can't change screen resolution

[SteveRiley]

think we have slightly different versions of VB, but this is obviously the right place to look

Hm, which version do you have? Mine's the newest, downloaded from VirtualBox.org. But I have no idea how the Manager will look on a Mac.

I believe it's already mounted

Open a Konsole window and run

ls -al /media

What do you see?

[dbaker]

it's there:

total 14
drwxr-xr-x   4 root     root     4096 Jul 31 04:48 .
drwxr-xr-x  24 root     root     4096 Jul 31 01:26 ..
lrwxrwxrwx   1 root     root       45 Jul 26 04:52 .directory -> /etc/kubuntu-default-settings/directory-media
drwxr-x---+  2 root     root     4096 Jul 27 11:41 dorothea
lrwxrwxrwx   1 root     root       42 Jul 26 04:52 .hidden -> /etc/kubuntu-default-settings/hidden-media
dr-xr-xr-x   6 dorothea dorothea 2048 Jul  4 14:19 VBOXADDITIONS_4.2.16_86992
dorothea@kubuntu-VirtualBox:/media$

[SteveRiley]

Ah, that VBOXADDITIONS_4.2.16_86992 subdirectory contains the files. I bet if you look inside there, you'll find the installer.

[dbaker]

haha, it's always so much simpler than I think! However, when I double-clicked on the installer I got this:

This program must be run with administrator privileges. Aborting

I assume this is why you're meant to run it from terminal using sudo. Which I can't get to work.

[SteveRiley]

I assume this is why you're meant to run it from terminal using sudo. Which I can't get to work.

We need to see the output of errors to help. When you run

sudo sh /media/VBOXADDITIONS_4.2.16_86992/VBoxLinuxAdditions.run

what do you see?

[dbaker]

I got it to work! I have a beautiful big screen now. the problem was, those instructions neglected to mention you need the WHOLE path (I didn't have the name of the ISO in there.) No wonder it wasn't working, the directory didn't exist. Surprised I didn't pick up on that :P

Thankyou for your time.

[SteveRiley]

The instructions have to be somewhat generic, since they can't predict how individual distributions will perform ISO mounting. This is one of the many things that make Linux different from Windows and Mac. It takes extended time with a distribution to learn its various quirks and how to adapt generic instructions to those quirks.

Glad you got it working. I am now off to bed.