VBoxHeadless - Running Virtual Machines With Virtual Box 3.1.x on a Headless CentOS 5.4 Server

8/6/2019 VBoxHeadless - Running Virtual Machines With Virtual Box 3.1.x on a Headless CentOS 5.4 Server

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VBoxHeadless - Running Virtual Machines With

VirtualBox 3.1.x On A Headless CentOS 5.4 Server

Author: Falko Timme

This guide explains how you can run virtual machines with Sun VirtualBox 3.1.x on a headless

CentOS 5.4 server. Normally you use the VirtualBox GUI to manage your virtual machines, but

a server does not have a desktop environment. Fortunately, VirtualBox comes with a tool

called VBoxHeadless that allows you to connect to the virtual machines over a remote desktop

connection, so there's no need for the VirtualBox GUI.

I do not issue any guarantee that this will work for you!

1 Preliminary Note

I have tested this on a CentOS 5.4 server (host system) with the IP

address 192.168.0.100 where I'm logged in as a normal user (user name admin in this

example) instead of as root.

If you only have a root account, but no normal user account, create one as follows

(user admin, group admin)...

# groupadd admin

# useradd -d /home/admin -m -g admin -s /bin/bash admin

... create a password for the new user...

# passwd admin

... and log in as that user.

2 Installing VirtualBox

To install VirtualBox 3.1.x on our CentOS 5.4 server, we need root privileges, therefore we run

$ su

Next download and register Sun's public rpm key:

# wget -q http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian/sun_vbox.asc

# rpm --import sun_vbox.asc

# rm -f sun_vbox.asc

Now we enable the VirtualBox OpenSUSE repository on our system:


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# cd /etc/yum.repos.d/

# wget http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/rpm/rhel/virtualbox.repo

We can now simply install VirtualBox 3.1.x as follows:

# yum install VirtualBox-3.1

Now we must add the user that will run VirtualBox (admin in this example) to

the vboxusers group:

# /usr/sbin/usermod -G vboxusers admin

VirtualBox is now installed and ready to be used.

Type

# exit

to leave the root account and become a normal user (admin) again.

3 Using VirtualBox On The Command Line

3.1 Creating A VM

To create a VM on the command line, we can use the VBoxManage command. See

$ VBoxManage --help

for a list of available switches and (highly recommended!) take a look at

http://www.virtualbox.org/manual/UserManual.html#vboxmanage.

I will now create an Ubuntu 9.10 Server VM with 256MB memory and a 10GB hard drive from

the Ubuntu 9.10 Server iso image (which I have stored in /home/ubuntu-9.10-server-

amd64.iso):

$ VBoxManage createvm --name "Ubuntu 9.10 Server" --register

$ VBoxManage modifyvm "Ubuntu 9.10 Server" --memory 256 --acpi on --boot1 dvd -

-nic1 bridged --bridgeadapter1 eth0

$ VBoxManage createhd --filename Ubuntu_9_10_Server.vdi --size 10000 --register

$ VBoxManage storagectl "Ubuntu 9.10 Server" --name "IDE Controller" --add ide

$ VBoxManage storageattach "Ubuntu 9.10 Server" --storagectl "IDE Controller" -

-port 0 --device 0 --type hdd --medium Ubuntu_9_10_Server.vdi


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To learn more about VBoxHeadless, take a look at

$ VBoxHeadless --help

and at http://www.virtualbox.org/manual/UserManual.html .

4 Connecting To A VM From A Remote Desktop

4.1 Windows XP

You can use the built-in Remote Desktop Connection utility to connect to the VM:

Type in the hostname or IP address of the host (not the guest!):

And voil, you should be connected to the VM:


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4.2 Linux

On Linux desktops, you can use the rdesktop command to connect to the VM. I'm assuming

you're using a Fedora 12 desktop here.

On Fedora 12, you must install rdesktop first. Open a terminal (Applications > System

Tools > Terminal)...


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... and become root:

$ su

Then install rdesktop...

# yum install rdesktop

... and leave the root shell:

# exit


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Then type in the following command:

$ rdesktop -a 16 192.168.0.100

(192.168.0.100 is the host IP address, not the one of the guest - replace it with your own IP

address or hostname; -a 16means 16 bit colour depth.)

And voil, you should be connected to the VM:

5 Links

VirtualBox: http://www.virtualbox.org/ CentOS: http://www.centos.org/

VBoxHeadless - Running Virtual Machines With Virtual Box 3.1.x on a Headless CentOS 5.4 Server

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