VirtualBox 2.0.2

[VgnFrnd]

As much as possible, I prefer to use virtual machines instead of dual booting. It would be nice to have Virtual Box (including its Guest Additions) available for SOHO 5.9.

VirtualBox is now at version 2.0.2, available here:

http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads

Thank you for considering this request.

[wcs]

I've been meaning to try this for some time, especially since the OSE got a lot of the functionality that was previously only available in the binary edition (except for USB support....).

But it's a bit of a non-standard one, and requires at least two compilers that are not in the vl repos at the moment.
Because of that, and because I actually use the USB support, I've resorted to the binary edition.

I agree it would be good to have the open-source edition in the repos, though, and I might try it soon.
But if somebody wants to have a go, by all means, don't wait for me.... 

[bigpaws]

Just download and install.

Bigpaws

[wcs]

Just download and install.

For sure, that has been my approach so far.
But i guess some people might be bothered by using non-free software, and want the open-source edition... which would then need to be compiled and packaged.

[VgnFrnd]

In my case, I didn't realize that the non-free edition would install safely. I may have had my wings clipped by the best practices of other distros, but I thought users should only install programs that are available in the repositories. I like to keep my installation as clean as possible, so I avoid junking it up with bits and pieces of code strewn about that might serve as the software equivalent of anti-aircraft flak.

Does Vector have a general recommendation regarding when (and when not) to go off the reservation (repositories) and install non-vetted software? I realize I am a big boy now, and I certainly know how to reformat and reinstall my / directory if I get into trouble; but maybe there are other users out there as well who would benefit from knowing when it is (and isn't) reckless to install from source?

[wcs]

I know what you mean about trying to maintain an installation with everything from the repos.
I try that as well, but sometimes the repos don't have everything I want.

When I don't find something, I usually try to compile it myself and eventually package it for the repos.
Sometimes, however, compiling it is a bit of trouble, because different compilers are required or whatever, which is the case with Virtual Box.

So I now have something like 4 or 5 applications installed in /opt.

My advice is that it is fine to install packaged software from other places, if:
1. It doesn't come from some dodgy place;
2. It is free or open-source software (at least partly), so that people other than the developer have possibly looked at the code;
3. It is fairly self-contained, so that I can extract it in /opt and be ready to go (usually this only requires making a link to the binary in /usr/bin, copying the icon to /usr/share/pixmaps, and making a .desktop file in /usr/share applications... some programs have an install script that actually do that.. I think Virtual Box is an example)
4. I can uninstall the application by simply removing the directory in /opt (and links, icons, etc..)

So as long as the application itself isn't "messy" and all over the place or with lots of dependencies, I don't think it is much of a problem.

I have actually had less trouble with this approach than with installing packages for Slackware, because sometimes I cannot find their dependencies or they are compiled with different compiling options than what I would want.

But I guess it depends... some people might find installing binary software a reckless thing in itself.

[VgnFrnd]

Thanks for the reply. Meanwhile, I've hit a snag. I installed VirtualBox 2.0.2, then updated to 2.0.4. Then I installed XP as a virtual machine.

Everything works okay, except for the Guest Additions. I have been working through the VirtualBox manual as best I can, but I'm at a stuck spot now. Following the VirtualBox manual, I installed "Qt 4.4.1-586-1vl59," "SDL_Pango," and "SDL_Perl," the latter of which pulled in all of the rest of the SDL packages as dependencies.

I am now at the point where the VirtualBox manual instructs me to navigate to the /opt/VirtualBox-2.0.4/additions directory and execute "sh ./VBoxLinuxAdditions-x86.run." The problem is that the file does not exist. According to the manual, the file should have been created automatically during installation.

The manual suggests that if there are problems with a VirtualBox installation from source code, the problem could be that the packages needed to compile the VirtualBox kernel module are missing. At this point, I am uncertain how to proceed, because I do not know which (if any) of the recommended steps are appropriate for Vector.

I have pasted the relevant passage from the manual below. I would appreciate any advice.

"To be able to install this kernel module, you will have to prepare your system for building external kernel modules. As this process can vary from system to system, we will only describe what to do for systems we have tested.

"Most Linux distributions can be set up simply by installing the right packages. Normally, these will be the GNU compiler (GCC), GNU Make (make) and packages containing header files for your kernel. The version numbers of the header file packages must be the same as that of the kernel you are using.

"For recent Linux distributions (for example Fedora Core 5 and later, Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy) and later and Mandriva 2007.1 and later) we recommend installing DKMS. This framework helps to build kernel modules and to deal with kernel upgrades.

"In newer Debian and Ubuntu releases, you must install the right version of the linux-headers and if it exists the linux-kbuild package. Current Ubuntu releases should have the right packages installed by default.

"In older Debian and Ubuntu releases, you must install the right version of the kernel-headers package.
On Fedora and Redhat systems, the package is kernel-devel.

"On SUSE and OpenSUSE Linux, you must install the right versions of the kernel-source and kernel-syms packages.

Alternatively, if you built your own kernel /usr/src/linux will point to your kernel sources, and you have not removed the files created during the build process, then your system will already be correctly set up."

[wcs]

If you are able to run virtual box, it means that you have compiled the kernel module and you have everything that is required.

The guest additions must be run inside Windows. That is, you need to install the additions for every guest operating system that you have (in this case, XP).

For Linux *guests*, this involves compiling another kernel module (which should be done automatically when you run that script)

For Windows guests (which is what you want), it is just a matter of letting the virtual CD-ROM autostart and launch the installer.

For accessing this "virtual cd-rom", go to Devices > Mount CD/DVD > CD/DVD Image, and then select the VboxGuestAdditions.iso file inside the additions directory. Do this while you are running windows.
If it does not autostart, access the cd-rom inside "My computer" and double-click VBoxWindowsAdditions.exe

You can burn this additions iso file to a real CD, but there's not much point as Virtual Box operates with the iso just fine, as if it were a CD.

I installed "Qt 4.4.1-586-1vl59," "SDL_Pango," and "SDL_Perl," the latter of which pulled in all of the rest of the SDL packages as dependencies.

I might be wrong, but I think you only needed the QT and sdl-1.2.11 packages from the repository. No harm done, of course, but I don't think you needed to install SDL_Pango, SDL_Perl and the rest of it.

[VgnFrnd]

If it does not autostart, access the cd-rom inside "My computer" and double-click VBoxWindowsAdditions.exe

Thank you, wcs. This was the trick I was missing.

I might be wrong, but I think you only needed the QT and sdl-1.2.11 packages from the repository. No harm done, of course, but I don't think you needed to install SDL_Pango, SDL_Perl and the rest of it.

Thanks again. For future reference, it sounds like you think the guest additions needed QT? (If I remember correctly, sdl-1.2.11 was already installed on 5.9.1. SOHO)

[wcs]

Great that it's working fine now! (amazing piece of software, this one). 

it sounds like you think the guest additions needed QT?

It seems that QT4 and SDL are needed for the graphical user interface (with guest additions or not).
This seems to be a new thing: I'm running a previous version of virtual box, and don't remember anything about dependencies.

Although they're not "required", as you might just want to run VirtualBox from the "headless server", however that works...
From their User Manual:

To be precise, these packages are only required if you want to run the
VirtualBox graphical user interfaces. In particular, VirtualBox, our main
graphical user interface, requires both Qt and SDL; VBoxSDL, our simplified
GUI, requires only SDL. By contrast, if you only want to run the headless
VRDP server that comes with VirtualBox, neither Qt nor SDL are required.

[VgnFrnd]

Great that it's working fine now! (amazing piece of software, this one). 

Yes. I have used it before to good effect on other distributions. My only troubles arose when I tried to move virtual disks and snapshots across linux platforms. Sometimes I could finagle them to work by parsing the error outputs, sometimes not.

Meanwhile, VirtualBox is in a new version, as of 10/24 (v. 2.0.4). It looks like USB passthrough is now enabled, but I haven't tried it yet. What I have noticed is that now I can run VirtualBox in "seamless" mode, which is basically a full-screen mode. An observer would not be able to tell that anything but the guest OS was running because in seamless mode the guest OS does not run in a window, but fills the full screen. I suppose that would be good for the "surprise!" factor during presentations or something, but I actually prefer windowed mode. I like being reassured that it really is linux that is running the guest.

I know that some folks like Wine, but I have never gotten used to it. I would rather sandbox my non-linux apps in a virtual machine.

[wcs]

VirtualBox in "seamless" mode, which is basically a full-screen mode. An observer would not be able to tell that anything but the guest OS was running because in seamless mode the guest OS does not run in a window,

That's a very cool feature.
I did have a few problems with it in a previous version (1.6.4) in which the guest windows always came out on top of the "native" windows.
Maybe it's fixed now, or maybe it was a bad interaction with the xfce window manager.
Do you experience the same?

[VgnFrnd]

I've never had that problem before with previous versions of VirtualBox, but I haven't actually done very much with my newest installation yet. I've got the guest OS installed and running now with the Guest Additions, plus the one non-linux mission-critical app I needed to use right away. But I am currently running on new (to me) hardware, and I haven't replaced the CPU fan yet. That thing sounds like a Harrier Jet on takeoff, so until I get it swapped out with the Zalman fan that arrived last week, I won't be using the guest OS any more than necessary. I'll keep everyone posted as events unfold. 

[VgnFrnd]

Wow. VirtualBox in seamless mode is better than ever. I took a break from VB for a couple of weeks, so I cannot recall what I am doing differently this time, but VirtualBox in Seamless mode is really impressive. I have it configured so that the Windows taskbar is displayed horizontally across the top of my screen, while my Vector Panel is configured vertically down the left of my screen. Both bars are visible, and the Vector desktop shows through. I have full access to both Windows and Vector OSes and packages, and VirtualBox displays the Windows applications to me as if they were running as Vector apps. Here's a screen shot showing both tool bars, with one Windows window open, and one Vector window open. By the way, for some reason VirtualBox isn't maxing out my CPU cycles this time around, either.

[Joe1962]

That's a really cool wallpaper you've got there, VgnFrnd...