If you want to run BackTrack in virtual box, I highly recommend installing the guest additions to take advantage of the screen resizing, shared windows, shared clip board, etc. Backtrack does not come with the virtualbox guest additions installed by default. Earlier versions of BT required several rounds of downloading kernel headers, patching, and copying files around, as of version BT5 R2 this is no longer the case and it couldn’t be simpler to install guest additions.

These instructions were tested on Mac OSX 10.7.4 running VirtualBox 4.1.18 with the extension pack and BackTrack 5 R2 64bit Gnome edition.

Download and Install
Download BackTrack
Download The Oracle VM Extension Pack, required if you want support for USB 2.0 devices.
If you want support for USB 2.0 devices you must download and install the Oracle VM Extension Pack

We are assuming you already have a copy of BT installed and that you have also installed the extension pack. In the virtual box menu go to Devices >> Install Guest Additions. This will automount the cd and you will be presented with a screen that asks if you wish to run the program, click yes and follow the instructions and everything will compile successfully.

If you run into problems you can download and install the kernel headers on your own with the instructions below, but for BT 5 R2 you shouldn’t have to.