Sunday, August 9, 2009

Virtualbox on opensuse 11.1

A short and quick installation guide for virtualbox v2.0.6 on a Dell XPS M1330 with opensuse 11.1.

I installed Virtual OSE (opensource edition) available in the openSUSE OSS repository
http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/11.1/repo/oss/

In addition I installed:

- virtualbox-kmp that has mandatory vboxdrv kernel driver
- Xalan-c package
- Xerces-c package

It's all described at the openSuSE Virtualbox_Installation guide.

After installing it, I loaded the vboxdrv module and added myself or actually my username to the "vboxusers" group:

# modprobe vboxdrv

# groupmod --add-user vboxusers

Logout and login in order that adding a user to a group is taking effect. The article mentioned above also explains how to auto load the driver after reboot.

I launched Virtualbox from the KDE Application Launcher Menu under "Recently Installed" applications.

Then I installed Windows Vista in Virtualbox. On this openSuSE page is a description how to create a new virtual machine.

After the installation:
The network was not working after the install. I read that I have to install the VBoxWindowsAdditions-x86.exe - "The 32-bit VirtualBox Guest Additions executable for Windows guest systems.".
I downloaded the VBoxGuestAdditions_2.0.6.iso from download.virtualbox.org.
In the VirtualBox setup screen under "Details", CD/DVD-ROM I checked the ISO Image File box and pointed it to the VirtualBox ISO.
Then I booted Windows, opened a file browser and pointed it to the virtual CD/DVD drive and with that to the ISO. The driver (network, video ....) got installed automatically.
Afterwards, network was available and automatic mouse/keyboard release. Network, both wireless and wired network work, although I read somewhere wireless is only working with IPv4.


I didn't have sound, so I had to change the Audio Host Driver to PulseAudio as this is the audio system I'm using. I know other people use Alsa, so whatever applies to your system.

So far these things are working and I was able to watch a movie on Netflix, my main and actually only reason, why I would want to use Windows.

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