Virtualbox3 Headless with Bridged Networking

Note: This howto is now outdated due to changes introduced in Virtualbox 3.1x

See this post for an updated version.

As of karmic koala, Vbox 3 is provided via the standard Ubuntu repos. Unfortunately, this is the OSE version and it does not appear to work headless.

So, we have to download the "free" version from the Sun (soon to be Oracle?) website, which is currently here

At the time of writing there was no Karmic build, so I used the Jaunty package (virtualbox-3.0_3.0.4-50677_Ubuntu_jaunty_i386.deb)

Before we can install the deb, we will also need to install some dependencies.

sudo apt-get install python2.5 libcurl3 dkms libqt4-network libqtgui4 libxslt1.1

Now we can install the virtualbox deb that we downloaded earlier.

sudo dpkg -i virtualbox-3.0_3.0.4-50677_Ubuntu_jaunty_i386.deb

NOTE: When I installed this for the nth time I received the following error:

virtualbox-3.0.postinst: 118: /etc/init.d/vboxdrv: not found

I'm not sure if this was due to my previous installations of different versions or not. I figured it was so ignored it and things seemed to be OK. Of course YMMV.

Next, add your user account to the vboxusers group

sudo adduser brettg vboxusers

Virtualbox machines that you create will by default go in your home directory

/home/brettg/.VirtualBox/

Ensure vboxusers have appropriate permissions to the kernel

sudo vi /etc/udev/rules.d/40-permissions.rules

/etc/udev/rules.d/40-permissions.rules

KERNEL=="vboxdrv", GROUP="vboxusers", MODE="0660"

Creating a virtual machine
Create a machine named "io"

VBoxManage createvm -name io -register

Configure it with a nic bridged to eth0

VBoxManage modifyvm io --nic1 bridged --bridgeadapter1 eth0

Create a virtual DVD link called "dvd" to an ISO image on the server

VBoxManage registerimage dvd /store/archive/ISO/ubuntu-8.04-server-i386.iso

Connect the DVD to the virtual machine

VBoxManage modifyvm io -dvd /store/archive/ISO/ubuntu-8.04-server-i386.iso

Assign "io" 128Mb RAM, enable acpi and set to boot from DVD

VBoxManage modifyvm io -memory 128MB -acpi on -boot1 dvd 

Create an 8Gb virtual HDD named "io-sda.vdi"

VBoxManage createvdi -filename io-sda.vdi -size 8000 -register

Assign that Virtual Drive Image to "io"

VBoxManage modifyvm io -hda io-sda.vdi

Because we are installing Ubuntu Server as a guest we need to enable PAE

VBoxManage modifyvm io -pae on

Using the virtual machine
Start the machine

VBoxHeadless -startvm "io" &

On a GUI workstation, establish a remote desktop connection to the machine

rdesktop -a 16 io:3389

Congratulations, you are now up and running!

After you have installed the OS, you need to remove the DVD and instruct the machine to boot from the hdd.

VBoxManage modifyvm "io" -dvd none

You can also deregister the dvd image if you don't intend to use it again.

VBoxManage unregisterimage dvd /store/archive/ISO/ubuntu-8.04-server-i386.iso

Note: When I installed Ubuntu Server the network autodetection didn't work. After installation was completed there was no eth0 present. I simply added the following to /etc/network/interfaces

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp

and was then up and running

Other useful commands;

VBoxManage showvminfo io
VBoxManage list hdds
VBoxManage list runningvms
VBoxManage controlvm io poweroff
VBoxManage controlvm "io" savestate