Comments on: 5 Reasons VirtualBox Rocks My Socks

By: Shivayogi

Shivayogi — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 06:28:42 +0000

I’d the system with Windows Vista Home Basic edition. I tried intsalling MS Virtual PC, but it is not supporting on this version. Hope Vbox works.

By: Pete

Pete — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 00:05:40 +0000

Re: Vbox vs VMWare Workstation, I’ve used both. VMWare was a bit slower and a little rough around the edges. I’ve got Vbox running on Ubuntu9.04 and it’s lightning fast. My winXP guest boots faster in VBox than XP did as a standalone OS on the same hardware – not including the ubuntu boot time, of course.

The seamless window integration in Vbox is also better than what you’ll find in VMWare. It’s really a kick to have a Quicken window set against the Ubuntu desktop without any of the windows OS junk cluttering the desktop

By: Justin Spradlin

Justin Spradlin — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 02:34:20 +0000

@jake

I’m sure that it can be done. I played around with my virtual hosts files for about an hour tonight and had the same success as you (i.e. could could map one host to one apache vhost).

It may have something to do with DNS entires/record, but that is far from my forte. A bit of a guess if you haven’t tried walking down that avenue. Perhaps you could create a guest DNS server and point it to projects on your various guest machines.

By: jake

jake — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 15:54:37 +0000

Do you have any tips for setting up apache virtual hosts in the guest os (Ubuntu) so I can access them by name on the host OS (Vista64) So if I have a project called, say project1 on guest v1, I could access it from the host as p1.v1? The best I can do is map any host to one apache vhost.

By: Justin Spradlin

Justin Spradlin — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 11:45:17 +0000

twtech,
You will first need to install “Guest Additions” onto your guest virtual machine. Here is an example of how to do that using an Ubuntu Virtual Machine. http://ubuntu-tutorials.com/2007/10/13/installing-guest-additions-for-ubuntu-guests-in-virtualbox/

Once you have Guest Additions installed you simply need to hit right ctrl + f and your VM should go into full screen mode.

By: twtech

twtech — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 04:45:37 +0000

How do I put a guest os in full screen mode? I must be missing something. Thanks!

By: Justin Spradlin

Justin Spradlin — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 04:49:42 +0000

@streetdaddy
Thanks for the kind words. Enjoy your VirtualBox experience.

By: streetdaddy

streetdaddy — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 04:32:46 +0000

Great article! I’ve just stepped into the world of VirtualBox myself after a few months of pain with Xen (me being the problem, not Xen!)

I was looking for a solution to problems cloning guests and you not only had the solution I needed, there was also a nice write up around it… thanks

By: Justin Spradlin

Justin Spradlin — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 17:46:15 +0000

@Casper

You can definitely access your virtual servers from outside computers on your network. For example. I have a desktop machine that runs to virtual servers and I can access them using my laptop which is on my home network.

Configuring the network with VirtualBox version 2.1 was relatively painless for me.

Check out the comment above addressed to mashcaster.

By: Casper

Casper — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 14:22:42 +0000

hi,

i just found your blog with googling, anyway, could you please tell me how you configured the network? are the servers on your virtual network reachable also from outside?

greets

By: Justin Spradlin

Justin Spradlin — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 19:49:48 +0000

@mashcaster

1. There are a couple of things you can try. To begin with make sure you are using VirtualBox version 2.1. Setting up networking in previous versions is pretty tedious.

2. I’m not sure how well VirtualBox works with wireless connections so if possible make sure you are using a hard line connection.

3. Make sure firewalls are turned off on your host operating system.

4. Make sure that in the network settings for your virtual machine that you use “Host Interface” for the “Attached To” field. Also try playing around with the “Adapter Type”.

By: mashcaster

mashcaster — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 14:20:12 +0000

I can’t seem to get a VirtualBox internal network working. Basically, I want to try simulating a network of 3 computer.

Computer 1 = gateway/router which has 2 virtual nic’s
Computer 2 = standard user computer with 1 nic
Computer 3 = same as computer 2

I have tried giving computer 2 and 3 access to the internet via computer 1, but I can’t seem to get it to work.

Help.

By: Justin Spradlin

Justin Spradlin — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 17:51:31 +0000

@Frank
I haven’t tried out MS Virtual PC but one big difference that I have noticed (according to MS’s website) is that VirtualPC only runs on Windows based hosts where as VirtualBox can run on Windows, Linux, Mac, and Open Solaris

By: Frank Rizzo

Frank Rizzo — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 17:08:36 +0000

How does it compare to Microsoft’s Virtual PC 2007, which is also free?

By: [Web] 連結分享 « 網站製作學習誌

[Web] 連結分享 « 網站製作學習誌 — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 03:45:23 +0000

[...] 5 Reasons VirtualBox Rocks My Socks [...]

By: Justin Spradlin

Justin Spradlin — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 01:00:10 +0000

@Kovi
I haven’t had much success with USB either. I typically use a shared folder to transfer files between guest and host systems.

@Anu
Thanks for the comment. Enjoy VirtualBox!

@Rob
This blog entry wasn’t specifically meant to be a comparison to other virtualization tools. To be perfectly honest I just randomly came across VirtualBox a few months ago, tried it out, and really enjoyed the experience so I’ve stuck with it. It meets all of my needs development needs and performs well so I thought I’d write about it.

I haven’t bothered to try anything else yet, but would certainly like to try out some alternative tools (especially VMWare) when I get some free time. Thanks for your comment.

By: Rob

Rob — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 18:39:25 +0000

It’s an interesting article, but it doesn’t tell me why I would choose VirtualBox over any other virtualization product. I have been using VMWare’s VMPlayer on Ubuntu and for me it does everything you described in your article. In fact, one thing you described about VirtualBox is “cloning” a VM. With a VMWare virtual machine, I can just copy the directory that contains the VM and I’m done, no bugs to worry about such as in the VirtualBox cloning method.

I would be interested in trying out VirtualBox if there was a compelling reason to do so. Why exactly did you find it easier to use than VMPlayer? In answering my own question the only thing I can think of is that it is harder to create your own VM in VMPlayer without using VMWorkstation which is not free. Is that the reason or are there others?

Thanks!
-Rob

By: Anu

Anu — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 17:44:27 +0000

I found your article at the time when I just installed VirtualBox couple of days back to run Ubuntu on my Windows Desktop.

I deliberated using VirtualBox or VirtualPC, but after reading several articles favoring VirtualBox over VirtualPC.I installed VirtualBox. Boy-o-Boy! I love it.

You have put up some good points in this article i’m surely going to try the networking option.

By: Kovi

Kovi — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 15:13:34 +0000

I’ve had problems using USB devices and COM ports on VirtualBox. I never really made them to work OK. I’m using VmWare because of this.

By: Justin Spradlin

Justin Spradlin — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 15:02:24 +0000

Thanks for the comment Topnotch!

By: Topnotch

Topnotch — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 14:56:24 +0000

Good post Justin and also good helpful comments from the readers and yourself might I add. I had considered trying out VirtualBox before but this post/comments just solidified my decision to give this virtualization technology a shot.

By: W

Tue, 13 Jan 2009 05:45:12 +0000

VirtualBox is good, really good! But it has some limitations: (i) it is not possible to make virtual machine with more than one CPU, (ii) VirtualBox has only experimental for support PAE (Physical Address Extension). For the second reason e.g. ubuntu-server will not easly install on VB.

By: Justin Spradlin

Justin Spradlin — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 19:01:33 +0000

@Neil Setting up LAMP is pretty staight forward in Ubuntu. Here are some great article that I think will really help you out (they helped me out a ton): Installing/Configuring Apache and PHP: Slicehost Apache/PHP5 Instructions Installing/Configuring MySQL: Slicehost MySQL Instructions Setting Up Apache Virtual Hosts: Slicehost Apache VirtualHost Instructions - 1 Slicehost Apache VirtualHost Instructions - 2 Making the Gedit Text Editor Much More User Friendly: Make Gedit Act like Textmate

By: Neil

Neil — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 15:54:42 +0000

Hi,

Nice article on virtualbox. I’m a beginner PHP developer who has normally used windows XP as a desktop.

I just installed ubuntu in virtualbox, and would love to learn how to properly setup the LAMP environment and other dev tools to make my life easier.

Would you be free on IM to chat to help me through some of it?

Oddly enough, I’m also located in DC!

Ls1dreams (at) yahoo (dot) com if you’d like to help.

By: Justin Spradlin

Justin Spradlin — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 14:30:48 +0000

@Romek

Thanks for the suggestion. I’ll have to check kvm out.

@Kint
Thanks for the update. I’ve noticed a few random issues as well, but overall the software is pretty incredible. Thanks for commenting.