I’ve installed Debian Lenny 5.0 from a NetCD and now i want to install the guest additions modules. The guest additions are very useful because they have a lot of usability features like: copy-ing/pasting from the guest system to the host sistem, you can fly the mouse pointer in and out of the guest system and so on.

On the VirtualBox menu go to Devices and click Install Guest Additions. This will mount a virtual cd in your linux guest system. Go to your cd-rom ( which also has the guest additions for windows ) :

cd /cdrom and run ./VBoxLinuxAdditions-x86.run.

You might get an error about installing linux kernel headers and build packages. That can easily be solved by using apt-get :

apt-get install build-essential linux-headers-`uname -r`

the ‘uname -r’ will autocomplete the kernel needed kernel version.

After this rerun the ./VBoxLinuxAdditions-x86.run and it should all go well. Reboot the debian system and enjoy the magical guest additions.