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Posts Tagged ‘virtualbox’

I believe many people have the same questions. Which one is the best free virtualization out there?

I did not include the Vmware Workstation because it is not free. Based on my experience working with all the virtualization software, my personal opinion would be the Sun VirtualBox. I got hooked up with it when I was trying to virtualize Solaris 10.

At that time, I was undecided to go to which direction for my career path. There was a vacancy as Unix expert in Sun platform which means that I have to work with Sun Solaris and its Sun Storage too.

I have installed Vmware server 2.0 but it always made my computer slow. The response was not so fast.

Then, I tried virtualbox, the installation steps were about the same as vmware server. After setting up all the guest OS, it was getting very smooth and fast response.

Virtual PC 2009 is good for Windows systems. Other than  that, it is not supported well.

It’s very simple. You just need to install Guest Additions.

Start up your Ubuntu 8.04 guest. In VirtualBox, click Devices->Install Guest Additions and your virtual Ubuntu should recognize a new CD. Open a terminal and run this command:
sudo /media/cdrom/VBoxLinuxAdditions.run

The installer should prompt you that it’s time to restart the virtual machine once it’s done. Just logging out and back in should work.

This is where things get sticky. For Ubuntu 8.04 guests, the VirtualBox video driver will not be enabled because of the minimalistic xorg.conf file.

Open your guest machine’s xorg.conf file:
gksu gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Find the device section, which should look like this:

Section "Device"
Identifier "Configured Video Device"
EndSection

And replace it with this to enable the VirtualBox driver:


Section "Device"
Identifier   "Configured Video Device"
Driver    "vboxvideo"
EndSection


Changing screen resolutions in Ubuntu 8.04 is done with RandR, which is not supported by VirtualBox. So you’ll also need to set a resolution manually. Find the screen section, which should look like this:


Section "Screen"
Identifier    "Default Screen"
Monitor    "Configured Monitor"
Device    "Configured Video Device"
EndSection


And replace it with this, but change 1024×768 to your preferred resolution:


Section "Screen"
Identifier    "Default Screen"
Device    "VirtualBox graphics card"
Monitor    "Generic Monitor"
DefaultDepth    24
SubSection "Display"
Depth    24
Modes      "1024x768"
EndSubSection
EndSection


Save, exit the editor, and log out. You should now have a large virtual machine window, as well as mouse pointer integration.

VT-x/AMD-V hardware acceleration has been enabled, but is not operational. Your 64-bit guest will fail to detect a 64-bit CPU and will not be able to boot.

Please ensure that you have enabled VT-x/AMD-V properly in the BIOS of your host computer

I have ticked Enable VT-x/AMD-V but got the error message when I tried to boot the Windows 7 64-bit as a guest using Sun VirtualBox 3.0.8

enable vt-x amd-v

The solution to this problem is actually upgrading my BIOS from A03 to A05 update released last week for Dell 1440. After updating the BIOS, I re-enabled the Intel Virtualization support in the boot setup. It worked like a charm after that. So why don’t you try to check if there is a BIOS update for you motherboard first.