Guest Additions    [  OK  ]
You may need to restart the hal service and the Window System (or just restart
the guest system) to enable the Guest Additions.

Installing graphics libraries and desktop services componen[  OK  ]

7. Reboot guest system

Bash

reboot

Then VirtualBox Guest Additions install is ready.