Virtualbox

[thelastknowngod]

i just installed virtualbox opensource edition and had a few hiccups along the way and i thought i would just share my experience. i installed this on debian etch with a net install.

start out by installing virtualbox open source edition

Code:

aptitude install virtualbox-ose virtualbox-ose-source

when i installed there was a problem where i did not have the virtualbox module (vboxdrv) installed. to install the the module it said that i needed my kernel source and headers installed.

Code:

aptitude install linux-source-2.6.18

i had an unresolved dependency for the headers. i needed linux-kbuild-2.6.18. unfortunately it was not available through my repositories. no big deal... a quick look on the packages page found it:

http://packages.debian.org/etch/linux-kbuild-2.6.18/i386/download

i installed that and then installed the kernel headers:

Code:

dpkg -i linux-kbuild-2.6.18_2.6.18-1_i386.deb
aptitude install linux-headers-2.6.18-4

now what i needed to do was install the virtualbox module. i used the application module-assistant to accomplish this. im sure you can do it manually, this is just how i did it.

Code:

aptitude install module-assistant
m-a prepare
m-a a-i virtualbox-ose

now you have to add the user to the newly created vboxusers group.

Code:

adduser nick vboxusers

for some reason i rebooted at this point and i dont remember why. if you have an issue with the groups or something try a reboot and see what happens. anyway, after the reboot i tried starting virtualbox and it was still complaining that it could not find the module. i simply ran:

Code:

modprobe vboxdrv

and tried starting virtualbox again and everything worked perfectly. after that it was a pretty simple to install a new os.

let me know if you have any questions. ill see what i can do.

oddly there is a story on digg about openbox that is awesome... check this out.

http://www.fsckin.com/2007/10/29/how-to-run-microsoft-outlook-natively-on-linux-using-virtualbox/

[thelastknowngod]

Screenshots:
OpenBox with the Xfce4 panel and windows in virtualbox's seamless mode.

[bananabob]

What sort of machine are you running this on. Ram and speed is really what I want to know? How does it affect swap? Does it have its own swap?

[bluepass]

That is awesome, thelastknowngod. It's just like Parallels. It allows you to have both operating system programs run on the same screen -- something VMware is not able to do yet. I really love that idea. I must give it a try...

Tell me about it, though. How does it work? Does it use your Linux partitions or is it like VMware, having one file that represents the hard drive? It would be neat moving files back and forth between the two systems without a problem, but it would get pretty confusing having the Unix filesystem in Windows.

I'm looking forward to your reply. Maybe this will help me convince my dad to switch completely to Linux.

He doesn't keep in touch with security threats and so on, so he has a very limited understanding of how things like hacker intrusion and virii work. I could probably say that most of what he knows about them is what he sees in movies and possibly what he reads in the newspapers, but none of those articles are detailed enough to give you the understanding of how these things actually work, not to mention the fact that movies are so far-fetched.

I was there once when he installed an antivirus and scanned his machine only to find about 4 or 5 malware, one of them being an actual trojan. I explained to him, none of this would've happened under Linux. He does online banking from his machine and everything, and he knows it's risky, but even after seeing the result of that antivirus test he still doesn't like the idea of using Linux for banking. His theory: if Linux is open source people can find flaws easier and use them against you or since there are so many people working on Linux, there could be someone out there with malicious intent that would leave a backdoor for themselves.

I sometimes wish people were less closed minded and if they didn't know what they were talking about they'd trust someone who has been studying things in-depth. *sigh*

[thelastknowngod]

it uses a file like vmware as a representation of the drive.

you can do shared directories. it looks simple but i have not gotten that far yet. ive only just started playing around with it.

the machine i have this running on is a pentium-d 920 with 512mb ram. nothing exotic. the 920 has hardware virtualization though. if you have this available for your processor then enable it in the settings section for the vm. it makes things run a lot smoother.

i have not run anything more than simple stuff and access so far so i dont know how fast it is in the long run but so far it is pretty quick considering that it is a virtual machine.

oh and, yes, i agree about the situation with your dad. there was someone that i had talked to when i was selling computers who thought the same thing your dad does. i just shook my head and though "no no no no no.... it doesnt work like that."

[bluepass]

I'm going to give it a try as soon as I get Gentoo running on that machine. For now I'm just a bit busy with school work to get to installing and configuring Gentoo. If things continue to go this way, my best bet is the winter break.

[Magus]

This is the howto I needed! I've been trying to get virtualbox to work for a while, mainly since I gave up on getting hardware virtualization to work with kvm.  It works now, and I'm setting up Foresight Linux for some testing.

In case you're wondering about Foresight, they are a newer distro with a really cool package manager called Conary. They had a booth at LinuxFest, next to the Gnome booth. A friend of a friend is one of their maintainers. 

[thelastknowngod]

foresight looks really cool too. let me know how you like the package management. id love to hear how it works out.

i have so many distros that i need to try... arch, gentoo, foresight, id like to check out zenwalk too but who knows when ill get the time... uugh...

[Magus]

The funny thing is the Foresight installer froze in the middle of "Post-Install Scripts."  I'll download the latest iso and try again, I guess. If it fails, I'm going to try PC-BSD next.

[lnxguit]

I've got Foresight up on a test box right now - interesting package management.
As far as "freezing" during the post-install scripts, that may not have been a problem.  It takes a while for the post install scripts to run.  I just went for a walk, and it was ready a half hour later.

[aristotlewilde]

I too have been playing with Virtual Box.  As stated elsewhere, I need an XP machine in order to login to my work VPN.  I got this crazy idea that I could create a virtual XP machine to use for this. 

After some fiddling, I was able to figure out how to connect to a Bridge Connection (by reading the manual) and login successfully.  Performance is a major issue though.

The PC is is an AMD x2 4200 w/ 3gb of RAM.  I alotted 2gb for the Virtual Machine, but still get spotty performance.  If anyone knows of any tweaks I coudl do to speed this up, let me know.  I really want to make thsi work, but logging into a Virtual Windows 2000 machine ON A Virtual XP MACHINE through an Ubuntu desktop may be causing my issues .

[Magus]

I now run Virtualbox on my work computer (Windows XP).  I did a Debian netinstall and I'm using this protected environment to play with the KDE4 packages in the Debian experimental repos.  It's not bad. I had to disable composite because the VBox video driver doesn't like it (things kept hanging for 30 seconds or so).  That said, the VBoxLinuxAdditions installed fine after I installed the linux headers and kbuild packages.

Also, I created a virtual machine on my laptop and installed Windows XP in it. This was the copy that came with the laptop, and it activated fine. I can't run any serious games (again because the VBox video driver doesn't give direct access to the video card), but I can run any normal Windows apps in seamless mode just fine.

[SkinnyJ]

I just found out about VirtualBox a few weeks ago after attempting to run VMWare.  Hard to believe that VBox is a mere 5 or 7MB download and it works great so far!

On my work computer, using Mint as the host, I set up XP as a guest.  Have a few issues like XP not having direct access to a USB storage drive, but overall it's working well on a Pentium IV and 1GB of RAM.

I have 2GB of RAM coming from Newegg to pump my home system up to 4GB, then I'm going to set it up with Mint as a host, and attempt to run bloated Vista as a VM.  I'll report back.

VirtualBox is going to be great for test driving Linux distros, which I do a lot of (still have not found that perfect distro yet, though Mint is close).  But now using VBox, I have no fear of trying out Slackware or OpenBSD since I can use snapshots and not have to start over when I hose the system.

So if you are new to Linux, try a distro or five using Windows as the host and run Linux as a VM.  You won't have to try setting up a dual boot or swapping out hard drives or cables.  And if you screw anything up tweaking on it, just revert to a prior snapshot, or start over.  Then make the jump over to Linux once your comfortable.  I wish I found out about this a few years ago!

[thelastknowngod]

yeah man. VBox is awesome. i like it so much more than vmware. the main reason for that is the seamless mode. running windows applications, or anything for that matter, in linux is great. running them in seamless is the best way to do it too.

[Magus]

Alas, seamless mode is only good for a windows guest in a Linux Host (as of VBox 1.5.2). I work at a Windows shop (they pay the bills, so I don't complain) and use VBox to get all the Linux apps I need to stay sane. I would love to be able to use Amarok in seamless mode, but it isn't supported yet.

Also, I wholeheartedly agree about using VBox to test different distros without messing up a working system. I've been trying KDE4 (not really a distro, but the same idea) in a VM, and I don't have to worry about it eating my children.