download of guest additions failed

[DeGarden]

The network operation failed with the following error: During network request: Unknown reason.

[DeGarden]

Fixed by downloading manually the iso from ​https://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/6.0.6/VBoxGuestAdditions_6.0.6.iso

and adding it to a virtual drive.

[Socratis]

This only happens if you use a fork of VirtualBox, i.e. the distro flavor. Which means you can either ask in their forums/channels for help, or completely remove/uninstall/delete/purge their version and install the official version from the Linux Downloads section of VirtualBox.

The official VirtualBox GAs ISO comes bundled with the main program, there's never a need to download the GAs ISO separately. Just take a look at the output of "VBoxManage -version". If it's any different than exactly the following:

$ VBoxManage -version
6.0.12r133076

then you're using the fork...

Fixed by downloading manually the iso from ​https://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/6.0.6/VBoxGuestAdditions_6.0.6.iso

Even in that case, you downloaded the wrong version of the GAs ISO. You have VirtualBox 6.0.12, you should download the matching version GAs ISO: ​https://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/6.0.12/

I gave you the link to the whole 6.0.12 installers. Take this chance and 1) uninstall your fork, 2) install the official VirtualBox. And no, you won't have to download the GAs ISO separately... ;)

BTW, it's usually better and faster, if issues get first addressed in the ​VirtualBox forums, a lot more eyes there. More than 95% of the issues are resolved in the forums, which keeps the developers focusing on the bug fixes and enhancements, and there is no need for another ticket to keep track of.

[Frank Batschulat (Oracle)]

@socratis

if the reason is truly a fork-version causing this:

https://www.virtualbox.org/attachment/ticket/18910/virtualbox-guest-additions-iso-failed.png

I wonder why exactly a fork-version would cause such behavior? Would it be because they do not offer the guest additions as an ISO for downloading ? Or what else? I mean if we could not retrive the gest additions because they are just not there, I'd expect a different and more obvious error like the one we get here.

[Socratis]

Replying to fbatschu:

Would it be because they do not offer the guest additions as an ISO for downloading?

More like "they don't bundle the GAs ISO, it has to be downloaded separately". I really don't know why they're doing this (license?), neither where they're trying to download the ISO from, I'll ask around on IRC at the ​#vbox-dev channel, there are a couple of distro maintainers hanging out there. I'll update the ticket if I find out anything...

But the fact of the matter is that a VirtualBox build (even the test builds) always bundles the GAs ISO. It may be a couple of revs older from the main program (due to how the build servers work), but they're always there. As I said, the only time I've seen this behavior is from a distro fork.

[Socratis]

UPDATE: Just as I suspected, I verified that the official VirtualBox GAs come bundled with the main program.

But, Gentoo (for example) has a different package for the GAs. See: ​https://packages.gentoo.org/packages/app-emulation/virtualbox-additions

And so does Ubuntu: ​https://packages.ubuntu.com/search?keywords=virtualbox-guest-additions

Only the "VBoxManage -version" command could potentially shed some more light on this...

[DeGarden]

I'm using ubuntu repos

VBoxManage -version 6.0.6_Ubuntur129722

[DeGarden]

Looks like the ubuntu packager introduced some bugs.

[Socratis]

Replying to DeGarden:

VBoxManage -version
6.0.6_Ubuntu r129722

Thank you for confirming my suspicion. As I said you have two options:

1. You can either ask in their forums/channels for help.
2. Completely remove/uninstall/delete/purge their version and install the official version from the Linux Downloads section.

[Frank Batschulat (Oracle)]

A regular Virtualbox package installation will always come with a guest additions ISO file placed into the virtualbox installation directory:

/usr/share/virtualbox# ll
total 76716
drwxr-xr-x   5 root root     4096 Sep  5 09:07 ./
drwxr-xr-x 629 root root    20480 Sep  8 20:51 ../
drwxr-xr-x   2 root root     4096 Sep  5 09:07 nls/
drwxr-xr-x   2 root root     4096 Sep  5 09:07 rdesktop-vrdp-keymaps/
-rw-r--r--   1 root root  1312024 Sep  3 14:51 rdesktop-vrdp.tar.gz
drwxr-xr-x   3 root root     4096 Sep  5 09:07 src/
-rw-r--r--   1 root root 77195264 Sep  3 14:53 VBoxGuestAdditions.iso
-rwxr-xr-x   1 root root     4163 Jan 25  2019 VBoxSysInfo.sh*