Installing and Configuring Innotek Virtual Box

Virtual Box is a very useful and effective Open Source, Virtual Machine software similar to Novel's VM Ware. Virtual Box can run on Windows, Linux and Mac's, and can operate All three on Virtual Machines, It is even able to support Vista.

This article at current is going to primarily cover running Virtual Box on Debian Etch as the Host, and XP on the VM.

First thing I did was install Virtual Box Via Apt. To do this you must add the Virtual Box Repositories to your Sources.list file, as well as add their Public Key to your Keyring.

The Apt repositories for Debian are as follows. You can access the repositories for another OS via the Virtual Box Website. http://virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads


     deb http://www.virtualbox.org/debian feisty non-free
     deb http://www.virtualbox.org/debian edgy non-free
     deb http://www.virtualbox.org/debian dapper non-free
     deb http://www.virtualbox.org/debian etch non-free
     deb http://www.virtualbox.org/debian sarge non-free
     deb http://www.virtualbox.org/debian xandros4.0-xn non-free


To add the public Key to your Keyring you must first download the innotek.asc file, Downloaded here
You may then add the key to your keyring:

      # apt-key add


NOTE: The innotek key fingerprint isn't important  to  the actual install, but it can be used to verify that you have a
              complete, non-corrupt and untampered key. I'm not certain how to check this information.
              but the innotek.asc file's fingerprint should be as follows.

                    6947 BD50 026A E8C8 9AC4  09FD 390E C3FF 927C CC73
                    innotek GmbH (archive signing key) <info@innotek.de>


After adjusting your Apt Sources, and adding the keyring you can install Virtual Box  Via Apt-Get.

      # apt-get install virtualbox    (For the Full Version)

                        -or-

      # apt-get install virtualbox-ose    (For the Open Source Edition)


I'm Currently using the full version, but they also offer an Open Source Edition. The Full version is offered as binary only, and contains a few features that the Open Source Edition does not. The full version is licensed free to private users and allows evaluation privileges to Enterprise customers. The  OSE version is completely Open Source, Licensed under the GPL and aimed twords Developers. For more information on the differences between Virtual Box and the OSE, See Here


Users of Virtual Box must have rights to edit /etc/init.d/vboxdrv  In order to allow this, The installation will create a Group (vboxusers) with this specific privileges so you must add any restricted user to this group before they can run the virtual box program. It is not suggested that you run Virtual Box with Root, for this can lead to security risk.

Before you can run Virtual Box you must also compile vboxdrv. this should be as simple as

      # /etc/init.d/vboxdrv setup

The only issue I came across with this step was that I didn't have my Kernel Headers installed. after I installed the headers and re executed the command it compiled just fine.

TROUBLESHOOTING:

As far as using Virtual Box. I have run across a few issues here and there. the following is how I handled them.

Unable to chose a CD Rom device, drop down window only offered /dev/fd0:
For some reason the at this point Virtual Box is only designed to recognize specific devices as CD or Floppy Devices. My CD-ROM      device was /dev/cdrom1 and so Virtual Box ignored it. I created a Sym Link to the device named cdrom and Virtual Box picked it right up

       # ln -s /dev/cdrom1 /dev/cdrom

I personally feel this is a bad design, There are way too many distributions out there to only recognize specific devices. Not to mention the concern that, what if a given system has multiple CD devices. If the virtual box only recognizes /dev/cdrom as a valid cd device, than how do you use both? Now this is of course based on a very limited experience with Virtual Box, and I can't say what all Virtual box does recognize as valid CD Devices. But given the diversity in the Linux Community, I feel there would be advantage in allowing the end user to define their CD devices to virtual box, if they don't fit into the box </ bad pun>

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VERR_FILE_NOT_FOUND:
You go to load up you Virtual Machine and you get a box, with some error that may very in the text slightly but in inevitably say THIS. I really haven't found out exactly what this statement means, and I swear it seems to be a catch all for anything and everything that can go wrong on a virtual machine, this complicates matters by the fact that the net is riddled with questions where this error has come up and the variables are astronomical. I have found this error myself several times, Even AFTER the system worked!

The first time I fought with this thing, it turned out that my network device settings where incorrect. I rest it to NAT and Vola' shit worked. I aim on doing some basic reading in the manual about the options listed here and how they work, but for first time, use NAT and leave it be. you can change it later after learning what the options mean

The Second time I received this error, I had just shut down a working OS. restarted my computer, and tried to load the machine up again, and low and behold, my shit was broke, I was like WTF!?! it turned out that This time it was my sound settings. I had loaded up Xmms in the host and was playing a mp3 and as long as XMMS claimed the sound device. The Virtual Machine couldn't claim it, Now I have had absolutely no problem with both the host and the VM sharing the sound device. Windows makes a sound, I run an MP3 in XMMS and then windows can play more sounds. the only thing is they can't both make sounds at the EXACT same moment, and The Virtual box needs to verify that it can use the sound device when you start a VM, and so will throw a Bitch Fit if something is using the device at that precise moment. I'll be so glad when E Sound Server or an equivalent becomes the default sound option in Linux. a server that handles the sound card exclusively and programs that send request to the server seems more logical than this. but all in good time I guess.

Basically these are just the causes to this error appearing I have experienced. best I can say is think about what you have changed since your last  effective use of the Virtual Machine throwing the error. and try disabling the hardware options and activating them one at a time and see where the error appears. it's an annoying process. but may get the job done.

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At current I have some other issues to weed out, I have networking both ways on my Virtual Machine, but not Internet. which is bazaar. I figure some study in the built in manual on the networking options may shed some light, otherwise it's back to the forums. The Virtual Box Site has a forum under their community tab that is useful. and you can also download the manual in PDF format if you like, I find this useful so I may study whilst on a computer that doesn't actually have the program installed on it.


This information is here to serve primarily as notes for Kinetic Bands internal uses, they are web accessible only in hopes that the information contained may be useful to others, this data was copied in part from the following source, you will find additional information and troubleshooting info there.

http://virtualbox.org