Virtualbox is a herculean x86 and amd64/intel64 virtualization mathematical product for enterprise as well as home use. Not only is virtualbox an highly lineament rich, high public presentation mathematical product for enterprise client, it is also the only professional person solvent that is freely uncommitted as open root software package nether the condition of the gnu ecumenical populace permission ( gpl ) interlingual rendition 2. See ” about virtualbox ” for an introduction.
Currently, virtualbox runs on windows, linux, macintosh and opensolaris horde and abide a gravid act of edgar guest lock organisation include but not limited to windows ( nt 4. 0, 2000, xp, host 2003, view, windows 7 ), dos/windows 3. X, linux ( 2. 4 and 2. 6 ), solaris and opensolaris, and openbsd.
Virtualbox is existence actively formulate with patronize unfreeze and has an ever turn list of feature film, plunk for edgar guest in operation scheme and program it runs on. Virtualbox is a community of interests attempt backed by a commit fellowship : everyone is boost to conduce patch prophesier secure the merchandise, fit master timbre standard.
VirtualBox OSE 1.6.6 is packaged for Debian Lenny and available as backported packages for Debian Etch. VirtualBox OSE 2.1.4 is currently packaged for testing.
Lenny
Using Etch? Skip to the Etch section.
udevcontrol reload_rules is not invoked at virtualbox-ose postinst as /sbin/udevcontrol does not exist in Lenny
1.
Install the virtualbox-ose package and appropriate kernel module package for your system:
# aptitude install virtualbox-ose virtualbox-ose-modules-$(uname -r)
2.
Instruct udevd(8) to reload the installed udev rules (Debian bug 509014):
# invoke-rc.d udev reload
3.
Load the VirtualBox kernel module:
# modprobe vboxdrv
4.
Add your user account to the vboxusers group:
# adduser yourusername vboxusers
Log out and log back in to your system to apply the group membership change.
VirtualBox OSE can now be started.
To load the vboxdrv module at system startup, edit /etc/default/virtualbox-ose and set LOAD_VBOXDRV_MODULE to 1.
Installing on Windows hosts
Prerequisites
For the various versions of Windows that we support as host operating systems, please refer to the section called “Supported host operating systems”.
In accession, windows installer 1. 1 or high must be submit on your system. This should be the case if you have all holocene epoch windows updates installed. Playacting the initiation
The VirtualBox installation can be started
either by double-clicking on its executable file (contains both 32- and 64-bit architectures)
or by entering
VirtualBox.exe -extract
on the command line. This will extract both installers into a temporary directory in which you’ll then find the usual .MSI files. Then you can do a
msiexec /i VirtualBox-
to perform the installation.
In either case, this will display the installment welcome dialog and provide you to choose where to establish virtualbox to and which component to install. In addition to the virtualbox applications programme, the conform to component are usable:
USB support
This package contains special drivers for your Windows host that VirtualBox requires to fully support USB devices inside your virtual machines.
Networking
This software contain supernumerary networking number one wood for your windowpane host that virtualbox need to back up bridge networking ( to make your vm ‘s practical web bill of fare accessible from other automobile on your strong-arm web ).
Python Support
This package contains Python scripting support for the VirtualBox API (see Chapter 11, VirtualBox programming interfaces). For this to work, an already working Windows Python installation on the system is required.[7]
Calculate on your windows configuration, you may see discourage nigh ” unsigned driver ” or similar. Delight quality ” keep ” on these discourage as differently virtualbox mightiness not serve right later installation.
The installer will create a “VirtualBox” group in the Windows “Start” menu which allows you to launch the application and access its documentation.
With banner mount, virtualbox will be establish for all exploiter on the topical anaesthetic system. In case this is not require, you have to put forward the installer by showtime distil it by using
VirtualBox.exe -extract
and then do as follows:
VirtualBox.exe -msiparams ALLUSERS=2
or
msiexec /i VirtualBox-<version>-MultiArch_<x86|amd64>.msi ALLUSERS=2
on the extracted .MSI files. This will install VirtualBox only for the current user.
If you do not want to install all features of VirtualBox, you can set the optional ADDLOCAL parameter to explicitly name the features to be installed. The following features are available:
VBoxApplication
Main binaries of VirtualBox.
Note
This feature must not be absent since it contains the minimum set of files to have working VirtualBox installation.
VBoxUSB
USB support.
VBoxNetwork
All networking support; includes the VBoxNetworkFlt and VBoxNetworkAdp features (see below).
VBoxNetworkFlt
Bridged networking support.
VBoxNetworkAdp
Host-only networking support.
VBoxPython
Python support.
For example, to only install USB support along with the main binaries, do a:
VirtualBox.exe -msiparams ADDLOCAL=VBoxApplication,VBoxUSB
or
msiexec /i VirtualBox-<version>-MultiArch_<x86|amd64>.msi ADDLOCAL=VBoxApplication,VBoxUSB
Uninstallation
As VirtualBox uses the standard Microsoft Windows installer, VirtualBox can be safely uninstalled at any time by choosing the program entry in the “Add/Remove Programs” applet in the Windows Control Panel.
Unattended installation
Unattended installations can be performed using the standard MSI support.
Installing on Mac OS X hosts
Performing the installation
For Mac OS X hosts, VirtualBox ships in a disk image (dmg) file. Perform the following steps:
1.
Double-click on that file to have its contents mounted.
2.
A window will open telling you to double click on the VirtualBox.mpkg installer file displayed in that window.
3.
This will start the installer, which will allow you to select where to install VirtualBox to.
After installation, you can find a VirtualBox icon in the “Applications” folder in the Finder.
Uninstallation
To uninstall VirtualBox, open the disk image (dmg) file again and double-click on the uninstall icon contained therein.
Unattended installation
To perform a non-interactive installation of VirtualBox you can use the command line version of the installer application.
Mount the disk image (dmg) file as described in the normal installation. Then open a terminal session and execute:
sudo installer -pkg /Volumes/VirtualBox/VirtualBox.mpkg \
-target /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD
Installing on Linux hosts
Prerequisites
For the various versions of Linux that we support as host operating systems, please refer to the section called “Supported host operating systems”.
You will need to install the following packages on your Linux system before starting the installation (some systems will do this for you automatically when you install VirtualBox):
Qt 4.4.0 or higher;
SDL 1.2.7 or higher (this graphics library is typically called libsdl or similar).
Note
To be precise, these packages are only required if you want to run the VirtualBox graphical user interfaces. In particular, VirtualBox, the graphical VirtualBox manager, requires both Qt and SDL; VBoxSDL, our simplified GUI, requires only SDL. By contrast, if you only want to run VBoxHeadless, neither Qt nor SDL are required.
The VirtualBox kernel module
VirtualBox uses a special kernel module called vboxdrv to perform physical memory allocation and to gain control of the processor for guest system execution. Without this kernel module, you can still use the VirtualBox manager to configure virtual machines, but they will not start. In addition, there are the network kernel modules vboxnetflt and vboxnetadp which are required for the more advanced networking features of VirtualBox.
The VirtualBox kernel module is automatically installed on your system when you install VirtualBox. To maintain it with future kernel updates, for most Linux distributions — for example Fedora Core 11 and later, Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy) and later and Mandriva 2009.1 and later –, generally we recommend installing Dynamic Kernel Module Support (DKMS)[8]. This framework helps with building and upgrading kernel modules.
If DKMS is not already installed, execute one of the following:
On an Ubuntu system:
sudo apt-get install dkms
On a Fedora system:
yum install dkms
On a Mandriva system:
urpmi dkms
If DKMS is available and installed, the VirtualBox kernel module should always work automatically, and it will be automatically rebuilt if your host kernel is updated.
Otherwise, there are only two situations in which you will need to worry about the kernel module:
1.
The original installation fails. This probably means that your Linux system is not prepared for building external kernel modules.
Most Linux distributions can be set up simply by installing the right packages – normally, these will be the GNU compiler (GCC), GNU Make (make) and packages containing header files for your kernel – and making sure that all system updates are installed and that the system is running the most up-to-date kernel included in the distribution. The version numbers of the header file packages must be the same as that of the kernel you are using.
With Debian and Ubuntu releases, you must install the right version of the linux-headers and if it exists the linux-kbuild package. Current Ubuntu releases should have the right packages installed by default.
In even older Debian and Ubuntu releases, you must install the right version of the kernel-headers package.
On Fedora and Redhat systems, the package is kernel-devel.
On SUSE and openSUSE Linux, you must install the right versions of the kernel-source and kernel-syms packages.
If you have built your own kernel, you will need to make sure that you also installed all the required header and other files for building external modules to the right locations. The details of how to do this will depend on how you built your kernel, and if you are unsure you should consult the documentation which you followed to do so.
2.
The kernel of your Linux host was updated and DKMS is not installed. In that case, the kernel module will need to be reinstalled by executing (as root):
/etc/init.d/vboxdrv setup
Performing the installation
VirtualBox is available in a number of package formats native to various common Linux distributions (see the section called “Supported host operating systems” for details). In addition, there is an alternative generic installer (.run) which should work on most Linux distributions.
Installing VirtualBox from a Debian/Ubuntu package
First, download the appropriate package for your distribution. The following examples assume that you are installing to a 32-bit Ubuntu Karmic system. Use dpkg to install the Debian package:
sudo dpkg -i VirtualBox-3.2_4.0.4_Ubuntu_karmic_i386.deb
You will be asked to accept the VirtualBox Personal Use and Evaluation License. Unless you answer “yes” here, the installation will be aborted.
The installer will also search for a VirtualBox kernel module suitable for your kernel. The package includes pre-compiled modules for the most common kernel configurations. If no suitable kernel module is found, the installation script tries to build a module itself. If the build process is not successful you will be shown a warning and the package will be left unconfigured. Please have a look at /var/log/vbox-install.log to find out why the compilation failed. You may have to install the appropriate Linux kernel headers (see the section called “The VirtualBox kernel module”). After correcting any problems, do
sudo /etc/init.d/vboxdrv setup
This will start a second attempt to build the module.
If a suitable kernel module was found in the package or the module was successfully built, the installation script will attempt to load that module. If this fails, please see the section called “Linux kernel module refuses to load” for further information.
Once VirtualBox has been successfully installed and configured, you can start it by selecting “VirtualBox” in your start menu or from the command line (see the section called “Starting VirtualBox on Linux”).
Using the alternative installer (VirtualBox.run)
The alternative installer performs the following steps:
It unpacks the application files to the target directory,
/opt/VirtualBox/
which cannot be changed.
It builds the VirtualBox kernel modules (vboxdrv, vboxnetflt and vboxnetadp) and installs them.
It creates /etc/init.d/vboxdrv, an init script to start the VirtualBox kernel module.
It creates a new system group called vboxusers.
It creates symbolic links in /usr/bin to the a shell script (/opt/VirtualBox/VBox) which does some sanity checks and dispatches to the actual executables, VirtualBox, VBoxSDL, VBoxVRDP, VBoxHeadless and VBoxManage
It creates /etc/udev/rules.d/10-vboxdrv.rules, a description file for udev, if that is present, which makes the USB devices accessible to all users in the vboxusers group.
It writes the installation directory to /etc/vbox/vbox.cfg.
The installer must be executed as root with either install or uninstall as the first parameter.
sudo ./VirtualBox.run install
Or if you do not have the “sudo” command available, run the following as root instead:
./VirtualBox.run install
After that you need to put every user which should be able to access USB devices from VirtualBox guests in the group vboxusers, either through the GUI user management tools or by running the following command as root:
sudo usermod -a -G vboxusers username
Note
The usermod command of some older Linux distributions does not support the -a option (which adds the user to the given group without affecting membership of other groups). In this case, find out the current group memberships with the groups command and add all these groups in a comma-separated list to the command line after the -G option, e.g. like this: usermod -G group1,group2,vboxusers username.
Performing a manual installation
If, for any reason, you cannot use the shell script installer described previously, you can also perform a manual installation. Invoke the installer like this:
./VirtualBox.run –keep –noexec
This will unpack all the files needed for installation in the directory install under the current directory. The VirtualBox application files are contained in VirtualBox.tar.bz2 which you can unpack to any directory on your system. For example:
sudo mkdir /opt/VirtualBox
sudo tar jxf ./install/VirtualBox.tar.bz2 -C /opt/VirtualBox
or as root:
mkdir /opt/VirtualBox
tar jxf ./install/VirtualBox.tar.bz2 -C /opt/VirtualBox
The sources for VirtualBox’s kernel module are provided in the src directory. To build the module, change to the directory and issue
make
If everything builds correctly, issue the following command to install the module to the appropriate module directory:
sudo make install
In case you do not have sudo, switch the user account to root and perform
make install
The VirtualBox kernel module needs a device node to operate. The above make command will tell you how to create the device node, depending on your Linux system. The procedure is slightly different for a classical Linux setup with a /dev directory, a system with the now deprecated devfs and a modern Linux system with udev.
On certain Linux distributions, you might experience difficulties building the module. You will have to analyze the error messages from the build system to diagnose the cause of the problems. In general, make sure that the correct Linux kernel sources are used for the build process.
Note that the /dev/vboxdrv kernel module device node must be owned by root:root and must be read/writable only for the user.
Next, you will have to install the system initialization script for the kernel module:
cp /opt/VirtualBox/vboxdrv.sh /etc/init.d/vboxdrv
(assuming you installed VirtualBox to the /opt/VirtualBox directory) and activate the initialization script using the right method for your distribution. You should create VirtualBox’s configuration file:
mkdir /etc/vbox
echo INSTALL_DIR=/opt/VirtualBox > /etc/vbox/vbox.cfg
and, for convenience, create the following symbolic links:
ln -sf /opt/VirtualBox/VBox.sh /usr/bin/VirtualBox
ln -sf /opt/VirtualBox/VBox.sh /usr/bin/VBoxManage
ln -sf /opt/VirtualBox/VBox.sh /usr/bin/VBoxHeadless
ln -sf /opt/VirtualBox/VBox.sh /usr/bin/VBoxSDL
Updating and uninstalling VirtualBox
Before updating or uninstalling VirtualBox, you must terminate any virtual machines which are currently running and exit the VirtualBox or VBoxSVC applications. To update VirtualBox, simply run the installer of the updated version. To uninstall VirtualBox, invoke the installer like this:
sudo ./VirtualBox.run uninstall
or as root
./VirtualBox.run uninstall
. Starting with version 2.2.2, you can uninstall the .run package by invoking
/opt/VirtualBox/uninstall.sh
To manually uninstall VirtualBox, simply undo the steps in the manual installation in reverse order.
Automatic installation of Debian packages
The Debian packages will request some user feedback when installed for the first time. The debconf system is used to perform this task. To prevent any user interaction during installation, default values can be defined. A file vboxconf can contain the following debconf settings:
virtualbox virtualbox/module-compilation-allowed boolean true
virtualbox virtualbox/delete-old-modules boolean true
The first line allows compilation of the vboxdrv kernel module if no module was found for the current kernel. The second line allows the package to delete any old vboxdrv kernel modules compiled by previous installations.
These default settings can be applied with
debconf-set-selections vboxconf
prior to the installation of the VirtualBox Debian package.
In addition there are some common configuration options that can be set prior to the installation, described in the section called “Automatic installation options”.
Automatic installation of .rpm packages
The .rpm format does not provide a configuration system comparable to the debconf system. See the section called “Automatic installation options” for how to set some common installation options provided by VirtualBox.
Automatic installation options
To configure the installation process of our .deb and .rpm packages, you can create a response file named /etc/default/virtualbox. The automatic generation of the udev rule can be prevented by the following setting:
INSTALL_NO_UDEV=1
The creation of the group vboxusers can be prevented by
INSTALL_NO_GROUP=1
If the line
INSTALL_NO_VBOXDRV=1
is specified, the package installer will not try to build the vboxdrv kernel module if no module fitting the current kernel was found.
The vboxusers group
The Linux installers create the system user group vboxusers during installation. Any system user who is going to use USB devices from VirtualBox guests must be member of that group. A user can be made member of the group vboxusers through the GUI user/group management or at the command line with
sudo usermod -a -G vboxusers username
Note that adding an active user to that group will require that user to log out and back in again. This should be done manually after successful installation of the package.
Starting VirtualBox on Linux
The easiest way to start a VirtualBox program is by running the program of your choice (VirtualBox, VBoxManage, VBoxSDL or VBoxHeadless) from a terminal. These are symbolic links to VBox.sh that start the required program for you.
The following detailed instructions should only be of interest if you wish to execute VirtualBox without installing it first. You should start by compiling the vboxdrv kernel module (see above) and inserting it into the Linux kernel. VirtualBox consists of a service daemon (VBoxSVC) and several application programs. The daemon is automatically started if necessary. All VirtualBox applications will communicate with the daemon through Unix local domain sockets. There can be multiple daemon instances under different user accounts and applications can only communicate with the daemon running under the user account as the application. The local domain socket resides in a subdirectory of your system’s directory for temporary files called .vbox-
All VirtualBox applications (VirtualBox, VBoxSDL, VBoxManage and VBoxHeadless) require the VirtualBox directory to be in the library path:
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=. ./VBoxManage showvminfo "Windows XP"
Installing on Solaris hosts
For the specific versions of Solaris that we support as host operating systems, please refer to the section called “Supported host operating systems”.
If you have a previously installed instance of VirtualBox on your Solaris host, please uninstall it first before installing a new instance. Refer to the section called “Uninstallation” for uninstall instructions.
Performing the installation
VirtualBox is available as a standard Solaris package. Download the VirtualBox SunOS package which includes both the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of VirtualBox. The installation must be performed as root and from the global zone as the VirtualBox installer loads kernel drivers which cannot be done from non-global zones. To verify which zone you are currently in, execute the zonename command. Execute the following commands:
gunzip -cd VirtualBox-4.0.4-SunOS.tar.gz | tar xvf -
Starting with VirtualBox 3.1 the VirtualBox kernel package is no longer a separate package and has been integrated into the main package. Install the VirtualBox package using:
pkgadd -d VirtualBox-4.0.4-SunOS.pkg
Note
If you are using Solaris Zones, to install VirtualBox only into the current zone and not into any other zone, use pkgadd -G. For more information refer to the pkgadd manual; see also the section called “Configuring a zone for running VirtualBox”.
The installer will then prompt you to enter the package you wish to install. Choose “1″ or “all” and proceed. Next the installer will ask you if you want to allow the postinstall script to be executed. Choose “y” and proceed as it is essential to execute this script which installs the VirtualBox kernel module. Following this confirmation the installer will install VirtualBox and execute the postinstall setup script.
Once the postinstall script has been executed your installation is now complete. You may now safely delete the uncompressed package and autoresponse files from your system. VirtualBox would be installed in /opt/VirtualBox.
Starting VirtualBox on Solaris
The easiest way to start a VirtualBox program is by running the program of your choice (VirtualBox, VBoxManage, VBoxSDL or VBoxHeadless) from a terminal. These are symbolic links to VBox.sh that start the required program for you.
Alternatively, you can directly invoke the required programs from /opt/VirtualBox. Using the links provided is easier as you do not have to type the full path.
You can configure some elements of the VirtualBox Qt GUI such as fonts and colours by executing VBoxQtconfig from the terminal.
Uninstallation
Uninstallation of VirtualBox on Solaris requires root permissions. To perform the uninstallation, start a root terminal session and execute:
pkgrm SUNWvbox
After confirmation, this will remove VirtualBox from your system.
If you are uninstalling VirtualBox version 3.0 or lower, you need to remove the VirtualBox kernel interface package, execute:
pkgrm SUNWvboxkern
Unattended installation
To perform a non-interactive installation of VirtualBox we have provided a response file named autoresponse that the installer will use for responses to inputs rather than ask them from you.
Extract the tar.gz package as described in the normal installation. Then open a root terminal session and execute:
pkgadd -d VirtualBox-4.0.4-SunOS-x86 -n -a autoresponse SUNWvbox
To perform a non-interactive uninstallation, open a root terminal session and execute:
pkgrm -n -a /opt/VirtualBox/autoresponse SUNWvbox
Configuring a zone for running VirtualBox
Starting with VirtualBox 1.6 it is possible to run VirtualBox from within Solaris zones. For an introduction of Solaris zones, please refer to http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/features/articles/solaris_zones.jsp.
Assuming that VirtualBox has already been installed into your zone, you need to give the zone access to VirtualBox’s device node. This is done by performing the following steps. Start a root terminal and execute:
zonecfg -z vboxzone
Inside the zonecfg prompt add the device resource and match properties to the zone. Here’s how it can be done:
zonecfg:vboxzone>add device
zonecfg:vboxzone:device>set match=/dev/vboxdrv
zonecfg:vboxzone:device>end
zonecfg:vboxzone>verify
zonecfg:vboxzone>exit
If you are running VirtualBox 2.2.0 or above on Solaris 11 or Nevada hosts, you should add a device for /dev/vboxusbmon too, similar to what was shown above. This does not apply to Solaris 10 hosts due to lack of USB support.
Replace “vboxzone” with the name of the zone in which you intend to run VirtualBox. Next reboot the zone using zoneadm and you should be able to run VirtualBox from within the configured zone.