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Teifi
Asked: 2013-04-26 00:37:57 +0800 CST

avoid reinstall virtualbox and update to the latest release

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Installing virtualbox-extension-pack-4.2.12 to enable USB2.0 controller prompted only to work with the latest release.

But my current version is 4.0.18 on debian wheezy. The latest release of virtualbox was 4.2.12 (can't update from apt-get,the newest release isn't in the source). So I downloaded the newest deb file from Oracle.com.

dpkg --install latest-release.deb told me that I have had installed virtualbox.

How avoid reinstall vritualbox or update it from the downloaded .deb file?

pls, I don't wanna reinstall my virtualbox.

apt

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    You won't lose your settings or files if you reinstall.
    Just install the package with dpkg and it will upgrade it. That's all.

    (In case you are really cautious, you can backup the .virtualbox folder under your Home.)
    More info on that can be found here.

    • Default machines folder $HOME/VirtualBox VMs
    • Default disk image location In each machine's folder
    • Machine settings file extension .vbox

    There should be an another folder in your Home with the global Settings.

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  2. Extension Packs for older VirtualBox releases are available from Oracle:

    However I do recommend upgrading to the most recent version for stability and compatibility with newer kernels. See answer below on how to add the Oracle repository to your sources:

    To be able to upgrade to a 4.2.x release we will have to purge the 4.0.x release first. Your virtual machines will be unaffected by this.

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