Installing Virtualbox - Debian (solved with a work-around)

[Taco.22]

Just tried installing Virtualbox into Scorpio and it is not showing up in the menu, or launching from terminal.  Can't find a .desktop file anywhere.

I installed virtualbox, virtualbox-dkms, virtualbox ose and virtualbox-fuse.  At that point I was getting a bit desperate!  Any ideas?

[melodie]

Hi,

Try to install virtualbox-qt. In Ubuntu yesterday, just this package pulled in all the other ones needed.

http://packages.debian.org/wheezy/virtualbox-qt

However, in Archlinux I updated it yesterday and now I don't have a menu entry anymore. There is a desktop file thought... with a funny category line, related to mandriva.   

Categories=Emulator;System;X-MandrivaLinux-System;Application;

[djohnston]

Just tried installing Virtualbox into Scorpio and it is not showing up in the menu, or launching from terminal.  Can't find a .desktop file anywhere.

I installed virtualbox, virtualbox-dkms, virtualbox ose and virtualbox-fuse.  At that point I was getting a bit desperate!  Any ideas?

Not sure what's going on there, but virtualbox and virtualbox-ose are two different versions of the same animal. At least they are in Mandy/Mageia/PCLOS. The virtualbox package is the full-featured one. On Debian, virtualbox-ose is described in Synaptic as a "dummy transitional package".  The virtualbox-qt package should have been installed as a dependency. Did you update the locate database?

Code: [Sélectionner]

su -c updatedb && locate virtualbox | grep .desktop
You should see the desktop file in /usr/share/applications/ and in /var/lib/menu-xdg/applications/ . If you don't, something's wrong with the installation. I have looked at the desktop file and there are no "NotShowIn" or "OnlyShowIn" lines in the file. On my LXDE installation, it is in the Accessories section of the menu. You also have to do a reboot before starting VirtualBox application for the features to work.

[Taco.22]

Thanks djohnston.  Your post appeared just as I was about to hit the post button for my own post!  By the way, the Scorpio system I'm running predates the current VillageBox with your Virtualbox additions.

In the end I went to the Oracle website and entered their repo into the apt sources.list and installed from there.  All worked fine - it discarded most of what I had installed from the Debian repo.  Don't know why it wouldn't work - had all the guest stuff and everything else I could think of installed but no appearance in the menu, or action from terminal.  Couldn't find the actual app or .desktop file - so obviously  it didn't fully install.

Problem now solved but I still don't know what caused it in the first place.

[djohnston]

In the end I went to the Oracle website and entered their repo into the apt sources.list and installed from there.  All worked fine - it discarded most of what I had installed from the Debian repo.

Were you able to install a keyring? I could never find a reasonable howto on it. And a repo search for it turns up empty.

Don't know why it wouldn't work - had all the guest stuff and everything else I could think of installed but no appearance in the menu, or action from terminal.

I'm not saying that was the problem, but, generally speaking, you don't install the guest additions on the host. They are only installed in the guest. Anyway, glad you got it sorted out.

[Taco.22]

Were you able to install a keyring?

Tend not to bother with that stuff.  I use apt-get in terminal and all that happens is that you get asked if you trust the source.  Of course I do - I put that listing into /etc/apt/sources.list in the first place!!  So I just say "yes" and let it happen.

[melodie]

Hi,
I am also glad you could solve it. Could you add (Solved) at the end of your topic/first post, please ?

[Taco.22]

Hi,
I am also glad you could solve it. Could you add (Solved) at the end of your topic/first post, please ?

Ah yes, I had been wondering about that - I guess it is solved even though we haven't worked out what the original issue was?

[melodie]

It is probably an egg and hen problem in the packaging.