When installing Guest Additions from CD image, first uninstall packages shipped with client OS

[RafSchietekat]

Motivation:

I was having difficulties with NetBeans 8.1 (the version installed by Software Manager on the guest OS, I didn't try the more recent NetBeans 8.2 but I don't suspect that it would make a difference) on a 64-bit GNU/Linux Mint 18.1 Cinnamon guest (on an Apple macOS host) that I *suspect* are related to VirtualBox Guest Additions. The manifestation is presumably an exception related to the pasteboard (see later), which then results in incomplete application startup (stuck at splash window), then a new application launch resulting in NetBeans minimally sized on top left corner of screen, an exception report in the IDE (some class not found), Project pane absent (C++), quitting during Reset Windows, ...unless I forgot something, but it's a real show-stopper.

Reproducing and avoiding:

After several tries, the problem seems to reappear whenever Guest Additions are installed from a CD image (I noticed this a few times), but I don't know whether I could reproduce from scratch. When I reinstalled a whole new VM from scratch (once, because it takes a while), and did a complete removal of 3 pre-installed virtualbox-guest-* packages as the first step after installation (those were on the guest OS installation .iso), after updating the client OS and then installing Guest Additions from CD image, I got an apparently stable-running NetBeans 8.1.

Suggested solution:

Could the script that installs the Guest Additions first detect which package manager is used in the current environment and propose to the user to uninstall the virtualbox-guest-* packages (or however they are called on each guest OS)? Even if the analysis above doesn't pan out, it doesn't seem like a bad idea to just always do that... and warn the user not to reinstall those packages later!

Further (de)motivation:

I don't know whether it still helps if the guest OS was already updated, but my hunch is that it's not a good idea to have both active and possible interfering with each other, and then perhaps letting a guest OS update overwrite the version installed by VirtualBox, etc. But if it is relevant, it would help the user avoid trouble.

[RafSchietekat]

UserManual.pdf: "The VirtualBox Linux Guest Additions installer tries to detect existing installation and replace them but depending on how the distribution integrates the Guest Additions, this may require some manual interaction."

So I guess it's a matter of adapting an existing procedure to support this particular guest OS... or guest OS family (GNU/Linux Debian-derived, or any version using apt-get)?

[RafSchietekat]

No, it just broke again... so much for that motivation (which I unfortunately can't modify?)! At this point I'm doubting everything, except that the shipped virtualbox-guest-* packages were not uninstalled, and that I'll probably have to run NetBeans from the host side on a shared directory.

[RafSchietekat]

I'm now even seeing failure when restoring and running snapshots taken when there was no failure!

The plot is definitely thickening...

[RafSchietekat]

With guest Mint 18.3 (as experienced with VirtualBox 5.1.30 on host macOS 10.13.2) no virtualbox-* packages are installed by default, so the topic in the title no longer applies. I have not (yet) reviewed the rest of this ticket.

Now with the guest additions installed from VirtualBox I'm experiencing something else: if I drag the VM window, its contents, i.e., the guest display, stay where they are and get separated from the frame! Maybe if I still get that with (a later iteration of) VirtualBox 5.2 I'll file a separate ticket for it.