If you are a virtualization user, you may have noticed that when you run a virtual machine on a host computer, the guest computer is always running the same version of the virtual machine. This is because the virtual machine runs in its own process and does not share resources with the host computer. To make sure that your guests run the latest version of your virtual machine, you can use a tool called “virtualBox” to create and manage virtual machines on your host computer. To copy and paste between a virtualBox host machine and a guest machine, follow these steps:

  1. On your VirtualBox host computer, open “VirtualBox” and click on “Create New Machine”.
  2. In the “Name” field, type “guest-vm”.
  3. In the “Description” field, provide a brief description of what this guest VM will do. For example, if you want to create a new Ubuntu 14.04 VM with OpenGL support, you might say something like this: Guest VM for Ubuntu 14.04 using OpenGL support 4. Click on “Create”.
  4. In the “Machine Type” field, select either an x86 or x64 platform (depending on which operating system your guests are running). 5a If you are creating an x86 platform VM, enter “x86”. If you are creating an x64 platform VM, enter “x64”. 6a Click on “Finish”. 7a On your VirtualBox host computer, open another window and type in “/usr/bin/virtualbox-configure –enable-gpu –enable-vnc –enable-xrandr –output=guest-vm /etc/vnc/vncserver.conf”. 8a Click on OK to close both windows and return to VirtualBox’s main window.

If you use VirtualBox to run different operating systems on your computer, you may be wondering how to copy text from your host machine into the guest machine and vice versa. You may have thought that VirtualBox Guest Additions provides this feature, but it doesn’t.

RELATED: Install Guest Additions to Windows and Linux VMs in VirtualBox

VirtualBox Guest Additions provides several useful features, such as shared folders and improved performance, and we do recommend installing the Guest Additions. However, to enable copying text between the host machine and guest machine, you must change a setting in VirtualBox for the virtual machine.

To enable copying text between the host and guest machines, first make sure the virtual machine for which you want to enable the setting is powered off. Then, select the virtual machine in the list in the VirtualBox Manager (if it’s not already selected) and click Settings on the toolbar.

On the Settings dialog box, make sure General is selected in the left pane. Select the Advanced tab on the right and select Bidirectional from the Shared Clipboard drop-down list. This will allow you to copy text in both directions, from the host to the guest and vice versa. Click OK to accept the change and close the dialog box.

You can also select Bidirectional from the Drag’n’Drop drop-down list. This allows you to drag and drop files between the host and guest machines.