April 12, 2019

Virtual Box - my notes from 2019

I am currently running Fedora 29 on a 64 bit system.

Evaluate my existing (5.1.18) version

I have an old version of virtual box (5.1.18). It is informing me that 5.2.26 is now available. (The main web page informs me that 6.0 is available, but I am ignoring that for the time being).

This has a single VM set up via /home/tom/VirtualBox\ VMs/Xenial/Xenial.vdi which is 32G virtual, 12G actual. To run this, it needs me to rebuild the kernel driver (no big surprise, this needs to be done whenever I install a new kernel, which happens often enough). 

su
/sbin/vboxconfig
This has troubles looking for /lib/modules/4.10.17-200.fc25.x86_64 . It is looking only for 4.x kernels and I have modules only for 5.0.6-200.fc29.x86_64, which I may as well reboot to rather than getting Virtualbox set up, then booting a new kernel and having to do it all over again. My guess is that I will need a more up to date virtual box to work with a 5.x kernel.

Let's install a new version

I boot to a new kernel, then start digging in further. It seems that neither dnf nor rpm know anything about the 5.1.18 version I have installed.

I trip over the following notes:

So, I do this: 
su
cd /etc/yum.repos.d
wget http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/rpm/fedora/virtualbox.repo
dnf install VirtualBox-6.0
I get a million errors like the following: 
/usr/bin/VBox from install of VirtualBox-6.0-6.0.4_128413_fedora29-1.x86_64 conflicts with file from package VirtualBox-5.1-5.1.18_114002_fedora25-1.x86_64
Doing the following fixes things: 
dnf erase VirtualBox-5.1
The install informs me: 
Creating group 'vboxusers'. VM users must be member of that group!
So I do this: 
su
usermod -a -G vboxusers wally
The net effect of this is to modify one line in /etc/group like so: 
vboxusers:x:977:wally
The install has created the kernel modules and I am ready to go. I can start virtual box via: 
VirtualBox
Typing "virtualbox" works just the same, there are a bunch of links in /bin to allow variations of this sort.

Using Virtual Box

It finds and starts up my old "Xenial" virtual machine without any trouble. It announces Ubuntu 16.04 It tells me about keyboard and mouse capture both being turned on. The "host key" is right Ctrl and can be used to unlock the above if they don't automatically get unlocked when they should. The root user is installed with my usual "A" password.

Install the current Debian

The current Debian is 9 (stretch), 8 was "jessie", 10 will be "buster".

Strangely, Debian calls all 64 bit x86 packages "amd64". Don't let that scare you if you are running a 64 bit Intel machine. I will install a 64 bit "stretch". I do this: 

cd /u1
wget http://ftp.utexas.edu/debian-cd/9.8.0/amd64/iso-dvd/debian-9.8.0-amd64-DVD-1.iso
This goes rather quickly and is 3.6 gigabytes.

Now I create a new virtual machine called "Debian Stretch". I put it right alongside the one I already have in /home/tom/VirtualBox VMs . It turns out this is a symbolic link to /u1/VirtualBox VMs , so these things aren't hogging lots of space in the /home partition.

Now the tricky part -- getting it to use the iso image. Click start, and you get a "select startup disk" menu. There is a tiny folder icon next to (right of) the menu of things to start from. Use this to navigate to and "open" the iso file /u1/xxx.iso as downloaded above.

This gives me the Debian installer boot menu. I select graphical install. It suggests hostname "debian", I change it to "debian-vm". It finds a network assignment via DHCP. It offers (and I select) Arizona time. I create a tom user and set a root password. I tell it to give me a separate /home. Away it goes installing packages.

It fails installing packages. It looks to me like the root partition filled up. Maybe having a separate /home was not such a good idea. It looks like it was 3G and /home was 4G (and /home is empty). I use the "reset" button and start over, slecting "one big partition" this time.

Feedback? Questions? Drop me a line!

Tom's Computer Info / [email protected]