Latest Ubuntu 12.10 on VirtualBox 4.2, Installed Guest Additions, But Still Some Issues

I just installed latest Ubuntu 12.10 (Quantal Quetzal) on VirtualBox 4.2 and I managed to install VirtualBox guest additions also on 12.10, but the performance is not good enough to do some basic stuff. Therefore, as of now, it is not recommended to upgrade or install Ubuntu 12.10 release on VirtualBox even for testing purpose.

I hope I’m not missing any important settings here and as far as I checked on internet, this is a common compatibility issue for Ubuntu 12.10 guest machine with current VirtualBox 4.2 version. I’m sure it will be fixed in upcoming versions by Oracle.

Installation is very simple and straight forward. After loading Ubuntu 12.10 ISO ( which can be downloaded here) installation will go smoothly through default steps. You can refer our earlier guide for more information.

Remove the ISO from virtual machine’s CD drive before reboot. Ubuntu 12.10 virtual machine started very slowly at first time. It is not only slow, but closing, minimizing and maximizing every single screen was breaking, that was really difficult to work even just to see what is new inside Ubuntu 12.10.

 

Install VirtualBox Guest Additions on Ubuntu 12.10

I thought slowness of virtual machine and each screen movement was due to less RAM (initially it was 512KB) and VM display settings. So, I have increased RAM size to 1GB and enabled display 3D acceleration with 128MB display memory, as below.

Installing VB guest additions helped me to get some extra features, like full screen mode, auto screen resize and unity mode (VB), but nothing with the performance inside virtual machine.

Steps

Make sure the guest Linux virtual machine is connected to internet, setting up NAT or Bridged network will help to have internet from host network adapter.

Run the following commands in terminal ( You can open Terminal by typing it in Ubuntu dashboard). You must be root/superuser (type su and issue password for root access).

sudo apt-get update

Once above command completed successfully, type below one.

sudo apt-get install virtualbox-ose-guest-utils

You have to press Enter or Y for some questing during installation.

Restart the virtual machine after installation.

This time you must see working guest additions (full screen, auto resize of guest machine).

Still inside performance was very poor, so I did not try 3D unity or anything like that fancy. But by following our earlier guide how we tested 2D and 3D unity in Ubuntu 11.10, I managed to view 3D unity inside Ubuntu 12.10 temporarily.

Typing following commands helped to view 3D unity,

sudo apt-get install build-essential linux-headers-$(uname -r)

sudo apt-get install virtualbox-ose-guest-x11

unity –replace

It was not permanent and not worked properly too.

Therefore, it is not recommended to run Ubuntu 12.10 on VirtualBox 4.2 till Oracle releases some updates or you do some extra settings and changes to make it work without unity and GNOME.

You can find some useful discussion about this here and here.

The current issue could be the reason of inability by VirtualBox to handle Ubuntu 12.10’s processor and display device handling.

We are hoping Oracle to come up with solution as already bug reports and support tickets are submitted to Oracle in several places.

Please share your experience about Ubuntu 12.10 on VirtualBox and how (if) you managed to make it work smoothly as virtual machine.