28 thoughts on “New Ubuntu Question”

  1. Install the guest additions.

    VirtualBox menu on the VM window: Devices->”Insert Guest Additions CD”

    Double click on “autorun.sh” when the CD file manager window opens. Type in your user password. Wait for installation.

    The Ubuntu VM will now autoadjust the resolution to match your window size.

    The VirtualBox manual is quite good. https://www.virtualbox.org/manual You should read chapter 1 (to learn about the host key) and chapter 4 (to learn about what you get from using the guest additions provide, including seamless windows).

      1. It’s a virtual CD, and assumes you configured your VM with a virtual CD drive. It’s an add-on to VirtualBox that you have to separately download and install into VirtualBox to make it available.

        No real CDs were harmed in creating this.

      2. Some notes:

        From

        https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads

        you need to download the “Oracle VM VirtualBox Extension Pack.” Be sure to match the version of VirtualBox you are running. Since my experience is with Windows hosts/Linux guests (VMs), I don’t know how to install it on a Linux host.

        I believe the Extension Pack is closed source. Open Source purists might have a problem with that.

          1. “Devices” should be one of the items you have on the menu bar that you see at the bottom (default) of the window that shows your VM’s (Ubuntu’s) screen while it is running.

            Also, going back to draining the swamp (the original problem), doesn’t this window have scroll bars?

            https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch01.html#intro-resize-window

            I’m assuming that Fedora is your host and Ubuntu is your VM aka guest.

          2. “Devices” should be one of the items you have on the menu bar that you see at the bottom (default) of the window that shows your VM’s (Ubuntu’s) screen while it is running.

            Not seeing anything like that. No “menu bar.”

          3. Also, on that bottom-feeding menu bar you have icons, not words.

            We’re assuming you can see it at all. What do you do if your window is larger than a physical screen in Fedora(?) and therefore you cannot see the bottom edge? I mean in a general case. It could happen in OpenOffice.

  2. When you are running the VM, click Devices and at the bottom of the list it should have something like “Insert guest additions CD image” Its not a real physical CD, its a simulated CD that will get attached to your running instance, as if you stuck in a CD into it’s drive. Inside you will find some install scripts that will compile a daemon that talks to your VM manager window, allows you to resize it dynamically, amongst other things. Can’t recall if there’ anything Ubuntu specific in there but it should allow you to compile kernel modules for the good stuff.

        1. One more thing. I assume you aren’t used to the Ubuntu window manager. Click on a program (in this case, the actual VM window), and then if you go to the bar along the top of the screen you can access the menus that program provides. Pretty much every other window manager puts it on the window.

          I prefer it at the top of the screen, but HATE that it hides the menus unless you put the mouse pointer on the bar. It causes no end of trouble when trying to explain to people how to do things.

        2. Host is Fedora, Gnome. That menu in the second shot does not appear in my Ubuntu virtual window. I see the things on the upper right, but nothing on upper left.

          Here‘s what I’m seeing.

          1. The menu option you want is on the window, not in it. In other words, show me a screenshot of your Gnome desktop, with VirtualBox running, don’t show me what is inside the VirtualBox window.

          2. Oh wait… It’s hard to tell what I was looking at there.

            Please minimize the “Oracle VM VirtualBox Manager”. It is NOT the window you care about.

            The window you care about is the running VM. I don’t know your Window manager. Are the window menus for that window under the dropdown on the top menu bar, labeled “Oracle VM virtualbox”?

  3. Well, good. Click on the bit that says “Ubuntu [Running] …”, then click on the bar right at the top of the screen to see your menus. If that doesn’t work, click on the little triangle to the right of the application, on the top bar (I’m guessing here. Maybe they did something extra obtuse).

    The basic problem here seems to be you don’t know how to use Unity.

    Ah. One more thing you can try. Click on the VM window then press RightCtrl-D. That is the keyboard hotkey for clicking on the Devices menu and selecting the “Insert Guest…” option.

      1. OK, following the instruction in the manual, I do seem to have installed guest additions (without ever finding the menu). But it seems to have broken things. When I reboot, now I get a screen that doesn’t match the mouse pointer (and I got an error message from Ubuntu). That is, what I click on is not what I get.

        This is what it looks like now. Note that isn’t filling the window. And in order to get the shutdown menu in the upper right, I have to click on the upper right of the window itself, not on the icon in the reduced window. I’ve rebooted twice, and that’s how it comes up.

      2. The screenshot is of the VM Manager, not the Virtual Machine itself.

        You are confusing the VM Manager with a running Virtual Machine.

        Please close the manager after you have started the VM. You don’t need it. It’s just a thing for managing multiple virtual machines. It’s not the VM itself. It’s a separate program altogether.

        To be super explicit:
        1) Run the Oracle VM VirtualBox Manager.
        2) Click on your VM in the left pane.
        3) Click on the green arrow labeled “Start”.
        4) Wait for the VM to start.
        5) Close the window labeled “Oracle VM VirtualBox Manager”.
        6) Click on the window that is the running Ubuntu virtual machine.
        7) Press RightCtrl-D.

  5. BTW, IIRC you were trying the Ubuntu VM to run KSP. While KSP is awesome, I’d expect the rendering performance in a Virtual Machine to be absolutely terrible, and quite likely unusable. I’ve been seriously considering upgrading my graphics card just for KSP, and I’m running it natively.

    1. Well, it was also just to check it out. Yes, if KSP requires a serious graphics card, native or virtual, that’s probably not going to happen — I’m not a gamer.

  6. Here’s another screenshot, this time taken of VirtualBox running under my Ubuntu system at work. It does appear that the Linux version doesn’t have the pretty controls in the upper lefthand corner of the VM window, however if you setup the iso image to be loaded on the virtual CDROM (in VirtualBox manager->Settings), it should just be automounted at boot time of the Ubuntu VM. My iso image is in:/usr/share/vitualbox/VBoxGuestAdditions.iso

    I regretfully switched from aerospace engineering to CS back in ’89, but KSP is an absolutely amazing learning tool for basic orbital mechanics. For more realistic simulations, there is a “Real Solar System” mod for KSP that replaces the cartoonish (and lower gravity) KSP solar system with more realistic versions.

    https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/31187593/Screenshot%20from%202015-04-22%2009%3A12%3A30.png

    I’m still skeptical on the performance for KSP in a VM, but it might be good enough to try out. KSP uses a ‘real/gaming’ 3D rendering engine (Unity), but if you keep your ships small and don’t load any of the fancy extra detail mods, you might be ok.

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