repository – How to add the virtualbox repositories in 24.04 LTS?

February 21, 2026admin

I am trying to add the Virtualbox repositories to Ubuntu 24.04.4LTS

The instructions are here.

I downloaded the key from www.virtualbox.org/download/oracle_vbox_2016.asc
And placed it in ~/Downloads/Virtualbox/oracle_vbox_2016.asc

I then added the key to /usr/share/keyrings/ with
sudo gpg --yes --output /usr/share/keyrings/oracle-virtualbox-2016.gpg --dearmor ~/Downloads/Virtualbox/oracle_vbox_2016.asc

So I now have /usr/share/keyrings/oracle-virtualbox-2016.gpg.

Next I have to deal with the line
deb [arch=amd64 signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/oracle-virtualbox-2016.gpg] https://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian contrib

The GUI at ‘Administration > Software & Updates` doesn’t like the bit in brackets […].

Neither does, add-apt-repository.

So now I’m trying to manually add everything to /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ubuntu.sources.

The current ubuntu.sources is

Types: deb
URIs: http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/
Suites: noble noble-updates noble-backports
Components: main restricted universe multiverse
Signed-By: /usr/share/keyrings/ubuntu-archive-keyring.gpg

Types: deb
URIs: http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/
Suites: noble-security
Components: main restricted universe multiverse
Signed-By: /usr/share/keyrings/ubuntu-archive-keyring.gpg

So I’m guessing I need to add:

Types: deb
URIs: https://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian
Suites: *1
Components: *2
Signed-By: /usr/share/keyrings/oracle-virtualbox-2016.gpg

But what do I put at *1 and *2 ?

Given that the Oracle deb line ends, contrib, do I simply put noble at *1 and contrib at *2 ?