The past few weeks I have been testing VirtualBox 1.5, the latest version of InnoTek’s x86 virtualizer on my HP Pavilion dv6120BR laptop running Slackware 12 and I must say that so far I liked it.
VirtualBox is available in two versions, an open source one and a closed source one. The only difference between them is that the open source version has a few less features than the closed source one, like USB and iSCSI virtual hard disks. According to InnoTek, the exclusive features of the closed source version will be eventually ported to the open source version after some time, this way they can give their commercial clients an “edge”, while also supporting open source software.. Both versions can be downloaded on VirtualBox’s website, the closed source version is free (as in beer logically) for non-comercial use.
I am currently using the closed source version due to it’s USB support. Since there are no binary packages for Slackware, I had to download the “All distributions i386″ version installer. Here are the steps I had to follow:
- Run the installer
- Run /etc/rc.d/rc.vboxdrv setup to build the necessary kernel modules (it’s necessary to have the current kernel’s source on /usr/src/linux)
- Add /etc/rc.d/rc.vboxdrv and /etc/rc.d/rc.vboxdrv to /etc/rc.d/rc.local to start on system boot
- Add your user to the vboxusers group on /etc/group
With that, everything should be working… except USB support, in case you need it. VirtualBox uses us/etc/rc.d/rc.vboxdrvbfs in order to access USB devices, so the user who is running virtual box needs to have read and write permissions on the virtual usbfs filesystem which is mounted on /proc/bus/usb. After some testing, I found that the for some reason, it’s not udev that mounts /proc/bus/usb on boot (it has a rule for it), nor is there any hal rule for it or fstab entry. After some time trying to figure it out I had to use a small workaround to get it going. It might not be the best or correct approach, but it worked 
. Add the following line to /etc/fstab
none /proc/bus/usb usbfs auto,remount,devmode=0664,devgid=10 0 0
Substitute the number on devgid to a group that the user that’s going to use VirtualBox is on (in this case it’s wheel). The trick here was to add the remount option, I added it because that file system is mounted before /etc/fstab is parsed apparently. Not an elegant solution.
Now just run VirtualBox and voila.
Gotchas:
If you have an ABNT2 keyboard like myself, you will notice a very annoying error, the / key is mapped to \, and there’s no way to change it to the correct mapping. InnoTek says that problem will be fixed on the next version 1.5.2. Their web site says it will be released in “a few days” (please note that the post was made several days ago, so they are quite delayed). It’s annoying, but you can work that out by using the / key of the numeric keypad.
Using a Windows VM:
I’ve tested a Windows XP on VBox. It worked ok. By installing the “Host Guest Additions for Windows”, which came on an ISO image provided by VBox I was able to get some interesting funcionalities, like resizing the Window anyway I wanted (the VM adjusts to the new resoltution), shared clipboard, sharing a directory with the host system and the so called “seamless window mode”, which basically strips out the desktop, leaving only the start bar and the windows open, like they where windows on the desktop, not veeeeeeeeeeeery useful, but looks cool anyway.
Using a Linux VM (Slackware 12):
Everything works ok, as expected. By installing the “Host Guest Additions for Linux”, which comes is available the same way as the Windows version I was able to get some new funcionalities, too bad they were not as much as the Windows version :/. I was able to create a shared directory between the Host and the VM, use custom resolutions on X (like 1250×500 ), and basically that’s it. There’s no seamless mode or dynamic resizing for Linux hosts. The shared clipboard was supposed to be working, but I was not able to get it to work so far, I will keep on testing.
Well, that’s it.
PS: This post is dedicated to Tiago Salem, who keeps telling me to write here more often
UPDATE: Virtual Box 1.5.2 was released and the keyboard mapping problem appears to be resolved.
