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I'm trying to get an Ubuntu VM to run well in the latest VirtualBox (5.2.2), which I installed by running sudo ./VboxLinuxAdditions.run. The problem is I keep getting this error message when the VM starts:

VBoxClient (seamless): failed to start. Stage: Setting guest IRQ filter mas Error: VERR_INTERNAL_ERROR

The host is Ubuntu 16.04.3. I've tried two Ubuntu 17.10 distros (Lubuntu and Budgie). Both failed with the same error.

Being unable to run Ubuntu on Ubuntu should be a P0 critical issue for Oracle. What am I doing wrong?

Turns out I had to install gcc, make and perl, then reinstall the additions and reboot:

sudo apt-get install gcc make perl

cd /media/$USER/<...>

sudo ./VBoxLinuxAdditions.run

sudo reboot

In addition to ensuring make, gcc and perl are installed as per Dan's accepted answer it may be necessary to also check for version-specific kernel headers linux-headers-$(uname -r), build-essential and dkms. Catch-all one-liner:

sudo apt install gcc make perl linux-headers-$(uname -r) build-essential dkms 

I ran into this issue while I had the first three package installed. Installing the rest resolved it. It's possible that not all are necessary, but notably only installing the linux-headers package (without version specified) was not enough.

I am on Mac OSX 10.14.3 and working with Virtualbox 5.2.22 and Ubuntu Desktop 16.04.6 virtual machine. In my case, I'm running Ubuntu in 32bit mode because I had trouble getting 16.04 to work in 64bit mode. I recently upgraded to kernel 4.4.0-143 using the typical Ubuntu update and then, when I restarted the VM again, I got this VBoxClient seamless error just like you see here. After trying all kinds of things, such as upgrading Virtualbox, upgrading VBox Extensions, and more -- the resolution was that I rebooted the VM, held the shift key down, and chose kernel 4.4.0-142. Then, I got the error, but was able to run:

sudo apt-get install --reinstall build-essential virtualbox-guest-utils virtualbox-guest-x11 virtualbox-guest-dkms

That, of course, would put the wrong virtualbox stuff on my VM, but was actually useful because then I could force the kernel to switch to the proper vbox extensions in my next step. So, with the command above typed, I rebooted my VM, held shift key down, and chose kernel 4.4.0-142. Now, this made the screen too small because it's not running the optimal virtualbox extensions that support proper screen resize with my Mac driver. Not a problem, though, because this was only temporary. So, I then ran this command:

cd /media/$USER/<...>

sudo ./VBoxLinuxAdditions.run

This properly compiled the vbox extensions that were suitable for my computer. I rebooted the VM, held the shift key down, and chose kernel 4.4.0-142. At that point, the VBoxClient seamless error went away, and I had all my functionality I needed including screen resizing, bidirectional clipboard, mounting shared volumes and so on.

Long story short, the kernel version was at fault, was the best that I
could determine. There was something up with the 4.4.0-143 kernel that
was causing Virtualbox to choke. Rolling back to a previous kernel and forcing vbox extensions to reinstall was my fix for now.