Installing Debian 10 buster on virtualbox

July 22, 2020

Getting Debian 10

Download from Debian website iso
Follow the installation instructions with UI walkthrough
Reboot machine

Add your user to sudoers file

$ su – # alternatively or “sudo su -“
$ apt install sudo
$ usermod -aG sudo <YOUR_USERNAME>
$ exit

Install dependancies for virtualbox guest

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

Installing VB guest additions

Insert CD/Media by Devices > Insert Guest Additions

$ sudo mkdir -p /mnt/cdrom
$ sudo mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom
$ cd /mnt/cdrom
$ sudo bash ./VBoxLinuxAdditions.run –nox11

Windows Hair Pulling Moments

If you are using windows, and is thinking of using virtualbox as your desktop emulator, think again. One of the main issues is that virtualbox relies on hyperV of windows 10, and if you are using some applications like docker-desktop on your host win10 machine, this can cause issues like [Errno 5] unable to read from cd at times. This is caused by random hogging of paravirtualisation on the host causing read issues. This issue is still reported in May 2020 with weird RW issues.

References

  • https://www.linuxuprising.com/2019/09/fix-username-is-not-in-sudoers-file.html