VirtualBox -- VMware-like but released under the GPL

[Fragadelic]

The kernel module gets loaded during the package install.

The message you get is simply a permissions issue and that will go away once you log out and log back in.

[scorp123]

The message you get is simply a permissions issue and that will go away once you log out and log back in.

Did you try it?

[Fragadelic]

Yes in Bea.

[nick]

Hi
Got VirtualBox running, had problem with USB
ports but solved it here:
http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=341740
But I need access to my serial port to control my Ham radio equipment, any ideas please.
Nick

[Fragadelic]

The message you get is simply a permissions issue and that will go away once you log out and log back in.

Did you try it?

Also works in Bianca.

gdm appears to cache user info so you have to "CTRL-ALT-BKSPC" once back at the login prompt to restart gdm. After that you login and everything works fine.

[scorp123]

gdm appears to cache user info so you have to "CTRL-ALT-BKSPC" once back at the login prompt to restart gdm. After that you login and everything works fine.

OK, yes, that might explain it. Thanks for the hint

[Fragadelic]

Thank you for finding it.

It seems to be fine for livecd's though. I can't get anything to install properly in the virtual disk. No matter what I use, Windows or Mint/Ubuntu, it hangs trying to detect hardware.

Haven't checked the docs on their site as I've been busy with the "remastersys" script.

[scorp123]

I can't get anything to install properly in the virtual disk. No matter what I use, Windows or Mint/Ubuntu, it hangs trying to detect hardware.

I successfully installed Windows XP and openSUSE 10.2 ... Did you try to ask the devs in their IRC channel?

[Fragadelic]

No but they mention something about kernel 2.6.17/18 and a race condition.

I also found out that these use the qemu code for part of their code.

[muncrief]

I have VMware Workstation but decided to try VirtualBox under Bea. I just wanted to let others know what I found so they can better decide whether they want to install it or not. The other free alternative is VMware Server which I'll quickly cover at the end of this post.

First of all, I was impressed by the speed and stability of the virtualization VirtualBox has achieved. VirtualBox appeared to run Windows XP Professional just as fast as VMware Workstation or Player. I did not experience any stability problems. This was quite impressive for an initial release.

However, VirtualBox is new and does suffer from one major drawback, poor device virtualization. It can't share most devices with other virtual machines (i.e. CD/DVD drives, audio, etc.) and CD/DVD drives are seen as VirtualBox devices and won't play encrypted DVD movies, allow CD/DVD burning etc. The only devices it seamlessly shares are the mouse, video, and network devices. NAT networking is easy to setup, while setting up bridged networking is a bit difficult but does work. The video card device is emulated very well, and although its also a Virtual Box device it seems to run as fast as VMware with experimental DirectX enabled (although it doesn't support DirectX).

However, Linux Mint is awesome, and provides plenty of CD/DVD burning and viewing programs, so unless you have a specific need to run a hardware dependent program most of these virtualization drawbacks shouldn't be an issue. Unfortunately though, the problem for many will be attempting to run more than one VM simultaneously. If you want to do this you have to manually connect/disconnect most devices as you use each VM.

This is really a pain if, for instance, you want to hear the audio from all running VMs. You have to physically connect and disconnect the audio device each time you switch machines. On the other hand, if you don't need to share devices simultaneously these drawbacks are not an issue.

So in summary VirtualBox is great if you only want to run one machine at a time, and don't want to run hardware dependent programs. It's not so great right now for running multiple VMs, although I know the developers are frantically working on it.

As for VMware Server, it provides excellent virtualization but the GUI runs very slow because all GUI data is sent over the network. However, you can create VMs with VMware server and then run the VMs on VMware Player and the GUI is capable of full speed operation, you can even play DVDs on the VM. The caveat is that you can't install VMware Server and Player on the same machine at the same time so if you want full speed virtualization you have to install VMware Server and create your machines, then uninstall VMware Server and install Player to run them. In addition to this, if you ever want to change the VM configuration (change memory size, add/remove devices, etc.) you have to reinstall VMware Server again to do it. All of this uninstalling and reinstalling quickly becomes a pain if you need to create or change VMs frequently. Remember though, if you don't care about the GUI speed you can just use VMware Server without Player.

Lastly, VMware Workstation, which I currently use, overcomes all of these problems but is very expensive. I bought it last year before the plethora of free products came out, and would probably choose the VMware Server/Player solution today, and await further development on VirtualBox devices.

OK, that's my two cents on VirtualBox. It takes a lot of time and effort trying all these virtualization products so I hope it will help some of you to better make a more informed initial decision, and save you some time.

Long live Linux Mint!

[ronan]

Hey,

I added myself to vboxusers and rebooted, but I keep getting this message:

Failed to create the VirtualBox COM object.
The application will now terminate.

Could not lock the settings file '/home/ronan/.VirtualBox/VirtualBox.xml'
(VERR_ACCESS_DENIED).

Any suggestions?

[Fragadelic]

this command should fix it.

sudo chown -R ronan:ronan .VirtualBox

[ronan]

Thanks, it's working good now.

[Fragadelic]

Thats the one issue with running things with sudo. Once in a while it writes the config file in your user folder with root permissions.

chown -R ronan:ronan .VirtualBox changes the permissions back to user ronan group ronan for all files and subdirectories under and including .VirtualBox.

-R is the part that does the thing for all the files. If you only want to change the permissions on one file, leave out the -R

[Harrie]

I'm so happy to have found this thread the other day, with all the great instructions for installing VirtualBox. I would like to add one tip that eluded me for awhile, about having VirtualBox find the CD-ROM on Ubuntu/Linux Mint.

It's from this page:

http://liquidweather.net/howto/index.php?id=103

....and the specific quote is:

In addition, you need to make sure that VirtualBox can find your cdrom. By default it expects it to be at /dev/cdrom. However, on *buntu (and maybe other distros) cdroms are found at /dev/cdrom0 and /dev/cdrom1 etc. So either create a symlink to /dev/cdrom (as root):
ln -s /dev/cdrom0 /dev/cdrom

or tell VirtualBox where your cdroms are using a system variable:
export VBOX_CDROM='/dev/cdrom0:/dev/cdrom1'

To make this permanent, insert that line in ~/.bashrc.

Actually, the very first time I ran VirtualBox, it did find my CD-ROM and I put in my Windows 2000 disk and it started setting up. But before finishing, everything froze on me entirely. And thereafter, I couldn't get VirtualBox to point to it, until I saw that tip and made the symlink first. So for anyone else who might have a problem, there it is.

I should also say hello, as I am new here, and say that I'm loving Linux Mint. It's quite awesome!

[Fragadelic]

Welcome to the forum and to Mint.

Virtual Box is definitely a gem of an app.

[PapiSolo]

@scorp123

I need some help if possible. I followed your instrauctions and all worked well. I managed to get bridged networking just fine.. that is until I rebooted. I then noticed that I lost tap0 and br0. Is there a way to do this so that it is persistent...?

[scorp123]

You uninstalled VirtualBox?? What do you then need those tap devices for?

[PapiSolo]

Sorry... I meant to say that i rebooted...

[scorp123]

As I wrote on page #1 of this thread, you could put this stuff into an init script.