VirtualBox
First of all, if you're going to use VirtualBox with Ubuntu, and either dual-boot, or even if Ubuntu is the only thing on your machine, you will probably need to deal with EUFI Secure Boot. For example, if you have a Hewlett Packard system, you'll find instructions here for enabling and disabling Secure Boot. (hint; hit F10 at POST). While you're in your system setup (aka "BIOS" although it's not BIOS anymore) make sure you enable VT-x / VT-d
- https://era86.github.io/2018/01/24/vagrant-virtualbox-secureboot-in-ubuntu-1604.html
- https://askubuntu.com/questions/914997/install-virtualbox-while-keeping-secure-boot
- https://stegard.net/2016/10/virtualbox-secure-boot-ubuntu-fail/
- Assuming you disable secure boot due to a package installation, even when you re-enable secure boot in your system configuration, you may still see “Booting in insecure mode” with SecureBoot enabled
You'll always find a newer version of VirtualBox using the Oracle ppa, so use that rather than the packaged version that comes with your distro. Warning: if you've already got VirtualBox installed from packages, you should remove it (but not 'completely' meaning don't destroy your existing images). Also, under packaged Ubuntu, you can simply apt-get install virtualbox-guest-additions-iso; however with the PPA, you'll need to download it yourself.
You'll also want to download an ISO or two for your virtual machines http://releases.ubuntu.com/
Note: you don't have to mount the ISO, you can just select it by clicking the little folder icon during setup.
Contents
VirtualBox
"VirtualBox is a powerful x86 and AMD64/Intel64 virtualization product for enterprise as well as home use. Not only is VirtualBox an extremely feature rich, high performance product for enterprise customers, it is also the only professional solution that is freely available as Open Source Software under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL)."
Getting it
# prep
# Stop any virtual machines
vagrant halt qualitybox
cd ~/Downloads
wget http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/5.0.26/virtualbox-5.0_5.0.26-108824-Ubuntu-trusty_i386.deb
sudo dpkg -i ~/Downloads/virtualbox-5.0_5.0.26-108824-Ubuntu-trusty_i386.deb
If you get a 'conflict with virtualbox' error, remove the existing package and re-try the previous install command
sudo dpkg --remove virtualbox-4.3
You may also need to upgrade vagrant E.g. VirtualBox GUI runs fine, but 'vagrant up' does not. This happened to me when my installed version of vagrant 1.7.1 only supported VirtualBox <= 4.3. Upgrading to vagrant 1.8.5 added support for VirtualBox 5.x
sudo dpkg -i /home/greg/Downloads/vagrant_1.8.5_i686.deb
VBoxManage
Besides the GUI interface for VirtualBox, you can manage your VirtualBox machines with the VBoxManage command line tool.
Important Settings
Be sure to enable PAE/NX in the System -> Processor tab for your Ubuntu guests
Guest Additions
If you have problems with installing Guest Additions, see https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/LinuxAdditionsDebug which describes what the drivers are, what they do, and how to install them manually.
Extensions
You may need/want to install the "Extension Pack" for VirtualBox. That's because it provides USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 Host Controller, Host Webcam, VirtualBox RDP, PXE ROM, Disk Encryption, and NVMe. First download the file (it's a tarball with a .vbox-extpack extension), and then use VBoxManage to install it.
VBoxManage extpack list
VBoxManage extpack --help
VBoxManage extpack install --replace ~/Downloads/Oracle_VM_VirtualBox_Extension_Pack-5.2.13-122773.vbox-extpack
Once you create a shared folder in the VirtualBox UI, you may need to mount that folder from the guest.
E.g. for meza,
cd ~/src/meza
vagrant ssh # to get onto the guest
sudo mount -t vboxsf -o uid=$UID,gid=$(id -g) opt_meza /opt/meza
# now the /home/greg/src/meza folder on the host is available to the vagrant user on the guest at /opt/meza
Disk Images
Learn more about VDI - Virtual Disk Images. All about how VirtualBox stores a 'snapshot' of a guest computer into a file on the host. http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?t=8046
Other Projects using VirtualBox
Vagrant
"Vagrant is a tool for building and distributing virtualized development environments. By providing automated creation and provisioning of virtual machines using Oracle's VirtualBox (ed.: as well as other virtualization engines), Vagrant provides the tools to create and configure lightweight, reproducible, and portable virtual environments."
The MediaWiki project uses vagrant and provides instructions as well as the configuration itself so that you can setup a development instance in a snap. See MediaWiki-Vagrant