VirtualBox host support

If you’re going to be using this Arch Linux installation as a VirtualBox host, you’ll need the following packages installed.

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sudo pacman -S virtualbox virtualbox-guest-iso virtualbox-host-modules

You can install the qt4 optional dependency in order to use the graphical interface which is based on Qt.

In addition, you’ll need to make sure the VirtualBox kernel modules run at startup on your host, then add your user account to the vboxusers group.

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sudo echo -e "vboxdrv\nvboxnetadp\nvboxnetflt\nvboxpci" >> /etc/modules-load.d/virtualbox.conf
sudo gpasswd -a $USER vboxusers
sudo reboot

Since VirtualBox 4.0, non-GPL components have been split from the rest of the application. These features came to be known as the Oracle Extension Pack and can be used by installing the virtualbox-ext-oracle package from the AUR.

VirtualBox guest support

If you are running Arch linux inside a Virtual Box VM, then you will want to install the Guest Additions on the Arch system. Do that like so:

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yaourt -S virtualbox-guest-utils

The above will also install the virtualbox-guest-modules package, but you will have to setup the kernel to load the drivers:

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sudo modprobe -a vboxguest vboxsf vboxvideo

Also edit the file /etc/modules-load.d/virtualbox.conf and add the contents:

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vboxguest
vboxsf
vboxvideo

You can also enable the vboxservice service which loads the modules and synchronizes the guest's system time with the host. You may also want to add the /usr/sbin/VBoxClient-all to the autostart section in your desktop environment. If you are using XFCE4 this is already done for you.