VM /ETC

Archive for the ‘virtualbox’ Category

I was banging my head against my desk trying to make shared folders work in VirtualBox 1.64 on my WinXP notebook inside an Ubuntu 8.04 guest. I kept getting a “protocol error” failure.

Here’s the scenario I was working with:

• I created a Windows folder on my notebook to share to the guests – f:\shared2vms
• I added the folder to the shared folders properties of the Ubuntu VM and named it shared2vms
• I created a folder at /home/username/shared2vms to be the mount point of the VirtualBox shared folder in the Ubuntu guest

For a Linux guest in VirtualBox the command to use the shared folder is “mount -t vboxsf [shared folder name] [mount point]”

So, the command I was using

#sudo mount -t vboxsf shared2vms /home/user/shared2vms

After some creative Google -ing I luckily found this Virtualbox.org forum thread that solved the issue – Read the rest of this entry »

Rick Vanover keeps posting great articles about the various features of Sun’s xVM VirtualBox over at TechTarget’s Server Virtualization Blog. Picking up where I left off on my previous summary post of Rick’s work, check out the following new VirtualBox features articles. Read the rest of this entry »

Download pre-built, complete Linux virtual machines for Sun xVM Virtualbox from veeDee-Eyes.com. More from the web site:

“About:
veeDee-Eyes.com was created to provide users with complete, functional Open Source Virtual Computers.
We download the distribution ISOs. Try and follow the installation instructions. We attempt to install the VirtualBox Guest Additions. VirtualBox VDIs that have the Guest Additions installed are noted on the VDI page.

Build Notes:
Unless noted in the “Build Notes” there are

• No additional packages added.
• No update performed.
• Only default options are used when ever possible

The goal is to create a CLEAN virtual computer. You get exactly what the creators of the “Operating System” designed in a STANDARD installation. From there you can make it your own.”

To use these VDI files you just need to do the following: Read the rest of this entry »

I already commented about Rick Vanover’s series of articles on Sun’s xVM VirtualBox, but I decided to make a more detailed how to tutorial on using the headless RDP features. This tutorial explains a step by step process for remotely creating virtual machine hardware, installing the VM operating system, and managing the VM using the VBoxHeadless console command. This post uses the steps from the VirtualBox User Manual found in Section 7.4 titled Remote Virtual Machines (VRDP support)

The following information is copied from the User Manual and provides a good general overview of the goal of this tutorial:

“VirtualBox therefore comes with yet another front-end that produces no visible out-put on the host at all, but instead only delivers VRDP data. With VirtualBox 1.6, this “headless server” is now aptly called VBoxHeadless. (In previous versions, it was called VBoxVRDP. For the sake of backwards compatibility, the VirtualBox installation still installs an executable with that name as well.)

To start a virtual machine with VBoxHeadless, you have two options:

• You can use VBoxManage startvm -type vrdp. The extra -type option causes the VirtualBox core to use VBoxHeadless as the front-end to the internal virtualization engine.

• The recommended way, however, is to use VBoxHeadless directly, as follows:

VBoxHeadless -startvm

This is the recommended way, because when starting the headless interface through VBoxManage, you will not be able to view or log messages that VBoxHeadless may have output on the console. Especially in case of startup errors, such output might be desirable for problem diagnosis.”

Although using the VboxHeadless command is simple, it is a series of console commands. This can be considered inconvenient to many administrators that are used to the point and click functionality of VMware’s products. In my opinion, it would nice to see VirtualBox release a web gui or a toolkit of scripts that can automate these commands. The VirtualBox user community has published some scripts for basic headless VM administration, but I could not find any scripts that actually create new VMs.

Read on for the tutorial.

Read the rest of this entry »

I have already posted about Sun xVM VirtualBox as a great open source alternative to VMware Workstation. ZDNet also wrote a comparison article of VirtualBox and and VMware Server that I reported on here at VM /ETC. I’ve been using VirtualBox as a free virtualization solution (replace VMware Server 1.5) on my notebook since Sun’s version 1.6 was released. So, when Rick Vanover began his series of posts on the SearchServerVirtualization Blog about VirtualBox I was more than interested. This post is a summary of (and links to) Rick’s posts with some of my personal experiences and opinions thrown in.

Networking Features

In my opinion, one of the biggest adjustments between VMware’s products and VirtualBox is having to
Read the rest of this entry »

Jason Perlow of blogs.zdnet.com has written a great feature comparison post of the 2 best multi-platform, free virtualization products in my opinion – Sun xVM VirtualBox 1.6 and VMware Server 2.0 Beta 2.

Personally, I used to run VMware Server 1.x on my XP notebook until I was tempted to try VMware’s first beta of version 2.0. Although not an officially supported OS for any version of VMware Server, my use of Server on XP was for basic research and test purposes, and I chose the free version over VMware Workstation. Like most, after the switch to 2.0 beta 1 I experienced frustration with the web interface. Now, since I discovered Sun’s xVM VirtualBox 1.6 seamless feature and the ability to run virtual machines created in VMware’s .vmdk format, I have switched. I am extremely happy with VirtualBox, and I even consider it to be a closer open-source replacement for VMware Workstation with features that rival the still in beta version of Workstation 6.5. I also use VirtualBox 1.6 on both 64 bit and 32 bit Ubuntu at home.

Jason’s comparison focuses on using the products in a true virtualization host capacity, and he provides some interesting performance analysis. Read the rest of this entry »

Innotek VirtualBox is a free, open-source alternative to VMware workstation. Aquired by Sun Microsystems earlier this year, VirtualBox has quickly become one of the leading developer platforms for the desktop with current features that rival even VMware’s latest version 6.5 currently in beta testing. I have used VirtualBox in the past, but because I had not used it in over almost over a year I was not aware of the latest features in the most recent releases. The feature that specifically caught my attention was the seamless window integration of Microsoft Windows virtual machines. Like VMware Workstation and Fusion’s Unity feature, VirtualBox allows Windows applications in the VM to pop out of the VM session making it available from the host operating system’s desktop.

Quoting from Sun’s announcement: Read the rest of this entry »