Software I like: VirtualBox

1. Introduction

VirtualBox is a virtualizer for x86 and amd64/intel64 hardware, that is, it allows one to run a guest operating system under a host operating system. On this page the focus is on Debian GNU/Linux as the guest operating system.

If you have problems getting VirtualBox to work, an open-source alternative is QEMU, which I haven’t tried. Another alternative for Linux is KVM. Another alternative is VMWare Workstation Player, which is a commercial product that is free of charge for personal non-commercial use. It is available for MS Windows and for Linux; VMWare Fusion is available for the Mac but is not free of charge.

Windows Subsystem for Linux is another possibility for running Linux applications under MS Windows. It is available under Windows 10. It is intended mainly for developers, and apparently there are (or were) stability problems when using graphics.

VirtualBox is not included in Debian 9 (Stretch) but can be installed from stretch-backports or directly from virtualbox.org.

This page mostly assumes that the guest operating system is Linux.

2. Installing VirtualBox

Installation of VirtualBox is straighforward.

One stumbling block is that you may see a message like the one on the right, about ‘Missing Dependencies’ related to Python. The message doesn’t make it clear whether or when the Python bindings are necessary. Apparently you only need them if you want to write Python programmes for handling VirtualBox virtual machines (ref). If you’re not going to be doing that, click on Yes to proceed with the installation.

3. Installing a guest operating system

In the VirtualBox Manager, do Machine ► New. In the window that pops up, select the type of operating system to be used on the new machine (e.g., Linux) and the version (e.g., Debian 64-bit) and specify a name (e.g., Debian-11-64, or whatever you like). In the next windows:

• Memory. Specify the memory size for the virtual machine. 2048 MB should be enough to run the AudiLab software; 1500 MB may be enough if you’re short of memory. You need to leave enough memory for the host operating system.

  If you immediately get a Killed or Segmentation fault error message when you try to run a programme in a guest operating system, you may need to increase the amount of memory allocated to the virtual machine. The amount of memory can be changed by shutting down the virtual machine and doing Machine ► Settings ► System.

• Hard drive. Specify a virtual hard drive. Normally you should create a new dynamically allocated VDI hard drive for each virtual machine. It is created as a .vdi file with a default location under a directory called VirtualBox VMs in your home directory.

  The virtual disk doesn’t normally have to be very big because your data files and other non-system files can be (and usually should be) stored directly in the file system of the host operating system (see Sharing below), so in most cases you can accept the default size of 8 GB, or perhaps set it to 10 GB for extra leeway. However, if you need to install a lot of software or big software (e.g., finite-element software) on the virtual disk, you should create a larger disk. If you have lots of free disk space, you may want to create a somewhat larger virtual disk just so it doesn’t gradually fill up over time.

  It is non-trivial but possible to later increase the size of the virtual disk (see Resizing below).

  Files can be extracted from a .vdi file using 7-Zip.

• Graphics controller. Under Display, for the graphics controller there is a choice between VBoxVGA and newer VBoxSVGA (for Windows guests) or VMSVGA (for Linux guests). As of 2019 Apr, the default VMSVGA for Linux guests was buggy (or at least my software didn’t work properly with it) so VBoxVGA needed to be selected. As of 2020 Jun 15, my software seems to work with VMSVGA. As of 2020 Aug 29, the use of VMSVGA causes an error message saying
  Failed to send host log message
  when starting the virtual machine, but the start-up continues.
• CPU’s. In Settings ► System ► Processors you can set the number of CPU’s allocated to your virtual machine. (‘CPU’ here really means ‘cores’ or even ‘threads’.) A single CPU should be enough for AudiLab software, but there have been reports of VirtualBox needing a second CPU to run properly (e.g., ref).

When a new virtual machine is started the first time, you will be prompted for the location of a virtual or physical optical drive from which to boot or install the guest operating system. For example, browse to where you’ve downloaded and stored a CD .iso image file on your host computer.

Follow the usual installation procedure for the guest operating system. If you plan to use AudiLab software, follow this installation procedure. Then install the VirtualBox Guest Additions.

4. Guest Additions

Guest Additions are additions to the operating system that has been installed as a VirtualBox guest. The additions provide important features such as access to directories and files on the host from within the guest operating system; mouse pointer integration; shared clipboard and drag-and-drop between host and guest; automatic resizing of the guest desktop when its host window is resized; and ‘seamless’ mode (View ► Switch to Seamless Mode in the guest). Guest Additions may be necessary for proper functioning of the mouse and keyboard when the host operating system is macOS.

To make sure you have the required packages for adding the Guest Additions, open a terminal window in the virtual (guest) machine by doing
Applications ► System Tools ► MATE Terminal
Give the command
sudo apt install make gcc dkms build-essential perl linux-headers-amd64
Enter your password when requested, to enable sudo, then type Y and Enter when asked whether to continue or not.
(These packages may not be available to you if you have not specified a download mirror in your /etc/apt/sources.list file.)
The architecture specification amd64 in the package name linux-headers-amd64 may not be appropriate for you. The output of the command uname -r can be used in place of amd64 in the package name.

Once you’ve installed these packages, it may be necessary to restart the virtual machine before doing the next step.

A procedure (the best one?) for installing Guest Additions in a Linux guest: If a virtual CD called something like VBox_GAs_n.n.n doesn’t already appear on the desktop of the the Linux guest, then in the VirtualBox window of the running guest machine do Devices ► Optical Drives ► Remove disk from optical drive; if you see a message saying Unable to eject …, click on Force Unmount. To ensure that no disk is present in the virtual optical drive, you can shut down the virtual machine by doing Machine ► ACPI Shutdown in the VirtualBox menu, or System ► Shut Down… in the Linux menu. Then in the VirtualBox Manager window, under Storage ensure that it says [Optical Drive] Empty; if it doesn't, click on [Optical Drive] and use Remove disk from optical drive, then restart the guest machine. Then do Devices ► Insert Guest Additions CD image …. A virtual CD should appear in the Places menu (e.g., VBox_GAs_n.n.n) and possibly on the desktop. If that doesn't work, try Devices ► Optical Drives ► Choose/Create a disk image…. You should see VBoxGuestAdditions.iso as ‘Attached’; select it and click on Choose. If necessary, click on Force unmount If a window pops up saying You have just inserted a medium … Choose what application to launch., you can just select Do Nothing and click on OK. In a terminal window (e.g., Applications ► System Tools ► MATE Terminal) do
cd /media/cdrom
(If you already had a terminal window open, you may need to open a new one to be able to see the contents of the CD.) If that doesn’t work, you can determine the correct directory for the guest additions by double-clicking on the CD icon on your desktop. For example, you may need to do something like
cd /media/username/VBox_GAs_n.n.n
Once you’re in the correct directory, do
sudo sh ./VBoxLinuxAdditions.run
and wait while it works. Check the output carefully to determine whether the process was successful or not.

After successful completion of VBoxLinuxAdditions.run, restart the guest machine. One method is to give the command
sudo shutdown -r now.
Alternatively, do System ► Shut Down ► Shut Down then restart the guest machine.

5. Sharing files between guest and host

The Guest Additions must have been installed.

To add a shared folder:

• With the guest machine Powered Off, select it in the column at the left in the VirtualBox Manager window.
• Select Machine ► Settings then Shared Folders.
• Click on the Adds new shared folder icon .
• Browse to find the Folder Path of the drive or folder that you want to share and select it.
• Accept the default Folder Name (i.e., a ‘share name’) or specify a new one.
  For example, to share the host Windows system’s C: drive in a Linux guest, select C:\ as the Folder Path and keep the default Folder Name of C_DRIVE.
  If the host is a Mac, you might select the Users/ directory and use Host as the name.
• If you want manual mounting, leave the Auto-mount box unchecked; if you want automatic mounting, click on it so it’s checked. Click OK. Brief instructions for accessing the shared folder are displayed when the mouse hovers over the Folders List.
• Start the Linux guest and open a terminal window.
• Use the mkdir command to create an empty directory that will be used as the ‘mount point’. For example, in your home directory:
  mkdir HostC
  or
  mkdir Host
  
• If you chose manual mounting, do the following in the guest machine:
  • Use the mount command (with sudo because it requires root privileges) to manually mount the shared drive at the mount point. For example,
    sudo mount -t vboxsf C_DRIVE HostC under MS Windows
    or
    sudo mount -t vboxsf Users Host under Mac OS
    Here is a sample script that is intended to be placed in a directory called bin/ in your Linux home directory and edited to match your setup.
  • The last step (mounting) must be done each time you start the virtual machine.
  If you chose automatic mounting, do the following in the guest machine:
  • The user must be made a member of the vboxsf group. This can be done with the command
    sudo usermod -a -G vboxsf username
    where username is replaced by the user name you’ve defined for yourself. You need to logout of the guest machine and log back in for this to take effect. You can use the groups command to check that vboxsf is listed among your groups. If it is not, waiting for 20 seconds or so may help, or you may need to shut down the guest machine and start it up again (ref).
  • The shared folder will appear in /media as something like /media/sf_C_DRIVE. For convenience, you can define a ‘symbolic link’ in your home directory with a command something like
    ln -s /media/sf_C_DRIVE HostC
    You could then access the shared directory by referring to HostC in your home directory.
  • Once automatic mounting has been set up, it shouldn’t require further action.
  • AudiLab software cannot interpret the symbolic link to HostC, so when browsing for files in that software it will be necessary to use the path /media/sf_C_DRIVE explicitly.

6. Sharing clipboards between guest and host

The Guest Additions must have been installed.

To enable the sharing of clipboards between guest and host, do Settings ► General ► Advanced. Under Shared Clipboard select Bidirectional or one of the other options. You can also enable Drag'n'Drop between guest and host here.

7. CD’s and DVD’s

CD’s and DVD’s are made available to the guest operating system using File ► Virtual Media Manager (Optical disks tab) in the Oracle VM VirtualBox Manager window and using Devices ► Optical Drives in the Oracle VM VirtualBox window of a running guest operating system. Real disks can be used in the host’s physical CD/DVD drive, and .iso files can be used as virtual disks.

8. Network

Under Windows 7, VirtualBox makes a network connection that appears, at least in my case, as an Unidentified network that is shown as having no network access but which works fine. In one case, after upgrading VirtualBox the network connection did not work. I fixed it by disconnecting and reconnecting the network using Devices ► Network ► Connect Network Adapter.

See this overview of networking in VirtualBox. There are more details in virtual-networking chapter of the VirtualBox manual.

9. Powering off the guest machine

The guest machine can be powered off using Machine ► Close. The three options are provided:

• Save the machine state: comparable to doing a Suspend or Hibernate
• Send the shutdown signal: like holding the power switch down, which should do a clean shutdown
• Power off the machine: like pulling the plug (not recommended)

10. Resizing a virtual disk

It is possible to increase (but not decrease) the size of an existing virtual disk (e.g., refs 1, 2, 3). The following instructions are for VirtualBox 6.1. They make a lot of assumptions and ignore a lot of alternatives.

1. Back up anything on the virtual disk that you don’t want to lose.
2. Shut down the virtual machine.
3. In the host machine, download and save the Live CD for GParted, the GNOME partition editor. Read the instructions about which version of the .iso CD image file to download.
4. In the VirtualBox Manager window, do File ► Tools ► Virtual Media Manager. Under Hard disks select the virtual disk that you want to modify. Select Properties in the toolbar at the top.
5. Use the Size slider or the number box to select the new larger size for the virtual disk. Make sure it’s not too big because you won’t be able to reduce it later. Click Apply.
6. Still in the Virtual Media Manager, select Optical disks and then select Add from the toolbar. Browse to find the .iso file that you downloaded (e.g., gparted-live-1.1.0-5-amd64.iso. Click Open and then Close.
7. In the VirtualBox Manager window, select the virtual machine whose disk you’re enlarging, go to Settings, and select Storage. Under Controller: IDE, click where it either says Empty or names an already inserted virtual CD (e.g., VBoxGuestAdditions.iso), then click on the CD icon (at the right in the Attributes section) and select the GParted .iso that is listed in the pop-up menu. The name of that .iso file should now appear under Controller: IDE. Click on OK.
8. In Settings ► System, make sure that in Boot Order the entry for Optical is listed above Hard Disk and has its box checked.
9. Start your virtual machine. It should boot into GParted Live. You can probably accept Default settings, KMS (you probably don’t need to know what KMS is, it’s related to graphics) and accept the default keymap, language, and graphics mode.
10. In the screenshot on the right, we see a colour-coded representation of a typical setup with what was an 8-GB virtual disk that includes a 6-GB main partition (sda1) and a 2-GB swap partition (sda5 nested inside sda2), which was enlarged to 20 GB in an earlier step. We could create a separate new partition to use the newly available space. However, since the swap partition doesn’t contain anything valuable, it’s easy to work around it and extend the sda1 partition:
    1. The swap partition can be deleted (delete sda5 first and then sda2) and then recreated after sda1 has been extended.
    2. Alternatively, the swap partition can be moved to the end of the disk by (1) extending sda2 to the end of the disk; (2) moving sda5 to the end of sda2; and then (3) resizing sda2 by moving its start up against the start of sda5. sda1 can then be extended.

    The newly created partitions will get temporary names until you actually apply your changes, at which point they’ll get names of the form /dev/sdan.

    To avoid small 1- and 2-MB bits of unused space, and also avoid certain error messages, the partition alignment can be changed to None in spite of the dire warnings, as long as you don’t touch sda1 except to extend it.

    As you specify changes, they’ll be listed at the bottom of the GParted window, and they can be undone. Once everything looks right, click on the green checkmark icon to apply the changes. Before you do that, convince yourself that you’ve backed up anything on the virtual disk that you don’t want to lose, in case something goes wrong.

11. If, after doing all this, you get a message when booting which says
    A start job is running for /dev/disk/by-uuid/…
    and the system waits while a timer counts down, it may be that the universally unique identifier (UUID) of one of your disk partitions has changed. To check if the problem is with your swap partition, give the command
    sudo swapon -s (or sudo swapon --show)
    If nothing is displayed, it means that your swap partition is not functioning. To see what the UUID of your swap partition is, do
    sudo blkid | grep swap
    To see what the system thinks is the UUID for your swap partition, do
    more /etc/fstab|grep swap
    If the two UUID's are different, you can edit the file /etc/fstab. First make a backup copy using the command
    sudo cp -p /etc/fstab /etc/fstab_old
    Then invoke the nano editor:
    sudo nano /etc/fstab
    Change the UUID for the swap partition and exit from nano, saving the modified file. Hopefully the delay when rebooting will no longer happen.

11. Problem with Wacom driver

As of 2015 Mar 29 I have a problem with my Windows 7 running out of memory and requiring me to shut down applications. It’s probably related to this Wacom forum posting (dated 2014 Nov 19) about a memory leak in the Wacom Bamboo driver when VirtualBox is running, even if the device isn’t being used. At this moment, for example, Pen_Tablet.exe has a Working Set size of ~1.8 GB and growing. The problem seems to have arisen for me only in the past few weeks. With the Task Manager I cannot directly kill the process Pen_Tablet.exe, nor stop the service TabletServicePen directly by right-clicking, but I could stop it by using the Services button, at which point the memory was released.