2015.11.26 by anthony

https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads

The main ubuntu download link was very slow, so I used a mirror, which was very fast:

http://mirror.pnl.gov/releases/trusty/

http://askubuntu.com/questions/64915/how-do-i-install-ubuntu-on-a-virtualbox-client-from-an-iso-image

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/VirtualBox

The VM originally had a 640×480 resolution, which is tiny.

Found several message board posts giving incorrect information. This one gave correct answer, although it includes a typo:

https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=63825#p299936

From the post, with the typo corrected (replaced dkms for dkmd).

We don't support the Ubuntu fork of the guest additions. 

I would suggest that you remove them and install the official 
ones from your VirtualBox.

Start the guest and install the following packages then click 
on the device tab and click insert guest additions.

    sudo apt-get install dkms build-essential linux-headers-generic
    

Initially made an 8GB primary partition, which filled up after installing only a few things! Increased to 15GB resizing the VDI using the VirtualBox vboxmanage tools on the OSX command line, installing gparted on Ubuntu, deleting the swap partition, resizing the primary partition, and then recreating the same sized swap partition. So far so good.

Chose “dynamically allocated” storage option when I set up the VM, but I still don't understand or see any evidence of it adjusting itself.

https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch08.html#vboxmanage-modifyvdi

http://osxdaily.com/2015/04/07/how-to-resize-a-virtualbox-vdi-or-vhd-file-on-mac-os-x/

https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=46814

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/VirtualBox/SharedFolders

This is the page the finally solved my problem:

http://lifecs.likai.org/2014/04/virtualbox-shared-folder-linux-notes.html

  120  sudo mount -t vboxsf -o uid=$UID,gid=$(id -g) acate /media/sf_acate
  121  dmesg | tail
  125  sudo updatedb
  127  locate mount.vboxsf
  128  ll `locate mount.vboxsf`
  134  cat /etc/modules
  135  echo `locate mount.vboxsf`
  136  ln -sf `locate mount.vboxsf` /sbin/mount.vboxsf
  137  sudo ln -sf `locate mount.vboxsf` /sbin/mount.vboxsf
  148  sudo mount -t vboxsf -o uid=$UID,gid=$(id -g) acate /media/sf_acate
  154  mount
  158  cat /etc/fstab
  159  sudo pico /etc/fstab
  163  sudo pico /etc/modules

<2016-01-14>

On 2015 Macbook Air laptop.

Permissions had always been root:root, which was very inconvenient. So Anthony set them to be anthony:anthony by changing /etc/fstab:

The relevant line now reads:

acate /media/sf_acate vboxsf uid=1000,gid=1000 0 1

(Reboot required after change).

Found instructions from these links:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1398340

https://askubuntu.com/questions/365346/virtualbox-shared-folder-mount-from-fstab-fails-works-once-bootup-is-complete

https://askubuntu.com/questions/113733/how-do-i-correctly-mount-a-ntfs-partition-in-etc-fstab

http://askubuntu.com/questions/368437/how-do-i-remap-my-ubuntu-keyboard-shortcuts-to-match-osx

https://pubs.vmware.com/fusion-5/index.jsp?topic=%2Fcom.vmware.fusion.help.doc%2FGUID-AFA596FD-7F5F-472F-BA5C-D54F84A61554.html

http://blog.nostopbutton.com/2013/08/24/setup-copy-and-paste-between-os-x-and-linux-virtualbox/

This process is slightly different from cloning, apparently, and uses what Virtualbox calls “appliances” that can hold multiple VMs.

Anthony took advice from these links:

https://askubuntu.com/questions/588426/how-to-export-and-import-virtualbox-vm-images

https://srackham.wordpress.com/cloning-and-copying-virtualbox-virtual-machines/

https://superuser.com/questions/633431/whats-the-recommended-way-to-move-a-virtualbox-vm-to-another-computer

Ubuntu 14.04 VM maintenance notes