VBoxHeadless - Running Virtual Machines With VirtualBox 2.0 On A Headless Ubuntu 8.04 Server

to manage your virtual machines, but a server does not have a desktop environment Fortunately, VirtualBox comes with a tool called VBoxHeadless that allows you to connect to the virtual machines over a remote desktop connection, so there's no need for the VirtualBox GUI. I do not issue any guarantee that this will work for you! 1 Preliminary Note I have tested this on an Ubuntu 8.04 server (host system) with the IP address 192.168.0.100 where I'm logged in as a normal user (user name administrator in this example) instead of as root. 2 Installing VirtualBox To install VirtualBox 2.0 on our Ubuntu 8.04 server, we open /etc/apt/sources.list... sudo vi /etc/apt/sources.list ... and add the following line to it: [...] deb http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian hardy non-free Then we download Sun's public key... sudo wget -q http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian/sun_vbox.asc -O- | sudo apt-key add - ... and update our package database: sudo apt-get update Now we bring our system up to date: sudo apt-get upgrade Afterwards, we install VirtualBox 2.0 as follows: sudo apt-get install linux-headers-$(uname -r) build-essential virtualbox-2.0 Creating group 'vboxusers' Users of VirtualBox must be member of that group in order to have write permissions to /dev/vboxdrv. Otherwise starting of VMs will not be possible. <-- Ok Unable to find a precompiled module for the current kernel! [...] Should the vboxdrv kernel module be compiled now? <-- Yes Now we must add the user that will run VirtualBox (administrator in this example) to the vboxusers group: sudo adduser administrator vboxusers VirtualBox is now installed and ready to be used. 3 Using VirtualBox On The Command Line 3.1 Creating A VM To create a VM on the command line, we can use the VBoxManage command. See VBoxManage --help for a list of available switches and (highly recommended!) take a look at chapter 8 (VBoxManage reference) in the VirtualBox 2.0 user manual. I will now create an Ubuntu 8.04 Server VM with 256MB memory and a 10GB hard drive from the Ubuntu 8.04 Server iso image (which I have stored in /home/ubuntu-8.04.1-server-i386.iso): VBoxManage createvm -name "Ubuntu 8.04 Server" -register VBoxManage modifyvm "Ubuntu 8.04 Server" -memory "256MB" -acpi on -boot1 dvd -nic1 nat VBoxManage createvdi -filename "Ubuntu_8_04_Server.vdi" -size 10000 -register VBoxManage modifyvm "Ubuntu 8.04 Server" -hda "Ubuntu_8_04_Server.vdi" VBoxManage registerimage dvd /home/ubuntu-8.04.1-server-i386.iso VBoxManage modifyvm "Ubuntu 8.04 Server" -dvd /home/ubuntu-8.04.1-server-i386.iso 3.2 Importing An Existing VM Let's assume you have a VM called examplevm that you want to reuse on this host. On the old host, you should have a directory Machines/examplevm in the VirtualBox directory; Machines/examplevm should contain the examplevm.xml file. Copy the examplevm directory (including the examplevm.xml file) to your new Machines directory (if your user name is administrator, this is /home/administrator/.VirtualBox/Machines - the result should be /home/administrator/.VirtualBox/Machines/examplevm/examplevm.xml). In addition to that copy the examplevm.vdi file from the old VDI directory to the new one (e.g. /home/administrator/.VirtualBox/VDI/examplevm.vdi). Afterwards, you must register the imported VM: VBoxManage registervm Machines/examplevm/examplevm.xml 3.3 Starting A VM With VBoxHeadless Regardless of if you create a new VM or import and old one, you can start it with the command: VBoxHeadless -startvm "Ubuntu 8.04 Server" (Replace Ubuntu 8.04 Server with the name of your VM.) VBoxHeadless will start the VM and a VRDP (VirtualBox Remote Desktop Protocol) server which allows you to see the VM's output remotely on another machine. To learn more about VBoxHeadless, take a look at VBoxHeadless --help and at chapter 7.4 (Remote virtual machines (VRDP support)) in the VirtualBox 2.0 user manual. $url[http://www.howtoforge.com/vboxheadless-running-virtual-machines-with-virtualbox-2.0-on-a-headless-ubuntu-8.04-server-p2,VBoxHeadless - Running Virtual Machines With VirtualBox 2.0 On A Headless Ubuntu 8.04 Server] - Page 2 $url[http://www.howtoforge.com/vboxheadless-running-virtual-machines-with-virtualbox-2.0-on-a-headless-ubuntu-8.04-server,continua...]