iEntry 10th Anniversary
LinuxHaxor
WH
MHCreating Seamless Virtual Machine with Virtualbox 1.6
Virtualbox 1.6, which was released in May 2, was the first major release since Sun took over virtualbox. All I can say is Wow!! This is perhaps the single biggest, most important open source release which will change the face of how computers are used for years to come. Hell this is even bigger than the release of hardy heron (IMO), and Ubuntu 8.04 LTS was a very important release.
One single feature of virtualbox, seamless, will make some major software completely redundant in coming years. Don’t get me wrong, seamless was possible with virtualbox since the last release before 1.6; but it was buggy, not a part of the features and needed a decent amount of hack and workaround to even get it to work. So seamless was possible, but never like this. With virtualbox 1.6 seamless is truly effortless, and well integrated, and super fast.
I think because of seamless virtual machine, the use of software like wine (compatibility layer for running Windows programs on linux environment), Cygwin (Linux-like environment for Windows), or a commercial product for a virtual machine like vmware, will be redundant. For developer like me, who constantly have to switch back and forth between linux and windows environment, this is god-send.
For a list of new features, bug fixes, check out the official changelog: http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Changelog
So lets get going and see how to install and setup seamless virtual machine.
Installing Linux guest in Windows host and configuring seamless mode
Step 1: Setting up Virtual Machine
Download and install virtual box for windows over here.
Create a new virtual machine but clicking “New”:
Choose a name for the virtual machine, choose the distro you would like to install. For this example, I chose Ubuntu.
Next we have to select the base memory. Here I would like to say a few words. Virtual machine are not for all systems, with the decreasing price of ever so powerful dual and quad-core systems, it would be a good investment for you to truly experience the integration of seamless virtual machine. Memory is also very important, I am showing this example on a quad-core with 3Gb of memory.
I am using 1GB for my virtual machine.
Next we will create a virtual dynamic disk for the virtual machine:
The rest of the selection process is pretty straight forward:
I choose 2GB because that all I need for this example, you can choose whatever amount you like.
After creating virtual disk, it should give you summary and that should end the wizard. Before you go on and start the virtual machine you have to assign the Ubuntu image file you should have downloaded by now before instalation. Just mount your ISO image file to the virtual machine cd drive:
(click for larger image)
Go ahead start the virtual machine by clicking start on top of the menu. Now the OS installation (Ubuntu here) should start. After you are done with installing the OS, go to the next section to configure seamless feature.
Step 2: Setting up Seamless
Before you restart after installation, make sure you unmount the OS image file, the same way you mounted it.
Now we will install “Guest additions” (Device –> Install Guest additions), which will add many of the features needed to enable seamless and other features of the guest OS.
Double-click or run the file VboxLinuxAdditions.run as root, which will install guest additions.
Restart guest ubuntu OS, go to Machine –> Seamless mode. Now you should have two OS running side by side, with the ability to copy&paste any information, without having to press “host” key to switch back and front from guest OS.
This is how my Desktop looks like now, very cool stuff. :)
(click for larger image)
I hope you found this article usefull as much as I have enjoyed making it.
If you liked this article, please share it on del.icio.us, StumbleUpon or Digg. I’d appreciate it. :)
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Yes a seamless VM could possibly be the end for compatibility layers that allow you to run Linux programs in windows… but i think your completely wrong on it replace wine, the vast majority of people running Linux do not want windows… so buying a copy just to run in a virtual machine seems unlikely (unless its some mission critical business software that doesn’t run in wine)
Yeah, it’s neat stuff. I was really excited when I downloaded this a few days ago.
Windows 2000 running seamlessly in Linux worked great, but now doing the opposite, with seamless Linux guests in windows, makes my windows work machine a lot more fun to be around!
Host Memory Low, I am getting this msg, what 2 do?
Closed all application, increased memory to 2 GB also, but still problem, Plz help n suggest. Thanks
I followed these directions, which were quite helpful up until installing VBoxLinuxAdditions.run. Despite all my efforts, i cannot run this file as a root, nor can i run it with administrative privileges through nautilus because it gives me an error message stating that there is no program which can open the file. What should i do?
tested on a virtualbox installed into an Arch Linux virtualizing a Windows 2003. Worked like a charm. Thanks for the info!
You can perform a similar trick using a rootless X server (such as XMing) on the Windows machine to connect to a Linux box (either virtualised, or a real machine elsewhere on your network) using XDMCP. This can be useful if you want to use an existing Linux box, rather than setting up a new virtual machine. I have details for doing this on my blog:
http://www.peppertop.com/blog/?p=54
@ Anonymous (first post) : but most geeks have an old copy of windows (eg XP) that they are legally able to use and that will run the old apps they need it to run.
@ Brad : the file is a binary. You run it by opening a console, then doing “sudo ./the-name-of-the-app.run”. Mind you it won’t work for me either (openSUSE 11.0 default install on virtualbox 1.6) because you need the kernel source - which I can get using the Yast2 installer for software, but which then mismatches with the kernel (and headers) installed already. I’m sure this can be fixed easily with the right repos to get the matching version of the kernel source for the running kernel however.
A nice guide Pavs.
pbhj, http://alicious.com
Nice article, but its hardly “haxor” material to use a GUI to set VirtualBox.
If you had an article explaining how to set it up from a headless box, then I’d be impressed, and it would be a useful resource because no such guide exists (yet).
For the guy asking about memory low… it’s probably because you are giving the VM too much memory right… like you only have 2gb of ram right.. so if you give the vm 2gb then your windows has 0 because you are just sharing the memory with the VM.
The main problem with virtual systems is lack of direct hardware access, a virtual system isn’t likely to be usable for games for a while due to needing direct access to the graphics card (parallels and vmware fusion do something similar). Your also going to have problems editing files on a usb stick, requring you to copy to and from the virtual system.
Could really do with a system that runs in tandem with a virtual system to map /mnt and /media to windows style X:\> mounts and visa versa. Also allowing for direct access you the filesystem from both OSes.
Like H3g3m0n said,
“The main problem with virtual systems is lack of direct hardware access, a virtual system isn’t likely to be usable for games for a while due to needing direct access to the graphics card (parallels and vmware fusion do something similar).”
This seems like a problem, any ideas how to hack round this? Doesnt seem possible at first glance.
Probably the nicest part of VB running in Linux is this: In your Linux based VB, install Windows XP, upgrade Internet Explorer, add service packs, patches, etc., etc, blah, blah, blah…then, close out VB and CLONE the patched, upgraded Windows XP Virtual Machine. You now have a complete, bootable backup of your XP install, including all of your patches and upgrades. If you get the Windows virus-from-Hell, or Windows just plain mucks something up, you can destroy your working copy of the Windows Vitual Machine, clone you backup copy of the Windows Virtual Machine into a clean working copy (complete with your service packs, patches, upgrades, blah, blah, blah) and be up and running with a new, clean Windows install in about 15 minutes. VERY sweet.
It runs decently except for a few minor niggles:
-Seamless mode only allows apps to stay in one monitor (as in you can’t drag windows off to another monitor.)
- Even when running on one monitor, it will only run on my primary monitor. If I drag the window onto my secondary monitor and go into seamless mode, the task just stays in the taskbar, unresponsive.
Nice article. I just finished setting up exactly what you have last week. I love it!
The windows version of Virtualbox is not opensource. Actually, none of the pre-compiled copies of Virtualbox are open source unless you download the source code and compile it yourself.
if you are using a pre-compiled version of Virtualbox and you are using it at your place of employment, you had better uninstall it or purchase the enterprise copy….
How did it cope with your graphics setup? Are both environments running GL properly for instance?
I had issues with permissions and dependencies in SUSE 11. I had to give up and install vmware server.
can seamless mode be uses in openSUSE? 10.2
hey I did this but with ubuntu 7.04 version I can’t get the semmless option to work what do I need to do it is grayed out
help please our is there any other way to save it so I don;t have to keep installing over and over help
The main problem with virtual systems is lack of direct hardware access, a virtual system isn’t likely to be usable for games for a while due to needing direct access to the graphics card (parallels and vmware fusion do something similar).”
I had just came a great MS Hyper-V resource. It show a step-by-step how to do Hyper-V
installation.It even introduce you to how to use all the advanced features of hyper-V like
MSCS, Quick Migration, & Snapshots.Check it out: MS windows 2008 Hyper-V important information
why I read this article so late?
why not before?
let it go after all you have a special thanks !!