[vbox-dev] Improving the guest additions support for LFS

[Angel Tsankov]

Hello Michael,


Michael Thayer wrote:
> Would you be able to provide us with a relatively standard/from the
> book virtual LFS installation that we could play with?  That would be
> the easiest way for us to ensure that everything works as it should.
>
I'll be glad to help!  However, I think that in order to test the guest 
additions fully a bare LFS system wouldn't be enough (for instance, LFS does 
not include X which is needed to test mouse integration).  What I think you 
need is a Beyond Linux From Scratch (BLFS) system.  (In case a short 
description is needed, a BLFS system is an LFS system plus additional 
packages that make the bare LFS system suitable for a particular purpose.)

At present, I'm building my own BLFS system and I'll readily provide it to 
you for testing and development of VirtualBox (incl. the guest additions). 
However, my (B)LFS system is probably slightly different from the official 
(B)LFS system in that I might have installed some packages that are not part 
of the official (B)LFS system or the versions of the packages I have 
installed might be other (most probably newer) that those in the official 
(B)LFS system.  In any case, this system is very close to the official one 
and I intend to continue upgrading it as new versions of the installed 
packages are released.

One other deviation from the official system is that I've used the package 
users package management system.  I think this is not an obstacle to testing 
the guest additions, but I mention it for two reasons: the first one is 
completeness and the second one is to request some changes to the install 
scripts so that the guest additions do not require root privileges in order 
to be installed.  (This will make it possible to install the guest additions 
as a package user.)  I have done some of these changes myself and I can 
share them if there is interest.


Regards,
Angel Tsankov