Sun Microsystems 3.0.0 Linux Guest Additions, Manual file extraction, Windows Vista networking

4Guest Additions

4.2.4Manual file extraction

If you would like to install the files and drivers manually, you can extract the files from the Windows Guest Additions setup by typing:

VBoxWindowsAdditions.exe /extract

To explicitly extract the Windows Guest Additions for another platform than the current running one (e.g. 64-bit files on a 32-bit system), you have to ex- ecute the appropriate platform installer (VBoxWindowsAdditions-x86.exe or VBoxWindowsAdditions-amd64.exe) with the /extract parameter.

4.2.5 Windows Vista networking

Earlier versions of VirtualBox provided a virtual AMD PCNet Ethernet card to guests by default. Since Microsoft no longer ships a driver for that card with Windows (starting with Windows Vista), if you select Windows Vista or newer as the guest operating system for a virtual machine, VirtualBox will instead present a virtual Intel network controller to the guest (see chapter 6.1, Virtual networking hardware, page 82).

However, if for any reason you have a 32-bit Windows Vista VM that is configured to use an AMD PCNet card, you will have no networking in the guest initially.

As a convenience, VirtualBox ships with a 32-bit driver for the AMD PCNet card, which comes with the Windows Guest Additions. If you install these in a 32-bit Vista guest, the driver will automatically be installed as well. If, for some reason, you would like to install the driver manually, you can extract the required files from the Windows Guest Additions setup. Please consult chapter 4.2.4, Manual file extraction, page 64 on how to achieve this. You will then find the AMD PCNet driver files in the x86\Network\AMD\netamd.inf subdirectory of the default install directory.

Alternatively, change the Vista guest’s VM settings to use an Intel networking card instead of the default AMD PCNet card; see chapter 3.7.7, Network settings, page 52 for details.

Unfortunately, there is no 64-bit driver available for the AMD PCNet card. So for

64-bit Windows VMs, you should always use the Intel networking devices.

4.3 Linux Guest Additions

Like the Windows Guest Additions, the VirtualBox Guest Additions for Linux take the form of a set of device drivers and system applications which may be installed in the guest operating system.

The following Linux distributions are officially supported:

•Fedora Core 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 11;

•Redhat Enterprise Linux 3, 4 and 5;

•SUSE and openSUSE Linux 9, 10.0, 10.1, 10.2, 10.3, 11.0 and 11.1;

64