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VirtualBox

https://www.virtualbox.org/

Open source VM desktop software.

Key Points

Brilliant for its day on x86_64 machines.

Doesn't support new Apple Silicon ARM architecture chips properly yet, very buggy.

Use UTM for qemu VMs on new Macs instead (unfortunately this rules out Vagrant).

Consider switching to Docker and local Kubernetes instead of using VMs.

VirtualBox CLI

VBoxManage --help
VBoxManage metrics list

DHCP

VBoxManage list natnets
VBoxManage natnetwork modify --netname NatNetwork1 --dhcp on

DNS Proxy

Enable DNS Proxy.

VBoxManage list vms

Software polite shutdown via ACPI:

VBoxManage controlvm acpipowerbutton "default"
VBoxManage modifyvm "default" --natdnsproxy1 on
VBoxManage startvm "default"
cat /etc/resolv.conf

output shows the VBox NAT DNS address:

nameserver 10.0.2.3

VirtualBox Guest Additions

This allows for:

  1. Mouse pointer integration with GUI VMs
  2. Shared Folders for sharing a directory between your host desktop / laptop which appears as a mount point in the VM for easy file transfers
  3. Software shutdowns (ACPI)

To install, either:

  1. mount the in-built guest additions ISO in the VM via the VirtualBox GUI
  2. or dump guest additions iso file from a system with a desktop manager, then mount /dev/sr0 inside the VM

Then run the installer file inside the VM where the guest additions virtual CD is mounted (/mnt/VBoxLinuxAdditions.run).

Broken on newer Ubuntu 14, may need to upgrade VirtualBox but this will break Vagrant:

if which yum; then
  yum install -y make gcc kernel-headers-`uname -r` kernel-devel-`uname -r`
elif grep -i ubuntu /etc/*release;then
  apt-get install -y virtualbox-guest-utils virtualbox-guest-x11
  elif which apt-get; then
  apt-get install -y gcc kernel-devel
  apt-get install -y build-essential module-assistant
fi

Needed to open with GUI in VBox and click install guest additions

{
  mount /dev/sr0   /mnt ||    # CentOS6
  mount /dev/cdrom /mnt       # CentOS5
} &&
/mnt/VBoxLinuxAdditions.run

Load kernel modules if not already loaded:

lsmod | grep -i vbox || /etc/init.d/vboxadd setup

Start VirtualBox Guest Additions service if not already started:

ps -ef | grep -i vbo[x] || /etc/init.d/vboxadd-service start
/etc/init.d/vboxadd-service status

Boot from USB

VBoxManage internalcommands createrawvmdk -filename usb.vmdk -rawdisk /dev/disk2

then add vmdk to VM storage controller in VirtualBox GUI settings.

Reclaim Disk Space

First zero out free disk space. This doesn't actually consume space VirtualBox must be smart about not writing zeros

On Windows:

sdelete -z c:

On Linux:

dd if=/dev/zero of=zero.txt
sync
sleep 1
sync
rm -f zero.txt

Now shut down the VM and compact the disk image:

VDI:

VBoxManage modifyhd disk.vdi --compact

VMDK - use VMware Fusion / Workstation (VirtualBox runs vmdk but VBoxManage modifyhd command doesn't support --compacting it in 4.2.6)

vmware-vdiskmanager -k disk.vmdk

Convert VMware VMDK to VBox disk format for use in VirtualBox

Using VMware Fusion.

Convert to .ovf:

"/Applications/VMware Fusion.app/Contents/Library/VMware OVF Tool/ovftool" Cloudera-Training-VM-4.1.1.c/Cloudera-Training-VM-4.1.1.c.vmx Cloudera-Training-VM-4.1.1c-OVF/Cloudera-Training-VM.ovf

Convert to .ova:

"/Applications/VMware Fusion.app/Contents/Library/VMware OVF Tool/ovftool" cloudera-data-science-vm.vmx cloudera-data-science-vm.ova
mv cloudera-data-science-vm.ova ...
  • Import into VirtualBox (name VM, don't start yet!)
  • Add Sata controller + CD drive
  • Install Guest Additions to added CD to drive
  • created Shared folder /Users/hari/vagrant to v-root
  • Network port forward so we can paste in all these commands
yum -y update kernel
vim /boot/grub/grub.conf
reboot

OR

  • Installed CentOS 6 with @core @server-policy only
  • set terminal profile transparency
  • 40GB thin provision storage, leave swap partition
  • leave swap partition it's more space friendly in thin provisioned disks than dd if=/dev/zero of=/swapfile

Old kernel-headers may not be available so update kernel:

yum install -y bind-utils \
               dstat \
               ethtool \
               iputils \
               lsof \
               mlocate \
               parted \
               sysstat \
               tcpdump \
               traceroute \
               wget \
               vim-enhanced &&
yum update -y kernel &&
reboot

Root Keys & Networking

On RHEL5 this is 60-net.rules:

rm -vf /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules

mkdir -v /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules # to prevent it being recreated

# rm -vf /etc/ssh/ssh_host_*

mkdir /vagrant
mkdir /root/.ssh

mount -t vboxsf v-root /vagrant

cp /vagrant/id_rsa.pub /root/.ssh/authorized_keys

chown -R root:root /root/.ssh
chmod 0700 /root/.ssh
chmod 0600 /root/.ssh/authorized_keys

service NetworkManager stop
chkconfig NetworkManager off

if ! [ -f /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 ]; then
  echo GATEWAY=10.0.2.2 >> /etc/sysconfig/network
  perl -pi -e 's/^HOSTNAME=/HOSTNAME=training-ml-template' /etc/sysconfig/network
  cat > /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 <<-EOF
  DEVICE=eth0
  IPADDR=10.0.2.15
  NETMASK=255.255.255.0
  ONBOOT=yes
  NAME=eth0
EOF
fi

service network restart

Troubleshooting

hostonlyif create problem on vagrant up resolved by (couldn't enable hostonlyif in VirtualBox GUI as well)

On Mac, restart VirtualBox:

sudo /Library/StartupItems/VirtualBox/VirtualBox restart

This didn't work one time, had to do go via Menu:

VirtualBox -> Preferences -> Network -> add Host-only Network -> vboxnet0

VBOX_E_INVALID_OBJECT_STATE when trying to do:

vm_name="Hortonworks Sandbox 2.0"
VBoxManage showvminfo  $vm_name
VBoxManage stopvm      $vm_name
VBoxManage startvm     $vm_name

tried:

VBoxManage controlvm    $vm_name poweroff
VBoxManage controlvm    $vm_name reset
VBoxManage discardstate $vm_name
VBoxManage unregistervm $vm_name

None of that worked - it turns out there was a pop-up window still open behind other windows that was stopping the VM from going down properly

To use /root home directory

  • .ssh/id_rsa private keys don't work without tight permissions
  • 0077 didn't work for umask, use 077
  • mount -t vboxsf umask=077,uid=0,gid=0 SharedFolder /SharedFolder

Upgrades

Beware upgrading VirtualBox may break your existing VMs containing versions of virtualbox guest additions.

Ported from private Knowledge Base page 2013+