For the various versions of Linux that we support as host operating systems, please refer to Section 1.4, “Supported host operating systems”.
You will need to install the following packages on your Linux system before starting the installation (some systems will do this for you automatically when you install VirtualBox):
Qt 4.4.0 or higher;
SDL 1.2.7 or higher (this graphics library is typically called
libsdl
or similar).
To be precise, these packages are only required if you want to
run the VirtualBox graphical user interfaces. In particular,
VirtualBox
, the graphical VirtualBox
manager, requires both Qt and SDL;
VBoxSDL
, our simplified GUI, requires
only SDL. By contrast, if you only want to run
VBoxHeadless
, neither Qt nor SDL are
required.
VirtualBox uses a special kernel module called
vboxdrv
to perform physical memory
allocation and to gain control of the processor for guest system
execution. Without this kernel module, you can still use the VirtualBox
manager to configure virtual machines, but they will not start. In
addition, there are the network kernel modules
vboxnetflt
and
vboxnetadp
which are required for the
more advanced networking features of VirtualBox.
The VirtualBox kernel module is automatically installed on your system when you install VirtualBox. To maintain it with future kernel updates, for those Linux distributions which provide it -- most current ones -- we recommend installing Dynamic Kernel Module Support (DKMS)[9]. This framework helps with building and upgrading kernel modules.
If DKMS is not already installed, execute one of the following:
On an Ubuntu system:
sudo apt-get install dkms
On a Fedora system:
yum install dkms
On a Mandriva or Mageia system:
urpmi dkms
If DKMS is available and installed, the VirtualBox kernel module should always work automatically, and it will be automatically rebuilt if your host kernel is updated.
Otherwise, there are only two situations in which you will need to worry about the kernel module:
The original installation fails. This probably means that your Linux system is not prepared for building external kernel modules.
Most Linux distributions can be set up simply by installing the right packages - normally, these will be the GNU compiler (GCC), GNU Make (make) and packages containing header files for your kernel - and making sure that all system updates are installed and that the system is running the most up-to-date kernel included in the distribution. The version numbers of the header file packages must be the same as that of the kernel you are using.
With Debian and Ubuntu releases, you must install the
right version of the
linux-headers
and if it
exists the linux-kbuild
package. Current Ubuntu releases should have the right
packages installed by default.
In even older Debian and Ubuntu releases, you must
install the right version of the
kernel-headers
package.
On Fedora and Redhat systems, the package is
kernel-devel
.
On SUSE and openSUSE Linux, you must install the right
versions of the kernel-source
and kernel-syms
packages.
If you have built your own kernel, you will need to make sure that you also installed all the required header and other files for building external modules to the right locations. The details of how to do this will depend on how you built your kernel, and if you are unsure you should consult the documentation which you followed to do so.
The kernel of your Linux host was updated and DKMS is not installed. In that case, the kernel module will need to be reinstalled by executing (as root):
/etc/init.d/vboxdrv setup
VirtualBox is available in a number of package formats native to various common Linux distributions (see Section 1.4, “Supported host operating systems” for details). In addition, there is an alternative generic installer (.run) which should work on most Linux distributions.
First, download the appropriate package for your distribution.
The following examples assume that you are installing to a 32-bit
Ubuntu Karmic system. Use dpkg
to
install the Debian package:
sudo dpkg -i VirtualBox-3.2_4.2.4_OSE_Ubuntu_karmic_i386.deb
You will be asked to accept the VirtualBox Personal Use and Evaluation License. Unless you answer "yes" here, the installation will be aborted.
The installer will also search for a VirtualBox kernel module
suitable for your kernel. The package includes pre-compiled modules
for the most common kernel configurations. If no suitable kernel
module is found, the installation script tries to build a module
itself. If the build process is not successful you will be shown a
warning and the package will be left unconfigured. Please have a look
at /var/log/vbox-install.log
to find
out why the compilation failed. You may have to install the
appropriate Linux kernel headers (see Section 2.3.2, “The VirtualBox kernel module”). After correcting any problems, do
sudo /etc/init.d/vboxdrv setup
This will start a second attempt to build the module.
If a suitable kernel module was found in the package or the module was successfully built, the installation script will attempt to load that module. If this fails, please see Section 12.7.1, “Linux kernel module refuses to load” for further information.
Once VirtualBox has been successfully installed and configured, you can start it by selecting "VirtualBox" in your start menu or from the command line (see Section 2.3.5, “Starting VirtualBox on Linux”).
The alternative installer performs the following steps:
It unpacks the application files to the target directory,
/opt/VirtualBox/
which cannot be changed.
It builds the VirtualBox kernel modules
(vboxdrv
,
vboxnetflt
and
vboxnetadp
) and installs
them.
It creates
/etc/init.d/vboxdrv
, an init
script to start the VirtualBox kernel module.
It creates a new system group called
vboxusers
.
It creates symbolic links in
/usr/bin
to the a shell script
(/opt/VirtualBox/VBox
) which does
some sanity checks and dispatches to the actual executables,
VirtualBox
,
VBoxSDL
,
VBoxVRDP
,
VBoxHeadless
and
VBoxManage
It creates
/etc/udev/rules.d/10-vboxdrv.rules
,
a description file for udev, if that is present, which makes the
USB devices accessible to all users in the
vboxusers
group.
It writes the installation directory to
/etc/vbox/vbox.cfg
.
The installer must be executed as root with either
install
or
uninstall
as the first
parameter.
sudo ./VirtualBox.run install
Or if you do not have the "sudo" command available, run the following as root instead:
./VirtualBox.run install
After that you need to put every user which should be able to
access USB devices from VirtualBox guests in the group
vboxusers
, either through the GUI
user management tools or by running the following command as
root:
sudo usermod -a -G vboxusers username
The usermod
command of some
older Linux distributions does not support the
-a
option (which adds the user to
the given group without affecting membership of other groups). In
this case, find out the current group memberships with the
groups
command and add all these
groups in a comma-separated list to the command line after the
-G
option, e.g. like this:
usermod -G group1,group2,vboxusers
username
.
If, for any reason, you cannot use the shell script installer described previously, you can also perform a manual installation. Invoke the installer like this:
./VirtualBox.run --keep --noexec
This will unpack all the files needed for installation in the
directory install
under the current
directory. The VirtualBox application files are contained in
VirtualBox.tar.bz2
which you can
unpack to any directory on your system. For example:
sudo mkdir /opt/VirtualBox sudo tar jxf ./install/VirtualBox.tar.bz2 -C /opt/VirtualBox
or as root:
mkdir /opt/VirtualBox tar jxf ./install/VirtualBox.tar.bz2 -C /opt/VirtualBox
The sources for VirtualBox's kernel module are provided in the
src
directory. To build the module,
change to the directory and issue
make
If everything builds correctly, issue the following command to install the module to the appropriate module directory:
sudo make install
In case you do not have sudo, switch the user account to root and perform
make install
The VirtualBox kernel module needs a device node to operate. The
above make command will tell you how to create the device node,
depending on your Linux system. The procedure is slightly different
for a classical Linux setup with a
/dev
directory, a system with the now
deprecated devfs
and a modern Linux
system with udev
.
On certain Linux distributions, you might experience difficulties building the module. You will have to analyze the error messages from the build system to diagnose the cause of the problems. In general, make sure that the correct Linux kernel sources are used for the build process.
Note that the /dev/vboxdrv
kernel module device node must be owned by root:root and must be
read/writable only for the user.
Next, you will have to install the system initialization script for the kernel module:
cp /opt/VirtualBox/vboxdrv.sh /etc/init.d/vboxdrv
(assuming
you installed VirtualBox to the
/opt/VirtualBox
directory) and
activate the initialization script using the right method for your
distribution. You should create VirtualBox's configuration
file:
mkdir /etc/vbox echo INSTALL_DIR=/opt/VirtualBox > /etc/vbox/vbox.cfg
and, for convenience, create the following symbolic links:
ln -sf /opt/VirtualBox/VBox.sh /usr/bin/VirtualBox ln -sf /opt/VirtualBox/VBox.sh /usr/bin/VBoxManage ln -sf /opt/VirtualBox/VBox.sh /usr/bin/VBoxHeadless ln -sf /opt/VirtualBox/VBox.sh /usr/bin/VBoxSDL
Before updating or uninstalling VirtualBox, you must terminate any virtual machines which are currently running and exit the VirtualBox or VBoxSVC applications. To update VirtualBox, simply run the installer of the updated version. To uninstall VirtualBox, invoke the installer like this:
sudo ./VirtualBox.run uninstall
or as root
./VirtualBox.run uninstall
. Starting with version 2.2.2, you can uninstall the .run package by invoking
/opt/VirtualBox/uninstall.sh
To manually uninstall VirtualBox, simply undo the steps in the manual installation in reverse order.
The Debian packages will request some user feedback when
installed for the first time. The debconf system is used to perform
this task. To prevent any user interaction during installation,
default values can be defined. A file
vboxconf
can contain the following
debconf settings:
virtualbox virtualbox/module-compilation-allowed boolean true virtualbox virtualbox/delete-old-modules boolean true
The first line allows compilation of the vboxdrv kernel module if no module was found for the current kernel. The second line allows the package to delete any old vboxdrv kernel modules compiled by previous installations.
These default settings can be applied with
debconf-set-selections vboxconf
prior to the installation of the VirtualBox Debian package.
In addition there are some common configuration options that can be set prior to the installation, described in Section 2.3.3.7, “Automatic installation options”.
The .rpm format does not provide a configuration system comparable to the debconf system. See Section 2.3.3.7, “Automatic installation options” for how to set some common installation options provided by VirtualBox.
To configure the installation process of our .deb and .rpm
packages, you can create a response file named
/etc/default/virtualbox
. The
automatic generation of the udev rule can be prevented by the
following setting:
INSTALL_NO_UDEV=1
The creation of the group vboxusers can be prevented by
INSTALL_NO_GROUP=1
If the line
INSTALL_NO_VBOXDRV=1
is specified, the
package installer will not try to build the
vboxdrv
kernel module if no module
fitting the current kernel was found.
The Linux installers create the system user group
vboxusers
during installation. Any
system user who is going to use USB devices from VirtualBox guests must
be a member of that group. A user can be made a member of the group
vboxusers
through the GUI user/group
management or at the command line with
sudo usermod -a -G vboxusers username
Note that adding an active user to that group will require that user to log out and back in again. This should be done manually after successful installation of the package.
The easiest way to start a VirtualBox program is by running the
program of your choice (VirtualBox
,
VBoxManage
,
VBoxSDL
or
VBoxHeadless
) from a terminal. These
are symbolic links to VBox.sh
that
start the required program for you.
The following detailed instructions should only be of interest if
you wish to execute VirtualBox without installing it first. You should
start by compiling the vboxdrv
kernel
module (see above) and inserting it into the Linux kernel. VirtualBox
consists of a service daemon (VBoxSVC
)
and several application programs. The daemon is automatically started if
necessary. All VirtualBox applications will communicate with the daemon
through Unix local domain sockets. There can be multiple daemon
instances under different user accounts and applications can only
communicate with the daemon running under the user account as the
application. The local domain socket resides in a subdirectory of your
system's directory for temporary files called
.vbox-<username>-ipc
. In case of
communication problems or server startup problems, you may try to remove
this directory.
All VirtualBox applications
(VirtualBox
,
VBoxSDL
,
VBoxManage
and
VBoxHeadless
) require the VirtualBox
directory to be in the library path:
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=. ./VBoxManage showvminfo "Windows XP"