VBoxHeadless - Running Virtual Machines With VirtualBox 2 On A Headless Debian Lenny Server

Version 1.0
Author: Falko Timme <ft [at] falkotimme [dot] com>
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Last edited 05/27/2009

This guide explains how you can run virtual machines with Sun xVM VirtualBox 2 on a headless Debian Lenny server. Normally you use the VirtualBox GUI to manage your virtual machines, but a server does not have a desktop environment. Fortunately, VirtualBox comes with a tool called VBoxHeadless that allows you to connect to the virtual machines over a remote desktop connection, so there's no need for the VirtualBox GUI.

I do not issue any guarantee that this will work for you!

1 Preliminary Note

I have tested this on a Debian Lenny server (host system) with the IP address 192.168.0.100 where I'm logged in as a normal user (user name administrator in this example) instead of as root.

If you only have a root account, but no normal user account, create one as follows (user administrator, group administrator)...

# groupadd administrator
# useradd -d /home/administrator -m -g administrator -s /bin/bash administrator

... create a password for the new user...

# passwd administrator

... and log in as that user.

2 Installing VirtualBox

To install VirtualBox 2 on our Debian Lenny server, we need root privileges, therefore we run

$ su

Then we add the VirtualBox repository to our apt configuration:

# echo "deb http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian lenny non-free" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/virtualbox.list

Then we download Sun's public key...

# wget -q http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian/sun_vbox.asc -O- | apt-key add -

... and update our package database:

# aptitude update

Now we bring our system up to date:

# aptitude safe-upgrade

(It is possible that the kernel gets updated. If this is the case, reboot the system...

# reboot

... log in as the normal user again and become root:

$ su

)

Afterwards, we install VirtualBox 2 as follows:

# aptitude install linux-headers-$(uname -r) build-essential virtualbox-2.2

Creating group 'vboxusers'
Users of VirtualBox must be members of that group. Host network interfaces will be assigned to that group. <-- Ok

Unable to find a precompiled module for the current kernel![...]
Should the vboxdrv kernel module be compiled now? <-- Yes

Now we must add the user that will run VirtualBox (administrator in this example) to the vboxusers group:

# adduser administrator vboxusers

VirtualBox is now installed and ready to be used.

Type

# exit

to leave the root account and become a normal user (administrator) again.

3 Using VirtualBox On The Command Line

3.1 Creating A VM

To create a VM on the command line, we can use the VBoxManage command. See

$ VBoxManage --help

for a list of available switches and (highly recommended!) take a look at chapter 8 (VBoxManage reference) in the VirtualBox 2.2 user manual.

I will now create a Debian Lenny Server VM with 256MB memory and a 10GB hard drive from the Debian Lenny Netinstall iso image (which I have stored in /home/debian-500-i386-netinst.iso):

$ VBoxManage createvm -name "Debian Lenny Server" -register
$ VBoxManage modifyvm "Debian Lenny Server" -memory "256MB" -acpi on -boot1 dvd -nic1 nat
$ VBoxManage createvdi -filename "Debian_Lenny_Server.vdi" -size 10000 -register
$ VBoxManage modifyvm "Debian Lenny Server" -hda "Debian_Lenny_Server.vdi"
$ VBoxManage registerimage dvd /home/debian-500-i386-netinst.iso
$ VBoxManage modifyvm "Debian Lenny Server" -dvd /home/debian-500-i386-netinst.iso

3.2 Importing An Existing VM

Let's assume you have a VM called examplevm that you want to reuse on this host. On the old host, you should have a directory Machines/examplevm in the VirtualBox directory; Machines/examplevm should contain the examplevm.xml file. Copy the examplevm directory (including the examplevm.xml file) to your new Machines directory (if your user name is administrator, this is /home/administrator/.VirtualBox/Machines - the result should be /home/administrator/.VirtualBox/Machines/examplevm/examplevm.xml).

In addition to that copy the examplevm.vdi file from the old VDI directory to the new one (e.g. /home/administrator/.VirtualBox/VDI/examplevm.vdi).

Afterwards, you must register the imported VM:

$ VBoxManage registervm Machines/examplevm/examplevm.xml

3.3 Starting A VM With VBoxHeadless

Regardless of if you create a new VM or import and old one, you can start it with the command:

$ VBoxHeadless -startvm "Debian Lenny Server"

(Replace Debian Lenny Server with the name of your VM.)

VBoxHeadless will start the VM and a VRDP (VirtualBox Remote Desktop Protocol) server which allows you to see the VM's output remotely on another machine.

To learn more about VBoxHeadless, take a look at

$ VBoxHeadless --help

and at chapter 7.4 (Remote virtual machines (VRDP support)) in the VirtualBox 2.2 user manual.