Configuring VirtualBox on FC6

[Bad2theBone]

I have installed and got running VirtualBox using M$ Win2K as the guest os. Everything is working great except networking. The default config is to use NAT on the virtual nic. This does not seem to work. I am able to "see" the virtual lan which is 10.0.2.x DHCP assigned for the guest and 10.0.2.2 for the GW & DHCP host, and 10.0.2.3 for DNS. I can ping these, but when I try to ping the real IP for the host, it'll time-out. When this happens they recommend setting up Host Interface Networking using bridging. I vaguely remember doing this many years ago, or something similar to what they describe in the User Guide. That was on Super-Minis and Main Frames. I'm a little vague on current procedures. They talk about the tunctl utility, and I can not find it anywhere. What package is it part of? I already have bridge-utils, but can anyone tell me where is tunctl? Also is there some docs out there that can explain howto?

[Gul Dukat]

Just out of curiosity. But how did you manage to get VirtualBox running on FC6? I tried it too, but I need to disable SELinux, to get it running. Something I don't want to do. Did you find some way to add a line/rule to SELinux to get SELinux running?

[Bad2theBone]

No actually I had disabled SELinux a while back for something else and forgot about. When I reenabled it, I could no longer boot, so I had to disable it again. I didn't even think of that, it may cause a problem for me in the future when I plan to redo my install. I've got to get a better understanding of how SELinux works so that I can fix what ever

[Bad2theBone]

Oh by the way, NAT is now working for me. I originally could not get to the inet. I had read something about firewalls being a problem so I disabled that, NAT started working and then renabled it and all is well. Oh, by the way be careful on the nameing of your VM. Like a noob I used a special character as part of the name. (M$_Win2K). It didn't seem to have a problem with it until I went to create the shares, VB would not recognize M$_Win2K as a registered VM. I wound up having to recreate the VM all over again to fix the problem. Also, I installed Windoze 2000 (as my VM name implies), and in the settings there is an option to turn on support for I/O ACPI. I thought that Win2K did but I guess it doesn't, for after several times of trying to install and it would hang just after it reads in all of the initial files to setup the hard drive. I disabled that option and it installed fine.

VB seems to be a vast improvement performance wise over what I'm used to, Win4Lin. The install of the VB software seems more polished and once I got past a few minor things the setting up of the guest was also much smoother and quicker than Win4Lin. I find performance wise VB is also better and quicker than Win4Lin. I assume they're using some form of QEMU, although I did not see any thing mentioning it, nor did it indicate any need for it, but that maybe because I already had KQEMU installed for Win4Lin. I'll have to see what happens when I redo my install from scratch.

[Gul Dukat]

Thanks for the tips. Will keep it in mind.

[Bad2theBone]

Let me know how it goes. Also let me know if you resolve SELinux issues with VB. I'm holding off on redoing my install until I get that fix. Also is there a good source of info for SELinux. What I've found so far leaves me going himinah huminh huh?

[Gul Dukat]

Well I haven't had time to test it, but I got the following reply on the VirtualBox-board:

Use:

chcon -R -t texrel_shlib_t /opt/VirtualBox-1.3.6/*.so

but there is a problem after, check my post at http://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/152 , i hope this folks fix the problem, so let's wait for it to happen.

[crosewarne]

The 'tunctl' utility is part of UML Utilities. This is on sourceforge and doesn't seem to have been updated in ages. No RPM for Fedora is available, so I made one and put it here:

http://www.chrisnet.id.au/pub/uml-ut...406-1.i386.rpm

[joe.pelayo]

Virtual Box is not part of FC6 repositories, is it?

[Bad2theBone]

No, you have to go to virtualbox.com and download the binary or the source. I believe 1.30 was just released The other day. Also you may want to download from the FC repository SELinux Troubleshooter. It will actually give you the command to modify the policies to allow VBox to run. Suggest that you modify one of the suggested commands to wildcard the file name(s) (shared libraries in one of the vbox directories). as this will eliminate the constant errors showing up at each encounter of each file. It also gives a fairly good explanation as to what is going on.

[joe.pelayo]

No, you have to go to virtualbox.com and download the binary or the source. I believe 1.30 was just released The other day. Also you may want to download from the FC repository SELinux Troubleshooter. It will actually give you the command to modify the policies to allow VBox to run. Suggest that you modify one of the suggested commands to wildcard the file name(s) (shared libraries in one of the vbox directories). as this will eliminate the constant errors showing up at each encounter of each file. It also gives a fairly good explanation as to what is going on.

Thanks for the info, I have already tried Virtual Box in PCLinuxOS and works really good.
I won't have problems with SELinux because it is already disabled (my file system is Reiser). In only have another question, is it necessary to configure Virtual Box each time the kernel is updated?

Joe.

[Bad2theBone]

No. After kernel update vboxdrv will get clobbered, but just attempt to run vbox (assuming that you start it from the GUI) it will tell you how to rebuild vboxdrv a single command. At least that's the way it works for me.

[joe.pelayo]

No. After kernel update vboxdrv will get clobbered, but just attempt to run vbox (assuming that you start it from the GUI) it will tell you how to rebuild vboxdrv a single command. At least that's the way it works for me.

Sounds the same as in VMWare, I hope this VirtualBox is not as delicate.

Joe.

[Bad2theBone]

Can't speak for VMWare, but once the command is executed it'll come back indicating a successful rebuild of the driver and you should be able to run as before.