VirtualBox
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Installation
Reference instructions can be found here:
- 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
Creating a New Virtual Machine
- To boot a Virtual Machine directly from a physical disk partitions, check the page on raw disks.
Booting Existing Windows XP from Physical Partition
Here I describe my attempt at booting the existing Windows XP partition on a Dell E6500.
- 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 [1], post from ChaosAddict, 20100210).
- → Now windows boot until login screen, but blue screen about IRQL_GREATER_R_EQUAL
Benchmark: 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
U9.04-32: Base Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty i386 Live running on USB, 2.6.28-11-generic, SMP
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
External references:
- Interesting post about step-by-step configuration to run an existing Windows XP installation.