18

I have moved a Centos 6 VM (used as a desktop) from Virtualbox to HyperV, and the performance is terrible. I have installed Linux Integration Services but this has hardly helped, so I would now like to try and remove Guest Additions.

The only documentation I have found involves inserting the VirtualBox virtual DVD and running:

sudo sh VBoxLinuxAdditions.run uninstall

But I think it's too late for that as I'm already on HyperV.

What are my options?

3
  • 2
    Find your version of vbox here and download the guest additions ISO file, mount it, and then run the command you listed in your post.
    – n8te
    May 3, 2019 at 7:59
  • On a Windows install, you can just use add/remove programs to remove the guest additions. Can't you remove it the same way on linux?
    – LPChip
    May 3, 2019 at 8:15
  • @n8te that worked, thanks. Can you add that as an answer, and then I'll accept it.
    – Rich
    May 3, 2019 at 8:59

4 Answers 4

9

Since you can no longer insert the Virtualbox Guest Additions CD through the Virtualbox app, you can just download the ISO image from the official site, mount it, and then run the uninstall command from there.

  1. Go to download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox and find the link to the version of Virtualbox Geust Additions you have installed (for this example, we will be using version 6.0.0). Look for a file with a name similar to VBoxGuestAdditions_6.0.0.iso. Download it to your virtual machine.
  2. Create directory to mount your ISO by running the following:
    sudo mkdir /mnt/iso
  3. Run the following command to mount your ISO image to the directory you just created:
    sudo mount -t iso9660 -o loop ~/Downloads/VBoxGuestAdditions_6.0.0.iso /mnt/iso (or replace ~/Downloads/ with wherever you had downloaded your ISO file)
  4. The contents of your ISO will now be copied into /mnt/iso, so change directory into that and run:
    sudo sh VBoxLinuxAdditions.run uninstall
36

The Guest Additions package now includes an uninstaller, at least on Debian derivatives. Running the following completely removes vbox-guest-additions for me on Ubuntu Desktop 20.04:

vbox-uninstall-guest-additions
4
  • 1
    I moved a virtual machine to real hardware, and this worked for me. Nov 17, 2020 at 15:34
  • Also worked for me on Oracle Linux 8: sudo vbox-uninstall-guest-additions Mar 6, 2022 at 20:45
  • worked after migrating a virtualbox vm to vmware workstation on another machine
    – Oliver
    Mar 14, 2023 at 18:28
  • It would help to mention from where to run this command. It's confusing because to install guest additions, we are expected to start the VM and then use the menu options to install it.
    – Nav
    May 24, 2023 at 5:22
1

You can make a try and search in the /opt directory. Virtualbox installs here the guest addition. You will find here the uninstall.sh script here.

E.g. on a debian system:

cd /opt/VBoxGuestAdditions-6.1-35
sudo sh uninstall.sh

This will uninstall and update (initramfs) your machine; including the the /opt/VBoxGuestAdditions-xxx directory.

-2

Step 1: You can find all VBOX files here "C:\Program Files\ldplayerbox".
Step 2: Just download the Unlocker app from here
Step 3: Run the Unlocker, and delete all "vbox" data.

1
  • after recompiling the kernel, I couldn't find C: in my Debian GNU/Linux VM... Gosh, my not-so-real computer has no not-so-hard disk now, why, Apple why you do such things to your DELL Latitude laptops?? ;P
    – xCovelus
    Nov 23, 2022 at 21:15

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .