VirtualBox Guest Additions strange behavoir between VMs

[stealth]

rpm lets you find any installed rpm software.

What command do I use to find or verify non-rpm installed software?

I have Debian installed as a guest OS in VirtualBox that is showing signs that some of the Guest Additions are working but not all. The mouse can move in and back out of the guest OS without having to click in the guest or use the the CTRL key to get out. That is strange because I haven't been able to install the Guest Additions. I keep getting permission denied even as root even when the permissions are 555 (r-xr-xr-x) on the VBoxLinuxAdditions.run file in /media/cdrom0/ inside the guest OS. Is it possible that the VirtualBox Guest Additions won't install because my host is rpm based and Debian is not?

I have openSUSE installed as a guest OS in VirtualBox and apparently it had the ability to know it was being installed on a VM and it apparently installed Guest Additions at install because the Guest Additions on this one work totally without me doing any steps to install Guest Additions. All the Guest Additions work.

I have PCLinuxOS installed as a guest OS in VirtualBox and went through all manual the steps to install Guest Additions and everything works.

I have a variant of Red Hat Enterprise Linux installed as a guest OS in VirtualBox and have made no attempt at this time to install Guest Additions and none of them work as expected.

My Host OS is my favorite flavor of PCLinuxOS KDE.

My point here is I am trying to find out how openSUSE has all the Guest Additions working and Debian only has part of the Guest Additions working and I didn't install Guest Additions on either. I would also like to get the Guest Additions working in Debian so I can re-size it to fit the screen on my PCLinuxOS host. openSUSE re-sized without a problem. mouse works.

Thanks for any help.

[kjpetrie]

Different distributions do different things. Pclos has some guest additions installed by default (or did once), but not all. I'm afraid I don't know what the other distributions do.

The place to ask that is on their forums if they haven't got wiki or FAQ pages to answer those questions. If you think about it, the question you're asking here is how those distros arrange (or not) to install GA in VB. That's nothing to do with pclos at all. They do what they do.

[stealth]

Yes your response is mostly correct. But I did ask how to find or verify if a non-rpm app is installed. That I would think would be the same across all Linux distros. My problem is I can't find an answer by Google. Maybe because I am not asking the right question (search words) because obviously I don't know what the command is called or I would not be trying to find it. Can anyone help me with that?

Oh, so far no at Debian has answered my question there which was specifically focused only on the manner in which GAs are installed on a Debian guest OS.

I never bothered to ask at openSUSE because GAs just worked.

Thanks

[johnmart]

But I did ask how to find or verify if a non-rpm app is installed. That I would think would be the same across all Linux distros. My problem is I can't find an answer by Google. Maybe because I am not asking the right question (search words) because obviously I don't know what the command is called or I would not be trying to find it. Can anyone help me with that?
Thanks

hmmm....I imagine non-rpm packages are installed from a terminal---could you just check your terminal history, if you forget what you have installed? Or are you referring to your Guest Account packages in Vbox?
Maybe more info on what exactly you want to do would be a help. 
But probably not from me.   
I'm learning too. 

[gseaman]

There can be no standard way to know what has been installed in a non-standard way. You can look for binaries, libraries and docs in the usual places, but only if you know the names of the programs that you are looking for. The reason we need packagers and something like rpm is because there are so many different ways to build software and programmers keep inventing new ways. There is no reasonable way to automate this.

Galen

[stealth]

I see that now. I wondered why I didn't recall seeing a command. Because there isn't one.  

[stealth]

Okay I finally found the answer to solving the problem with the Debian guest OS in VirtualBox. I also learned why openSUSE worked perfectly without me doing anything. All of it can be found in the Manual found under Help > Contents in the VirtualBox control panel. both of them are supported in VirtualBox. openSUSE is supported and requires no manual configuration while Debian is supported and requires a lot of manual configuration.

I am going to see what it takes to get Mandriva and Red Hat working. They are also supported.

PCLOS requires some manual configuration but nothing like Debian.