CentOS – How to Fix Header Mismatch When Installing VirtualBox Guest Additions

I try to install VirtualBox Guest Additions on a CentOS 7 VM.

I installed the prerequisites via

sudo yum install perl gcc dkms kernel-devel kernel-headers make bzip2

then I "inserted" the Guest Additions CD image and the Guest Additions auto runner came up and ran.

However the Guest Additions installation errored out with

VirtualBox Guest Additions: Kernel headers not found for target kernel 3.10.0-1062.el7.x86_64.

For closer examination I issued the following commands in the Terminal shell of the VM:

$ ls /usr/src/kernels/
3.10.0-1062.18.1.el7.x86_64

and

$ uname -r
3.10.0-1062.el7.x86_64

Notice the ddition caharcters 18.1 in the installed headers copared to what the kernel reports. I guess that is the reason why he Guest Additions installation fails.

How can I fix this and install the Guest Additions?

A few more details:

• OS Version: CentOS 7.7.1908
• Guest Additions Version: 6.1.6
• EPEl Repo URL: https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-7.noarch.rpm