VirtualBox

Installation

Reference instructions can be found here:

• For VirtualBox 3.2.x:
• Add the following lines to /etc/apt/sources.list (here for Ubuntu Lucid):
deb http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian lucid non-free
• Add the Oracle public key for apt-secure, then install

  wget -q http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian/oracle_vbox.asc -O- | sudo apt-key add -
  sudo apt-get update
  sudo apt-get install virtualbox-3.2
  

• For VirtualBox 3.1.x:
• Add the following lines to /etc/apt/sources.list (here for Ubuntu Karmic):
deb http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian karmic non-free
• Add the Sun public key for apt-secure, then install

  wget -q http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian/sun_vbox.asc -O- | sudo apt-key add -
  sudo apt-get update
  sudo apt-get install virtualbox-3.1
  

The group vboxusers is created during installation.

• Users of the VirtualBox must be member of that group. New users can be added with

sudo usermod -a -G vboxusers username

• The daemon for the network interfaces will be assigned to that group.

VirtualBox requires a kernel module vboxdrv.

• The default location of the module is given by setting KDIR=[fullpath] in file /etc/default/virtualbox.
• The kernel module can be compiled with

sudo /etc/init.d/vboxdrv setup

• Enable Dynamic Kernel Module Support to deal with Kernel Upgrade

Launch VirtualBox as another user

• Limitation! It seems that only one user can access PulseAudio (see [1]). This means that when launching VirtualBox as another user (other than root), it will not be possible to play sounds in the host anymore.
• Create user vbox (disabled, uid 7000, group vboxusers + groups cdrom, audio, video, plugdev, fuse, netdev). This user will store VirtualBox settings and disks, access bluetooth...
• If user vbox needs to access a partition directly (e.g. because using a raw drive), give RW access on the selected partition. For instance, to give RW access to partition /dev/sda2, create a new udev rule in file /etc/udev/rules.d/99-custom.rules:

# Rules to change the ownership of /dev/sda2 to user "vbox" (vbox will boot /dev/sda2 in VirtualBox + follow least privilege principle)
# reference: http://www.reactivated.net/writing_udev_rules.html#ownership
KERNEL=="sda2", SUBSYSTEM=="block", OWNER="vbox"

• Allow users to launch VirtualBox through user vbox. Add to /etc/sudoers:

ALL	ALL=NOPASSWD: /bin/su vbox -c /usr/bin/VirtualBox

• Helper function to add to e.g. ~/.bashrc :

function winbox() {
	#First allow user vbox to connect to X11
	xhost +SI:localuser:vbox
	sudo su vbox -c /usr/bin/VirtualBox&
}

Creating a New Virtual Machine

• To boot a Virtual Machine directly from a physical disk partitions, see section Advanced storage configuration in Ch. 9 Advanced topics.

Booting Existing Windows XP from Physical Partition

Here I describe my attempt at booting the existing Windows XP partition on a Dell E6500.

1st attempt

• In Windows, created a 2nd hardware profile called Virtual, copy of the original profile Profile 1
• New VirtualBox machine:
  • Base Memory 1894MB
• Using raw disk only with partition /dev/sda2 doesn't work

sudo VBoxManage internalcommands createrawvmdk -filename nxl670002-sda2.vmdk -rawdisk /dev/sda -partitions 2

This doesn't work! First Grub complained, then I tried to restore back the default WXP MBR (using either install-mbr or ms-sys but to no avail)

I created

• Virtual machine NXL670002
  • Base Memory 1894 MB
• Using raw disk with whole disk access/dev/sda

sudo VBoxManage internalcommands createrawvmdk -filename nxl670002-sda.vmdk -rawdisk /dev/sda

This works, Windows boots!

• But hangs. In Safe Mode, it hangs after loading AGPCPQ.SYS.
• Some related posts:

http://www.techspot.com/vb/topic21511.html

http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=19847

http://forum.driverpacks.net/viewtopic.php?id=3865

This post refers to problem with ACPI / APIC.

Miscellaneous work-around

• Deleted the file ...\system32\drivers\agp440.sys and agp440.sys + agppcq.sys in dllcache (check [2], post from ChaosAddict, 20100210).

→ Now windows boot until login screen, but blue screen about IRQL_GREATER_R_EQUAL

2nd attempt

• Started from base image. I compared all the drivers with a base XP + SP3 install. Disabled all additional drivers.
• Booted in safe mode... hangs... hangs and hangs again.

3rd attempt

• Started from base image again. Renamed some drivers (including agp440.sys + some others)
• Disabled VT-x, disabled PAE, disabled multi-cpu, enabled IO APIC, disabled 2D accel.
• Boot in safe mode... OK!
• Boot in normal mode... ok!
• Enabled back everything, boot in normal mode... ok!
• Installed VirtualBox Additions... ok!
• Restored all drivers, but agp440.sys... ok!
• I can even boot in native!!!

Benchmarks

Settings:

• Dell Latitude E6500, 4GB RAM.
• VirtualBox 3.1.6.
• System: 1536 MB RAM, IO APIC, 2 CPU with PAE/NX, VT-x + Nested Paging.
• Video: 32 MB Video + 2D accel
• Storage: PIIX4 ctrl, raw vmdk image /dev/sda
• Audio: PulseAudio + ICH AC97
• Network: Bridged Adapter

task	U9.04-32	U9.04-32	U9.04-32	U9.10-32	U9.10-32	U9.10-32	U9.10-64	U9.10-64	U9.10-64	U9.04-32	U9.04-32	Native	Native	Native
grub → hw profile	2.86 s	2.82 s	2.77 s	2.76 s	2.68 s	2.84 s	2.50 s	2.51 s	2.61 s	3.22 s	2.73 s	1.62 s	1.57 s	1.41 s
hw profile → login screen	23.49 s	23.46 s	21.56 s	42.07 s	43.48 s	40.28 s	48.63 s	52.00 s	56.07 s	33.15 s	24.06 s	29.52 s	24.89 s	25.16 s
login screen → pwd typed	17.69 s	12.94 s	12.62 s	9.83 s	9.69 s	8.56 s	15.41 s	9.85 s	9.31 s	9.68 s	8.75 s	9.88 s	8.42 s	8.99 s
pwd typed → communicator	8.83 s	7.73 s	8.45 s	32.51 s	29.97 s	36.57 s	38.50 s	33.53 s	34.44 s	20.48 s	8.24 s	9.47 s	7.20 s	6.81 s

U9.04-32: Base Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty i386 Live running on USB, 2.6.28-11-generic
U9.10-32: Base Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic i386 Live running on USB
U9.10-64: Base Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic AMD64 running from HDD, 2.6.31-20-generic
Native: Running Windows directly, no emulation

External references:

• http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=769883

Interesting post about step-by-step configuration to run an existing Windows XP installation.

• Two posts about disabling IO APIC:[3] and [4]. But apparently this doesn't really fix anything (also the poster has a old cpu, etc).

Bugtracker

• Enhancement - #6854 - Allow hot-plug addition / removal of screens (monitors) in guest OS