9

I try to enable copy-paste functionality in the Oracle Virtual Box. In order to accomplish this, I run: 

sudo /usr/bin/VBoxClient --clipboard

and I get

Failed to connect to the VirtualBox kernel service

What does this mean and how can I solve it? I tried to launch the Virtual Box with sudo, it did not work. I mention that I have virtualbox-guest-utils and virtualbox-guest-x11 installed. Ubuntu 14.04

Thanks!

Jastria Rahmat
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yonutix
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3 Answers3

7

I am assuming you ran Insert Guest Additions CD Image from the VirtualBox menu and ran the disk in your VM.

I had a similar issue where my Bidirectional Clipboard was working and then stopped after an update. I was getting the error message displayed: vboxclient the virtualbox kernel service is not running. Reinserting the Insert Guest Additions CD Image and reinstalling the services FIXED my issue.

I am using VirtualBox ver. 5.0.20. with Fedora 23 VM.

Andrew Lobban
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3

I am using VirtualBox 5.0.6 and I got the same error after I updated my guest virtual machine. This solved it for me.

sudo /etc/init.d/vboxadd setup

Then I used sudo /usr/bin/VBoxClient --clipboard to enable clipboard and it worked.

If you are using VirtualBox pre 5.x, use this

sudo /etc/init.d/vboxdrv setup

Check this answer for the VirtualBox Ubuntu 14.04 - vboxclient the virtualbox kernel service is not running question.

Community
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Lamya Elmorsy
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  • I've been having this same issue with an Ubuntu guest with a Mac OSX host. I did an apt-get update and apt-get dist-upgrade and now whenever I try to log in I get that cannot connect to kernel error. Being a Mac host, I have no /etc/init.d/vboxadd. I did a find / -iname vbox* and didn't see anything that looked like vboxadd OR vboxdrv... – Arvandor Nov 29 '17 at 17:04
0

How I got it working for me:

My setup:

  • VirtualBox 6.0.4

  • Host machine - Ubuntu 18.04

  • Guest machine in virtualbox - Kali 2019.1 kernel version 4.19.0

Install needed packages with apt on GUEST machine

apt-get install build-essential virtualbox-guest-utils virtualbox-guest-x11 virtualbox-guest-dkms

After this, run:

VBoxClient --clipboard

Also, make sure that you have enabled Shared Clipboard from Settings>General>Advanced on the HOST machine.

Now it should be working :)

sanre
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