Why Virtualbox?

You may be wondering why you should choose VirtualBox instead of using VMware. Well, for one reason – you will save yourself a good bit of cash, since VMware can costs you a pretty penny, and VirtualBox is a free solution. Of course, free is not enough to make a product worth your while. It needs to have other traits, such as stability and a development team that support it with regular updates. VirtualBox provides you with both of these things, so you can use it with confidence that you will not end up with problems a year down the line.

What Do You Need On Your System

In order for this system to work, you need to have a setup that has either an Intel or AMD processor that is capable of supporting hardware virtualization.

What You Need to Do

First off, if you have not installed VirtualBox, now would be a really good time to get it. Go to Virtualbox website and download the installer for your OS. If you do not own a Snow Leopard disc, you might want to search for a OSX86 iso file and download it.

Step 1: Open the VirtualBox software and click the “New” button. This will launch the ”create a new VM” wizard tool which is designed to walk you through the setup.

Step 2: Give your new VM a name (I named it Mac OSX). Choose “Mac OS X” in the “Operating System” dropdown menu, and then select “Mac OS X Server” from Version dropdown menu, which you will find in the same area.

Step 3: Assign the amount of memory you want to allocate to the new operating system. The maximum in VirtualBox is 1500MB, but you will want to temper this figure based on what you need to do with the system, how much memory you have in total on the system, and the types of programs you intend to install on under the new OS.

Update: The maximum in VirtualBox is not 1500MB. You can allocate up to 2GB if you have enough memory in your system.

Step 4: Make a new hard drive for your VM. If you are not sure how much you need, choose the “Dynamic” option. This will allow the system to expand as your needs do. If you choose the “Static” option, be sure that you know what you need and allot accordingly. Then click on “Next” to finish up with the wizard.

Step 5: Click on “Settings” and then “System”. Uncheck the box next to the words “Enable EFI (special OSes only)”.

Step 6: Choose “Storage” from the menu on the left and choose the word “Empty”, you will see it under the OSX.vdi. You will see a folder with a green arrow. Click on it and a new window will open. Click on the plus sign. You will now be able to find the OSX86 iso that you downloaded earlier in this process. Once you have highlighted it, click on the “Select” button and then click on “OK”. Finally, click on the main start button to begin the process.

Step 7: When all of this is done the VM should start booting. You will be asked to select a language. Do that and click on “Next” then “Continue and Agree”. The next screen will show you the words choose the 20GB VBOX HARDDISK, and click on the “Erase” button.

Step 8: Click on “Install” to begin your installation. When the installation is done click the Right-Ctrl key and unmount the CD/DVD drive for now. Then restart the VM. OSX should begin to boot.

There you have it Mac OS X Snow Leopard running in VirtualBox on your Windows-based machine.

The virtual machine window is optimized to work in 32 bit color mode but the virtual display is currently set to 16 bit.

Please open the display properties dialog of the guest OS and select a 32 bit color mode, if it is available, for best possible performance of the virtual video subsystem.

Note. Some operating systems, like OS/2, may actually work in 32 bit mode but report it as 24 bit (16 million colors). You may try to select a different color mode to see if this message disappears or you can simply disable the message now if you are sure the required color mode (32 bit) is not available in the guest OS.

It stated that your system is optimized to work in 32-bit, but the color quality is set to 16-bit. First of all, there is no “display properties” in Ubuntu that allows you to change from 16-bit to 32-bit. Secondly, when you open the monitor option, you can only select 800×600 (or lower) screen resolution.

Here’s what I did to solve the problem.

1. Install Guest Addition. Do not restart after the installation has finished.

2. Open a terminal (in your Ubuntu guest) and type

gksu gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Paste the following to the file.

Section "Screen"
        Identifier    "Default Screen"
        Device        "VirtualBox graphics card"
        Monitor       "Generic Monitor"
        DefaultDepth  24
        SubSection "Display"
                Depth         24
                Modes         "1280x800" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
        EndSubSection
EndSection

Save and close the file.

3. Restart the VM.

It should work now.

Note: This was tested on a Ubuntu Natty 32-bit guest.

Installation

VirtualBox works in all platforms, including Windows, Linux and Mac.

First, make sure that you have removed all your previous installation of VirtualBox. For Windows and Mac, simply download the installer (.exe and .dmg files respectively) and install them in your system.

In debian based Linux, you can add the following repository to your sources.list file:

sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

Add the following line to the end of the file

deb http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian maverick contrib

Save and close the file. Next, type

wget -q http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian/oracle_vbox.asc -O- | sudo apt-key add -
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install virtualbox-4.0

New GUI

The most notable changes to version 4.0 is the new user interface. From the dashboard, you can now view a screenshot of your saved VM. It is a nice to have feature, though I don’t find it very useful.

You can also drag to reorder your VM now.

When you right click on the VM, there is a new option to create a shortcut on your desktop. Clicking on this shortcut will start your VM.

Extensions

Almost every new applications nowadays come with extension support. In VirtualBox 4.0, they have also added the support for extensions, though there is one extension currently available for installation. The extension pack provide supports for USB 2.0 devices, VirtualBox RDP and PXE boot for Intel cards. Rather than calling it an extension pack, I think it is more appropriate to call it a mandatory install (unless you can do without the USB support).

To install the extension pack, first download it from here.

In your VirtualBox Manager, go to “Files -> Preferences“. On the left pane, click on the “Extensions” entry. On the right, click on the “Add Package” icon. It will then prompt you to choose the extension pack file to install.

New disk file layout for VM portability

In the past, Virtualbox stores all the VM setting files in one folder and the virtual hard disks in another. This make portability a difficult task since the files are scattered around. In version 4, all the files (.vbox and .vdi) are now stored in the “VirtualBox VMs” directory in your Home folder.

In addition, when you delete a VM, you can now choose to delete all files related to the VM, including the settings, snapshots and saved states.

Improved RAM support

VirtualBox 4.0 now supports more than 1.5/2GB of RAM allocation for your VM on a 32-bit hosts.

Support for new virtual hardware

VirtualBox 4.0 now supports Intel ICH9 chipset with three PCI buses, PCI Express and Message Signaled Interrupts (MSI). For those of you who are not sure what chipset is, It is the IC chip in the motherboard that determine the OS capability. Older chipsets don’t come with support for 64-bit system, HD graphics and audio etc. With this newer chipset support, you can now install a modern operating system (like 64-bit OS) and run it without any hiccups.

In addition, you can now choose between 1 – 4 CPU resources to allocate to the VM. (Note: You will need a physical quad-core CPU to be able to allocate up to 4 CPU resources).

New scale display mode

Virtualbox 4.0 can now run within a window in scale mode. What this means is that when you resize the window, the VM display will get resize as well. This allows you to check out other application while keeping your VM window in view.

From the screenshot below, you can see my Windows XP running in a a small tiny window and still has the full-desktop view.

Better upgraded guest addition

The guest additions for Linux now support multiple virtual screens in Linux and Solaris guests. Also, the shared folders can now be marked as auto-mounted on Windows, Linux and Solaris guests. Best still, for Linux guest, the shared folders now support symbolic links. On Windows guest, automatic logon on Windows Vista/Windows 7 is now able to handle renamed user accounts.

Importing/Exporting

Importing and exporting of appliances now support OVA format. This will bundle all the files and settings in a single archive file.

Conclusion

Without a doubt, VirtualBox 4.0 is a much better build than its previous version. Most of the changes are geared toward its usability and all are welcome changes. It will not be capable of running an resource intensive 3D game yet, but for daily matters like web surfing, run office programs etc, it is more than sufficient to meet your needs.

If you are an advanced user, for sure you know about VirtualBox, which has been covered plenty of times in Make Tech Easier. The most important difference between VirtualBox and Windows XP mode is that you don’t need a Windows XP CD. You can download all files from Microsoft.

If you are having problems porting your programs to Windows 7, this feature is an option you need to review. Following is the step by step guide to install and execute Windows XP mode in your Windows 7 machine.

Note: For this mode to work you will need a Professional, Enterprise or Ultimate version of Windows 7.

First, download the Download Windows XP Mode with Virtual PC

Insert your edition of Windows 7 and your language:

Once you do that  the step 3 will appear. Now as you can see in the image above, you have to download and install Windows XP Mode, Windows Virtual PC and Windows XP Mode Update in this order.

Before downloading, Windows will check if your Operating version is valid. Press Continue:

You should now have these three files:

Installing Windows XP Mode

Double click the Windows XP Mode installer. Press Next:

It will ask for the folder of the installation, just press Next:

The program start the installation:

Installing Windows Virtual PC

Double click Windows6.1-KB958559.msu. you will see the following image, press Yes:

In the following image you will see the license agreement, press I Accept:

Once it finished it will ask for a reboot of your computer:

Installing Windows XP Mode Update

Double click Windows6.1-KB9777206-x86.msu, you will see the following image:

Starting Windows XP Mode

In the Start Menu, look for Windows XP.

Now you can click over Windows XP Mode. The first time you have to setup the aplication:

Now the program will ask you for an installation folder and the credentials for Windows XP Mode. Be sure to remember that password.

Turn on Automatic Updates and press Next.

Click on “Start Setup“:

Windows XP Mode will start to prepare itself:

Once it is done, you will see Windows XP on the screen:

Now you can install any program you want. Personally, I prefer VirtualBox, but that will require you to have the Windows XP installer CD. Windows XP Mode is a very good choice if you are experiencing problems with Windows 7 compatibility.

What do I need?

• First, be sure to have at least 8GB of free hard drive space on your Mac. Most Mac comes with pretty big hard drives, so this probably won’t be an issue; but if it is, clear the space before you start.
• Additionally, you’ll need internet access – wired or wireless. 
• You’ll also need the Ubuntu ISO (or disk image) for your Mac, which you can get here
• VirtualBox by Sun, which you can get here!
• Lastly, this process might take up to about an hour, so have a little free time handy to devote to the process!

Walkthrough

First, once you’ve finished downloading VirtualBox and Ubuntu from the links above, run VirtualBox. Once it opens, you’ll want to create a new virtual machine. To do this, click “New” in the top left corner.

The first thing you’ll need to do now is name your virtual machine (VM) then select Linux as the Operating System and Ubuntu as the version. Give it a good name to remember and that distinguishes it from other operating systems, as if you ever install another VM you’ll want it to be clear which one is which.

Now, select the amount of RAM you want to dedicate to your VM. Even though Ubuntu doesn’t need a ton, I still recommend you to dedicate at least 1GB of RAM, or 1024MB.

On the next screen, make sure that “Boot Hard Disk” is checked, and “Create new hard disk” is selected.  Then click “Continue”.

Next will come the wizard you’ll use to create the virtual hard disk onto which you’ll install and run Ubuntu. Choose Continue to begin, then select “Dynamically expanding storage” and click Continue. Here you’ll need to select how much hard drive space you want to dedicate to Ubuntu. This will come from your Mac’s primary hard drive’s space, so decide how much you want to give up (I used 5GB) and input that number, then click the Continue button, then Done.

Now we just need to tell the Ubuntu virtual machine to read from the Ubuntu ISO for the installation process, and thankfully, VirtualBox will help us to do this. Run the Ubuntu VM by double clicking on it on the left side of the VirtualBox screen. Now you’ll see the First Run Wizard, which let’s us install Ubuntu on the virtual drive we just created. Click continue to begin the setup process. On the “Select Installation Media” screen, click the folder icon on the right side.

In the window that comes up, select Add in the top left corner:

Now navigate to wherever you downloaded the Ubuntu ISO image to and select the ISO file. You’ll then see Ubuntu in your Media Manager window.

Select it and press the Select button.  You’ll then see Ubuntu as your selected installation media, and can click Next.

After clicking Next, click done, and you’ve finished the hardest parts!

Now comes installing Ubuntu! This will take about a half an hour. Once the installer loads, you’ll be greeted with this screen giving you the option to either install or try Ubuntu:

Pick your language, then click Install. At the next screen click “Download updates while installing” and “Install this third-party software“. This will ensure that when you’re finished your install, Ubuntu is up to date and ready to go, as well as ready to browse the internet to its fullest ability.

While the installation begins, you’ll be greeted with some options screens, like time zones, etc.  Just select whatever is appropriate for you and click Forward, proceeding through the process.

It will also ask you, during installation for efficiency, to set up your User Account. You’ll also name your computer here, so if you plan on networking, pick something that’s easily remembered and identified.

Once you get to the Guide slideshow, the bulk of the installation will be happening. This will take 20-30 minutes or so depending on computer speed and available resources. Scroll through the slideshow to see some cool stuff you can do with Ubuntu and how you can work it into your computing process.

Once installation finished and you restart the VM, which Ubuntu will prompt you to do, you’re all finished, and will be greeted with your new Ubuntu desktop after login!

Now just explore and enjoy! Mac users out there, what do you think of Ubuntu 10.10?

Test Drive is a package for Ubuntu that allows you to test drive the daily build of Ubuntu with little effort on the user side. With a single click (Well, to be exact, there are several clicks on the first run), you can get the application to download the ISO from the web and run it in your virtual machine. While it is meant for non-technical Ubuntu users to test and provide feedback on the current Ubuntu release under development, it can also be used for any Linux distro as long as you provide it with the ISO URL.

Installation

For Ubuntu Lucid users, you can easily install with the following command:

sudo apt-get install testdrive

For users using older version of Ubuntu, open the sources.list file

gksu gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/testdrive/ppa/ubuntu YOUR_UBUNTU_VERSION_HERE main

deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/testdrive/ppa/ubuntu YOUR_UBUNTU_VERSION_HERE main

Lastly, type the following to install:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install testdrive

Usage

Once installed, you can find the entry at Applications -> System Tools -> Test Drive.

At first run, it will configure your system and check if you have Virtualbox installed. Next it will prompt you to download the Ubuntu version that you want to test. Currently there are Ubuntu 10.10 desktop, server, netbook edition etc.

if you intend to test other Linux distro, you have to enter “6″ when prompted, and enter the URL of the distro’s ISO file.

When you have selected your ISO image, testdrive will download the image to your system. You will need to have at least 1GB of free disk space to contain the ISO image.

One good thing about TestDrive is that it uses rsync to download the file, so the next time you run this application, it will only download the part that have changed since last download.

When the download is completed, it will automatically launch Virtualbox and run the ISO. No configuration is required. One thing though, it only works with Virtualbox 3.0.x or 3.1.x. If you are using the version 3.2, you will have to downgrade your Virtualbox to the older version.

Once it is running in the Virtualbox, you can choose to install to a virtual disk or simply run it in LiveCD mode.

* In case you are wondering, the ISO image are stored in the /home/username/.cache/testdrive/iso/ directory. You can delete the ISO file after you have finished testing to free up some hard disk space.

Has this software been useful to you? Let us know in the comments.

Image credit: Toyota UK

Well, with a simple hack, you can actually switch off the menu bar and status bar and get your VM to run in the maximum resolution.

Run the following command in your terminal (or command prompt):

VBoxManage setextradata global GUI/Customizations noMenuBar,noStatusBar

Start your VM. The Menu bar and the Status bar should be gone now.

To retrieve back your menu bar and status bar, run the command:

VBoxManage setextradata global GUI/Customizations MenuBar,StatusBar

While the menu bar is gone, you might want to learn some Virtualbox keyboard shortcuts to quickly access the menu options.

Bring up the menu options – Host + HOME

Snippet is a short tip/trick or just a quick fix for a certain issue that we discover from time to time. Don’t forget to subscribe to our RSS feed for more up to date tutorials/tips/tricks.

Thus sometimes you may need an operating system that would be portable, so that you can run it from your removable drive and from any computer. We have covered Mojopack earlier, which lets you carry a “self made system environment” in your USB drive. But Mojopack is not any operating system and it depends upon the host computer where you would be using it.

What if we could install and carry an operating system of our choice from the USB drive?

The answer: Virtual box made portable. The idea here is to install Virtualbox in your USB drive and use it to install a guest operating system. With this portable virtual disk, you can use this system in any computer you want.

How to Make VirtualBox Portable

1. To install Virtualbox in your removable drive, go to vbox and download the package (957 Kb). Choose the version 3.0 as shown below.

2. Run the set up and it will ask you for a location to unzip the files. Extract all the files to your USB drive.

3. The setup will extract all the files required to set up virtualbox in your USB drive. Now open the “Portable-Virtualbox” folder from the removable drive and double click the set up file as shown below.

4. Now you will be shown something like this

5. Select the checkboxes “Extract the files for a 32 bit system” and “Extract the files for a 64 bit system“. You can also choose to compress the files to save some precious space in your removable drive.

6. That’s it. Click the “Download Installation file for Virtualbox” button.

7. Immediately after that, you will see that the application has started downloading the setup files required to install portable Virtualbox. Wait for the download to finish. You will see a notification right in the middle of the screen and also in the system tray.

8. It would take some time to download the Virtualbox files. After the download is over, you will see a prompt as shown below

9. Now open your removable drive again and you would see a new icon named as “Virtual Box” (not to be confused with Portable Virtualbox icon). Double click it and you will see the usual Virtualbox wizard.

Complete the wizard and you are done with the installation part of portable Virtualbox in the removable drive.

Install a Portable Operating System in your Removable Drive

Now that Virtualbox is in your removable drive, you can easily create a virtual hard disk and install any operating system such as Windows XP, Windows Vista, Linux etc. Start the virtual Box program and you can create a virtual hard disk. Save this hard disk in your removable drive as you would be using it from the USB drive only. Now here are some useful guides on how to install a new operating system with Virtualbox:

• How to Install Windows In Ubuntu Hardy with VirtualBox
• Share Your Virtualbox VM Across Different OS
• How To Run Android on Your Home PC with Virtualbox

Once you are done with the installation part you can carry the Operating system in the removable drive and use it on multiple computers. That concludes the tutorial on installing a portable operating system in your USB stick.

Advantages

There are a lot of advantages of using a portable Virtualbox hard disk and running an operating system with it. The biggest advantage is that you can run the OS on any computer which does not have virtual box installed. Another major advantage is keeping your hard disk free from virtual hard disks or you may even copy the virtual hard disk from one computer to another.

Hope you would find this software useful. What’s your take on portable Virtualbox? Do let us know through a comment.

Getting Android

While it’s true that the needed files are available on the Google Code project page, I’d recommend downloading with this torrent link instead. This is because the project page has the ISO file split into two parts that you’d have to manually join together. That torrent is the same files, pre-joined by Yours Truly for convenience. It’s about 173MB. The torrent is new so until I have some other seeders, it may be a little slow.

Preparing VirtualBox

With that downloads, Windows, Linux, and Mac users can all get their system’s version of VirtualBox here. Follow the website’s instructions to install, and start the program. Once ready, you should have something like this:

Choose New in the top left corner. After hitting Next, you’ll be taken to the first config screen where you can enter the information as shown in the screenshot below.

The Name field can, of course, be anything you like.

The next step on the following page is to set Base Memory Size. Go ahead and leave this at the default. On the page after that, you’ll be presented with an option to boot a hard disk. Since we’ll be running solely from the live image, a hard drive image is unnecessary so go ahead and remove the checkbox leaving that page blank, as shown below.

VirtualBox may give you a warning about no hard drives, but that’s ok for what we want to do. Ignore the warning, and hit Finish on the final page. This should take you back to the main screen, but this time it’ll show LiveAndroid 0.3 in the left pane.

Booting LiveAndroid

Before you click Start, we have to tell VirtualBox to boot from the LiveAndroid file. If it has finished downloading, click the Settings button in VirtualBox. Choose CD/DVD Rom on the left. With the config screen open, check the box for Mount CD/DVD Drive and ISO Image File. You can click the folder icon to choose the downloaded ISO file, as shown here.

When finished click OK and you should be returned to the main screen, but this time it should show liveandroidv0.3.iso under the CD/DVD ROM section in the right hand panel.

If all is well and good, you can now hit Start and boot into your very own local Android OS.

There’s a new (Windows only, strangely enough) software tool out called LiLi USB Creator. LiLi makes it incredibly easy to create your own customized bootable Linux system on a USB stick, and even run it from within Windows using an portable copy of Virtualbox that’s included on the installation. Impressed? I am.

I ran LiLi on Windows XP Pro with Service Pack 3 and a 2GB Kingston USB drive. You can download the installer here. It’s a ZIP file and there’s no installer so you can just run it directly from wherever it was extracted. Once loaded you’ll get the main LiLi screen where all your choices are made.

Step 1: Choose a USB Key

If your USB drive isn’t already connected, connect it now and wait a few seconds before hitting the blue refresh button. When you click the drop-down list, you should see your flash drive in the list. Make sure you’re choosing the correct flash drive, as the program also lists your hard drives, and we certainly wouldn’t want to go wiping any of them. Which reminds me – in case this isn’t yet clear, this flash drive will be wiped clean so make sure there’s nothing important on there before we proceed.

Step 2: Choose a Source

LiLi needs to know what you plan to use as the base of your system. This is one of LiLi’s big strengths in my opinion. You can choose to use a Live CD ISO file you already have, a Live CD in your CD-ROM, or to have LiLi download an ISO for you. This last option is particularly impressive, as LiLi provides a list of some of the compatible distros and will automatically fetch and check the files it needs.

As for me, I went with Fedora because… well… pretty much just because I haven’t used it in a while. If you chose to let LiLi download a compatible ISO for you, then you’ve got a little time to wait while it downloads. Now might be a good time to make a snack, read a book, or better yet – browse articles on MakeTechEasier.

Step 3: Persistence

At this point, we can take advantage of the fact that we’re using a USB drive and not a Live CD. By setting some space for persistence, we can now save file and settings changes directly on to the USB drive. This is also the cause of some confusion when creating these live systems.

For clarity, we’ll use my 2GB Kingston flash drive as an example of how this all works. It’s actually about 1.9GB, and the files from the ISO will be using up about 700MB, so according to LiLi that leaves about 1.1 GB for persistent files to be saved. The math doesn’t quite add up, but I would guess that LiLi is using up a little more space than just the ISO contents for things like VirtualBox (discussed below). The slider bar in the screenshot above lets me choose how much of that space I really want to use. Unless you’ve got other plans for that space, you probably want to slide the bar all the way up.

If your USB drive is larger than 1GB and LiLi doesn’t let you move the slider past 0MB, just reformat the entire USB drive, reload LiLi and try again.

Step 4: Options

The first item in the Options section is whether or not you want to hide the system files on the USB drive. The only relevance this has is whether or not Windows will show the Linux system files on the flash drive. The benefit is that you won’t have to worry about a convoluted mess of files and directories on the drive if you just want to run VirtualBox (which we’ll cover in a moment). The down side is that it would be more difficult to access or edit those files from Windows, should you want to. Neither choice will have any significant effect on how your Linux system runs.

The second option is whether or not to format the USB drive in Fat32. Unless you have a specific reason not to, I’d recommend you allow the format to be certain that the drive is being wiped clean and installed correctly.

The last option is one of the really unique and interesting things about LiLi. As I hinted in the opening paragraph, LiLi is capable of adding a portable copy of VirtualBox to your USB drive. For anyone not familiar with VirtualBox, it’s a high quality free virtualization program. With VirtualBox on the drive, you’ll be able to run your new Linux USB system from within Windows, without rebooting. I’d recommend checking this option, so that your flash drive can be as versatile and useful as it can be.

Step 5: Create

Before clicking the lightning bolt to begin, there are a few things to check to make sure we’re not about to cause a disaster. First, make totally certain that the device you chose in Step 1 is the USB drive, and that you don’t mind wiping its contents. Next do a quick glance at the traffic light icons in the bottom right corner of each step. Each light should be green, indicating it’s got everything it needs in order to proceed. When ready, hit the lightning bolt icon, and go make yourself another snack.

Running your new USB Linux System

If you’ve followed this guide closely, then you now have two ways to start your new system. The first is from within Windows, using VirtualBox. Open My Computer to your flash drive, and you’ll see a Virtualbox folder. Open that and run Virtualize This Key. That will launch the portable VirtualBox to your Linux image and you can use your shiny new Linux system from a contained environment within Windows. Keep in mind, this method does give the benefit of being able to use both OSes simultaneously, but Linux will most likely be MUCH slower here than if it had been booted on its own.

The other method is to boot the USB key as intended, as its own OS. To do that, you insert the USB drive into whatever computer you’d like to boot, and restart the computer. Some computers may require you to open the BIOS settings to include USB in the boot devices. Others may give you an option when starting up like Hit F12 for Boot Menu, or something along those lines. Any fairly modern PC should be capable of booting from a USB drive.

Presuming all went well, you should now have a portable, self-contained, customizable USB Linux system installed on your USB drive that can be taken anywhere. This can be useful in repairs, file recovery, virus scanning, or just showing off. Files saved to the USB drive will persist across multiple reboots.

Other than a booting glitch when I tried LiLi with Crunchbang (which may or may not have been LiLi’s fault), everything seems to work smoothly. I was very impressed by LiLi’s simple yet powerful user interface, and the developers have clearly put a lot of thought and effort into making LiLi a quality piece of software. I’m a little surprised it only runs in Windows, but everything it does, it does well. Kudos to the development team.

Make Tech Easier has extensively covered VirtualBox a couple of times earlier and we are great fans of this cross platform, open source application.

One thing which VirtualBox was missing till some time back was support for 3D acceleration for guest operating systems. What this means is that the graphics driver used inside the guest virtual machines was only capable of simple 2D graphics and thus interfaces like Compiz on Linux and Aero on Vista were not useable.

There was basic 3D support for Windows guests in Virtualbox 2.1 but users using Virtualbox to run Linux guests were mostly confined to the 2D graphics driver. That has changed with the release of VirtualBox 2.2 recently and VirtualBox now supports 3D acceleration. The 3D acceleration support built in VirtualBox uses your native machine’s graphics hardware to provide this capability, so if your native graphics driver doesn’t have 3D capability, VirtualBox cannot make use of it.

The support for 3D acceleration is not enabled by default and with this tuturial we aim to help you guys set up a new virtual machine with 3D accelerated graphics support.

First create a new Machine the usual way, and install a guest operating system in it. We used Ubuntu for our testing.

Now, you need to edit the settings of your newly created virtual machine. To edit the settings for any virtual machine, the virtual machine has to be shut down. So, first shutdown whatever operating system you have running inside the virtual machine.

Now, while the virtual machine is highlighted, click on the Settings button to open up the settings window.

In the general settings pane, check the check box titled, “Enable 3D acceleration”.

That’s it. The virtual machine has been enabled for 3D accelerated graphics now. But, to actually start using 3D effects inside your guest operating system, you need to be using the special VirtualBox graphics driver, which is distributed with the “Guest Additions”.

To Install the VirtualBox “Guest Additions” drivers in your guest operating system, while the guest is running, click on the Devices menu and select the “Install Guest Additions” option.

Now, follow the instructions to install the drivers in the guest operating system.

Now, you can enable Aero or Compiz effects in the guest operating system and make full use of the graphical capabilities of your machine’s graphics card.

If you have a great deal of hard disk space to spare, you can simply ignore this. However, if you find yourself always running short of hard disk space, you might want to consider shrinking the VM and free up unused disk space.

This tutorial will go through the steps to shrink your Virtualbox VM.

It doesn’t matter if you are using Windows/Linux host. The instructions for a Windows and Linux guest are slightly different though. (I have not tried this on a Mac host yet. Theoretically it should work, but do it at your own risk.)

For Windows guest

If you are using Windows guest, do the following:

• Uninstall all unnecessary applications
• Perform a hard disk defragmentation. If you are using WinXP, you You can access the inbuilt disk fragmenter from Start -> All Programs -> Accessories -> System Tools -> Disk Defragmenter.

Download sdelete and extract it to your desktop.

Open a command prompt and cd to the sdelete directory. Type in the following command:

sdelete -c c:/

This will add zeroes to all the free space in your C: drive.

Once it is done, shutdown the VM.

For Linux guest

If you are using Linux guest (this tutorial assumes you are using Ubuntu and is running on ext2/ext3 filesytem. It does not work on ext4), here is what you need to do:

• Remove any unused applications.
• Clean up your Linux VM

Install zerofree

sudo apt-get zerofree

Restart and boot your Linux VM into Recovery mode. (This is generally the second option in the Grub boot up screen.)

In the root shell prompt, type

df

This will display all the available filesystem in your OS. Record down the filesystem where the main directory lies. (it should be in /dev/sdaX or /dev/hdaX format)

Mount the filesystem in read-only mode with the following command:

mount -n -o remount,ro -t ext3 /dev/sda1 /

replacing the /dev/sda1 with the filesytem info that you have recorded just now.

Next, type the following command to zero out all the free space.

zerofree /dev/sda1

Once again, replace the /dev/sda1 with your own filesystem info.

Once you are done, shutdown the Linux VM:

shutdown -h now

Shrinking the VM

Now that we are done with clearing up the VM and zero out all the free space, it’s time to shrink the file size using the VboxManage command.

If you are still using the older Virtualbox 2.0.x version, you can easily shrink the hard disk with the following command:

VboxManage modifyvdi /path/to/your/VM.vdi compact

If you have upgraded your Virtualbox to the 2.1.x version, you will find that the above command will no longer work. There is a bug in the software that disable the use of the modifyhd command. An alternative solution is to use the clonehd command to creat a smaller clone copy of the original VM.

In your terminal (or command prompt), type the following:

VboxManage clonehd name-of-original-vm.vdi name-of-clone-vm.vdi

This will create a clone of the original VM with the name that you have specified in the command above.

Result

After shrinking my VM, I manage to shave 45% off the size of the oirginal VM and free up a whopping 4.5GB of hard disk space to store my other stuff.

The original VDI: 10GB

The cloned VDI: 5.5GB

Importing the clone VM into Virtualbox

The whole process is not finished yet. You still need to import the clone VM into Virtualbox and remove/delete the original VM from your system.

In your Virtualbox console, click on the New button.

Follow the instructions to create a new VM. When it reaches the screen to ask you to choose the hard disk, select Existing.

In the Virtual media manager window, click Add to add the newly cloned VM.

Highlight the newly added VM and click Select.

Back to the Hard disk selection window, you should see your new VM in the dropdown selection. Click on Next to finish up the import.

Once everything is in place, run the newly added VM to make sure that it is working fine.

On the main Virtualbox screen, highlight  the original VM and go to Machine -> Delete. This will remove the entry from the console.

Go to File -> Virtual Media Manager. Highlight the original VM and click the Remove button. When prompt if you want to keep the file, select Delete. This will delete the vdi file from your system.

That’s it.

If you are having this problem, here’s the fix:

First, make sure that the guest addition is already installed inn your Ubuntu Intrepid guest.

Open a terminal, type

gksu gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Add the following lines to the end of the file. Save and close

Section “InputDevice”
Identifier “Configured Mouse”
Driver “vboxmouse”
Option “CorePointer”
EndSection

Restart the computer. The mouse integration should work now.

There are several new features in Virtualbox 2.1.

• Support for 64-bit guests on 32-bit host operating systems – If you have a 64-bit processor, you can now install/run a 64-bit virtual machine on a 32-bit host. For those who wanted to test out software compatibility on a 64-bit OS, this is the best way for you to do so.
• Experimental 3D acceleration via OpenGL – If you have a graphics card that can support OpenGL, your Virtualbox VM can now make use of your accelerated 3D hardware to run 3D graphics. Potentially, you would be able to play 3D game on your VM. This means that Linux users will be able to play 3D Windows game on a Windows guest without having to dual-boot Linux and Windows. Currently, this 3D acceleration feature is only supported in Windows XP or 32-bit Vista guest.
• Full VMDK/VHD support including snapshots – Virtualbox 2.1 is able to support VMDK and VHD virtual hard disk format. This means that you can now use your VMware hard disk or Microsoft VirtualPC hard disk in Virtualbox without any need for conversion.
• Easier implementation of Host Interface networking – In the past, implementing Host Interface networking requires you to install and configure TUN/TAP. With this new feature, you can easily configure your VM networking to pass through the host interface rather than NAT. By using the host interface, your VM will appear to the host as a network drive connected via a network cable. You can then set up a file server and share files easily between the guest and host.

Installing Virtualbox2.1

If  you have never installed Virtualbox, this is what you need to do to install Virtualbox 2.1.

In your terminal,

gksu gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

Add the following line to the end of the file. Save and close.

deb http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian intrepid non-free

Back to your terminal,

wget -q http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian/sun_vbox.asc -O- | sudo apt-key add -
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install virtualbox-2.1

Upgrading to Virtualbox 2.1

If you have installed virtualbox 2.0, you will need to remove first before installing virtualbox 2.1.

sudo apt-get autoremove virtualbox-2.0
sudo apt-get install virtualbox-2.1

When it prompts you to convert your old Virtualbox files to the new format, click OK.

Adding 3D hardware support to your VM

On the main screen of your Virtualbox, highlight the Windows VM (make sure that it powered off) and click on the Setting button in the top menu.

On the General option in the left pane, under the Video Memory Size, checked the box Enable 3D Acceleration.

Implement Host Interface networking

In the Settings page, click on the Network option on the left pane. In the second dropdown bar with the label Attach to, select Host Interface.

That’s it.

First of all, make sure you have already installed both VirtualBox and Windows Vista guest. If you have not, here is the complete installation guide.

Secondly, make sure you have updated your VirtualBox to the latest version (2.0.4). There are some issues in the earlier version which will cause the mounting to fail.

In your Ubuntu machine, open up Virtualbox (Applications -> System Tools -> virtualBox).

Highlight the Vista VM entry (make sure that it is in Powered off state) and click on the Settings icon at the top.

On the left, click on the Network. On the right, make sure that the Enable Network Adaptor and Cable Connected are checked.

On the left, click on the Shared Folders. Then, click on the icon on the far right.

Select the folder that you want to use as a share point. Give it a name.

Click OK to close the Settings window.

Boot up your Vista VM.

Install the guest addition. (Skip this step if you have already done so)

Restart the Vista VM.

Open your Windows Explorer, click on the Map Network Drive

In the Folder input text, enter

\\vboxsvr\sharename

where sharename is the name of the share folder that you add just now. Make sure that the Reconnect at logon is checked. Click Finish

You should now see the shared folder mounted as a network drive.

That’s it.

While creating a virtual machine in Virtualbox is an easy task, sharing the virtual machine across different OS is not. If you are dual-booting your computer and have created a virtual machine in one of the OS partition, due to the difference in file structure among the different OS, you will not be able to access and open the VM file in the other partition.

To illustrate: let’s say you have installed Win XP on your Macbook via boot camp. As you have heard so much about Ubuntu and wanted to try it out, you installed Virtualbox and created an Ubuntu virtual machine in your Mac partition. One day, while doing your work in the Win XP partition, you found that you need to access some applications in the Ubuntu virtual machine. There is no way for you to open the Ubuntu virtual machine in Windows since you can’t access your Mac partition. Now, rather than rebooting into the Mac partition, wouldn’t it be great if you can access and open the Ubuntu virtual machine in the Windows partition?

The above situation will happen even if you are running a Linux/Mac or Linux/Windows dual boot. The following tutorial will show you how you can have access to your Virtualbox virtual machine regardless of which OS you are in.

The rule of thumb:

Always create your Virtualbox virtual machine (the file with a vdi extension) in a NTFS partition.

That is to say, if you are dual-booting Windows and Linux/Mac, always save the vdi file in your Windows partition. For those with Mac and Linux, you will have to create a new NTFS partition either on your existing hard disk or on an external hard disk (preferably).

Here’s the complete tutorial to access the virtual machine from different OS

• Click here if you are dual-booting Windows and Mac/Linux.

• Click here if you are dual-booting Mac and Linux.

For computer that dual-boot Windows and Mac/Linux

• Boot into Windows

• Download and install Virtualbox for Windows (if you have not done so).

• Create your virtual machine as you always do. Note the file path where you save the virtual machine vdi file.

Restart your computer and boot into the other OS.

If you are in Mac OS

• Download and install MacFuse and NTFS-3G. It will prompt you to restart your computer. After the restart, you will see a new drive mounted on your desktop. That is the Windows partition.

• Download and install Virtualbox for Mac (for Intel Macs only).

Now, we are going to create an entry on your Virtualbox and make it point to the vdi file in the Windows partition.

• Open the Virtualbox application.

• On the top of the window, click New to create a new virtual machine.

• Click Next and follow the instruction to create a new VM until you reach the point where it asks you to specify your hard drive

• Click on Existing. In the next window, click on the Add and point the file path to the vdi file in the Windows partition.

• You should now see an entry in the window. Highlight the entry and click Select.

• On the next window, click Next follow by Finish. It will bring you back to the main window.

• Highlight the new VM entry on the main window and click Start. You should see the same virtual machine that you have created in your Windows partition running in your Mac now.

Dual-booting Linux and Windows

Restart your computer and boot into the Linux partition.

• Install ntfs-3g (if you are using Ubuntu Hardy, you can skip this step. Ntfs-3g is already pre-installed in your system)

• Download and install Virtualbox for your Linux distro (if you have not done so).

Now, we are going to repeat the same steps as we did in Mac (follow the screenshots instructions above) to create an entry on Virtualbox to point to the virtual machine in the Windows partition.

For computers that dual-boot Mac and Linux

If you are dual-booting Mac and Linux, first boot into the Linux partition.

• Follow this guide to format your external hard disk to NTFS format. (You can also resize and create a new partition on your existing hard disk and format it to NTFS format. I will cover that in the future).

• Download and install Virtualbox. Create a new virtual machine and follow the instructions until it asks you the location of your hard disk.

• Click New to create a new virtual hard disk. Click Next until it asks you where to store your virtual hard disk

• Click on the icon beside the Image File name field and select any folder in the external NTFS hard disk. This will save the vdi file in the external hard disk rather than its default location.

• Proceed on with the standard installation of the guest OS.

Once you are done creating the virtual machine, reboot into Mac and follow the above step to configure the Virtualbox in your Mac to access the VM on the external hard disk.

That’s it!

Screenshots

Windows Vista running as a VM in Ubuntu

The same Vista VM running in Mac

1) File size

How long do you need to download a 20MB file with a broadband connection? A snap of finger! Yes, that is how small VirtualBox is: slighly over 20MB where you can download it in a snap. VMware server? About 102MB, well…not too long either, mayber after you have finished your tea session.

2) Installation

Ubuntu users can simply install VirtualBox from the repository. Simply open the Synaptic Package Manager, check the VirtualBox and click Apply to install. For other Linux disro, there is also debian and rpm package available for download. For VMware server, only if you like to compile and build the source code from command line.

3) Speed Boost

The real advantage of VirtualBox over VMware server lies in its performance. VirtualBox apparently runs faster than VMware server. A timed experiment of an installation of Windows XP as the guest OS took 20 mins in VirtualBox and 35 mins on VMware server. A similar test on the booting time of the guest OS also shows favor to VirtualBox with a timing of 45secs compared to 1min 39 secs on VMware server.

4) Remote File Sharing

When I was using VMware server, I have to install and configure Samba on my Ubuntu host so as to access the files in my guest OS. In VirtualBox, the remote file sharing feature is built right in the package. Setting up remote file sharing is easy and you only need to do it once: point the file path to the directory that you want to share.

5) Integration with Host OS

In VirtualBox, there is this mode call ‘seamless mode‘ where you can integrate the guest OS with the host OS. With this mode on, you can access the applications from the guest OS right from the host’s desktop. There is no need for you to traverse between the guest and the host. VMware server does not have this feature, although you can find the ‘unity‘ mode that does the same thing in VMware Workstation.

My Feel…

I have not tested VirtualBox on a server setting, thus I can’t comment on its performance for corporate use. However, for personal use, I would strongly recommend VirtualBox over VMware server because of its faster speed and user-friendliness.

Before you attempt to install any Windows OS as a virtual machine, make sure that your computer has enough memory (at least 1GB of RAM) and hard disk and you own a genuine Windows installer CD with valid license key.

Installing VirtualBox

Go to the VirtualBox download site. Under the Platform dropdown box, select Ubuntu 8.04 (x86). AMD users please select Ubuntu 8.04 (AMD64). Check the agreement box and click Continue.

Check the box Sun xVM VirtualBox 1.6 and click “Download selected with Sun Download manager”. The program should now download the virtualbox_1.6.2-31466_Ubuntu_hardy_i386.deb file to your desktop. If you don’t have java runtime installed, you can simply right click on the file link and select “Save link as”.

(Click to enlarge)

Once the downloading is done, double click on the virtualbox_1.6.2-31466_Ubuntu_hardy_i386.deb to install the program.

After the installation, VirtualBox will create a group call vboxuser. You will have to add your user name to the group. To do this, go to System -> Administration -> Users and Groups.

Click the Unlock button, follow by Manage Groups.

Scroll down until you see the vboxusers. Click Properties.

Put a check beside your user name and click OK. Done

Go to Applications->System Tools -> Sun xVM Virtualbox. If you can’t find the entry, reboot your computer.

You should see the VirtualBox main window (image below) upon opening the application

Click New to install a new virtual machine.

On the welcome screen, click Next to proceed.

Give your VM a name and determine its type. If you are installing Windows XP, simply put “Windows XP” under the name field and select Windows XP under the OS Type dropdown box.

In the next screen, set your base memory size. If you are installing Windows XP, it is recommended to allocate at least 256MB of memory. If you have lot of memory in your computer, you can always allocate up to 1GB or more.

Next, you have to create the virtual disk space. Click New.

A new window will pop up. Click Next on the new window to proceed.

Select “Dynamically expanding image” follow by Next.

Give the image a name (can be the same as your VM name) and allocate the size. Recommended is at least 8GB. Click Finish to complete the process.

This will close the window and bring you back to the previous window. Select the virtual disk you have just created and click Next. The last part is the confirmation where it will show you the summary of your configuration. If everything is fine, click Finish.

You should now see an entry of the virtual machine in the main screen. Highlight it and select Settings (just above the entry). On the left pane, select the CD/DVD ROM. On the right pane, check the box ‘Mount CD/DVD Drive’ and select Host CD Drive. Click OK.

Now insert in the Windows XP/Vista installer CD. On the virtual box, highlight the virtual machine and click Start. The virtual machine should now boot up and you can follow the screen instruction to install Windows XP.

At any time, if you want to get out of the virtual machine screen, press right Ctrl button. Once you have finished installing the OS. Reboot into the virtual machine. Under the device menu, select Install guest addition. This will allow you to enjoy enhanced graphics and smooth mouse transition between the virtual machine and your host machine.