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My Shared clipboard has stopped working all of a sudden after a dist-upgrade. I tried re installing guest additions but it doesn't seem to work. I've checked that "Bidirectional clipboard" was enabled.

Dan Dascalescu
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Shenal Silva
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5 Answers5

72

Started working after running: sudo apt-get install virtualbox-guest-dkms and enabling bidirectional shared clipboard.

AlikElzin-kilaka
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25

Mine wasn't working too, Windows 7 64bit running Ubuntu 10.04. Running the following commands on the guest machine solved for me:

sudo VBoxClient-all stop
sudo VBoxClient-all start
Vitor Ferreira
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17
  1. In VirtualBox Menu Devices -> "Insert Guest Additions CD image…"
  2. Follow all prompts and accept all installs
  3. Reboot

This worked for me with Windows 10 Host and Ubuntu 16.04 Guest.

Phrogz
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11

I've had same issue.

1) Enabling bidirectional shared clipboard
2) Type following commands:

sudo apt-get update  
sudo apt-get install virtualbox-*  
sudo shutdown -r now
Hizqeel
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Dinwy
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6

Background:

I run Windows 7 64 bit, Linux inside Virtual Box v4.3.16 r95972. After building a new 3.17 kernel on one of my VM's the guest additions in general stopped working (this included both Cut&Paste and the window resizing).

Summary:

I found I needed the later version of virtual box guest additions from Oracle, loaded as an .iso file, and another utility called parcellite. My cut and paste is a two step operation.

Attempted fixes:

I tried removing and reinstalling various guest additions (iso, dkms, x11) using the apt-get remove and apt-get install all to no avail. Then I noticed that I had problems reading the virtual CD (VERR_PDM_MEDIA_LOCKED) where I had originally loaded another version of the guest additions from Oracle.

It turned out that the guest additions from Oracle were 4.3.16 (see this via modinfo vboxguest) and the versions from apt-get were 4.3.10. However in order to re-install the later version from the .iso file I had to find a way around the CD mount problem.

What finally worked for me was to make sure that all CD's were unmounted from all of my VM's using the 'Devices -> CD/DVD Devices -> remove disk' selection and then to mount the .iso file via the VirtualBox Manager via the Settings -> Storage -> IDE Controller "CD icon". When I selected the .iso file from the VirtualBox Manger its installation window popped up in my VM, but trying to access this file from the VM always failed.

Once this installation finished I power cycled the VM and the guest additions worked again.

Cut and Paste still seems to have an issue that I had worked around before. The work around is to install parcellite (Ubuntu software center or apt-get). This is a clipboard manager that creates an icon in the top right where you can access the clipboard for cut and paste. Using the left and right mouse buttons to select text in an xterm window cuts to a different buffer than the clipboard (I read online) which is why it does not seem to work between machines.

So to cut and paste to Windows from a Linux xterm I do a multi step process: - first select the text using left and right mouse clicks, - then open parcellite and select History, which opens an Editing Clipboard window.
- Use the mouse middle mouse button to paste into this clipboard.
- Then select the text (again!) using the mouse, after doing the right click here you get a pop-up selection where you select 'Copy'.
- Now when you paste into a Windows area the text you 'Copy' selected appears.

Hope this helps! - Jon Shapiro

Jon Shapiro
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