How To: Install VirtualBox on Fedora 10

[SendDerek]

This is my humble tutorial on how to get VirtualBox properly up and running on Fedora 10 (including USB support). It's located on my web blog here:

How To: Install VirtualBox on Fedora 10 [Tutorial]

Enjoy!

[SendDerek]

Updated November 25th, 2008

This is a tutorial on how to get VirtualBox up and running on Fedora 10. Also, this tutorial is for the 32-Bit version of VirtualBox, so you’ll have to customize a little more to get the 64-bit version running. Everything in the “code” sections should be copy/pasted/typed into the terminal. Right, let’s get to it:

PreStep.) Open the terminal and get into super user mode:

su -

1.) Get the latest VirtualBox package (as of now, 2.0.6) from the VirtualBox website for Fedora 9 and install it (generally, after a few months, the Fedora 10 link will be available).

wget http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/2.0.6/VirtualBox-2.0.6_39765_fedora9-1.i386.rpm && rpm -ivh VirtualBox-2.0.6_39765_fedora9-1.i386.rpm

2.) Get the kernel-devel package:

yum install make automake autoconf gcc kernel-devel dkms

3.) Run the setup file for VirtualBox:

/etc/init.d/vboxdrv setup

4.) Add yourself to the “vboxusers” group and fix SELinux Permissions:

usermod -G vboxusers -a username
chcon -t textrel_shlib_t /usr/lib/virtualbox/VirtualBox.so

5.) Run, and enjoy!

VirtualBox

6.) To Get USB Support:

1 - create a new group called “usb”;
2 - locate file usbfs: in my case is /sys/bus/usb/drivers (I suggest to find the file with a usb device inserted;
3 - modify file /etc/fstab inserting a line containing the right path and the number corresponding the “usb” group :
none /sys/bus/usb/drivers usbfs devgid=503,devmode=664 0 0
4 - command mount -a;
5 - start VB and try…;

Source: Fedora Forums

7.) To Properly Backup the VirtualBox Machine (.vdi):

Please refer to my other page here:

How To: Properly Backup a VirtualBox Machine (.VDI)

8.) To Get Sound Working:

Highlight your virtual machine and click on the “Settings” button. Click on the “Sound” category, and then check the “Enable Sound” option. In the drop-down box, select “PulseAudio”. You should now have sound.

[leigh123linux]

It would be better to use dkms !

su
yum install make automake autoconf gcc kernel-devel dkms

[SendDerek]

It would be better to use dkms !

su
yum install make automake autoconf gcc kernel-devel dkms

Thanks!

I'll update the tutorial with that instead.

To be honest, I wasn't sure what that was, so I looked it up. Here's the link for anybody else interested in learning about DKMS:
http://linux.dell.com/projects.shtml

[SendDerek]

Thanks to DangerMouse for pointing out a potential issue with SELinux denials. I have added this step to the tutorial.

[bodhi.zazen]

Works fine in x86_64

You need also install the qt libs

yum install qt qt-x11

[Mobius X]

This is a very useful guide. Thanks SendDerek...just installed it on my machine.

[wilbertnl]

Works fine in x86_64

You need also install the qt libs

yum install qt qt-x11

Thank you, I needed this information.

[metatron]

Thanks, I'm not sure if it was some of the updates I installed or your tutorial, but it took care of my SELinux problem when starting Virtualbox.

[londo]

Hi guys i'm kind of a noob and i tried everything referred in here in order to install virtualbox on Fedora 10.
But when i type:

wget http://download.virtualbox.org/virtu...ra9-1.i386.rpm && rpm -ivh VirtualBox-2.0.6_39765_fedora9-1.i386.rpm

i get this:

error: open of VirtualBox-2.0.6_39765_fedora9-1.i386.rpm failed: No such file or directory



So when i continue the steps, there is no /etc/init.d/vboxdrv ...

[wilbertnl]

Hi guys i'm kind of a noob...

Hello londo,

Go to the following web page and download the Fedora 9 i386 file: http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Linux_Downloads

[SendDerek]

Well, that particular command will download the virtualbox installer and then (&&) installs that rpm package. You're getting that error because it's not downloading it in the first place.

Maybe you should bypass that and visit the virtualbox website directly. Download the latest version of virtualbox, open with the package manager to install it, and then you should be good to go on with the rest of the tutorial. Let me know if you have problems after that.

[marko]

Another problem is that VirtualBox's web site inserts a bunch of gibberish in the filename
because of some kind of redirection or java script they're using.

That wget command in post #2 will get something like this as the filename on your local disk:

VirtualBox-2.0.6_39765_fedora9-1.i386.rpm?e=1228006573&h=27396f90923454969ab1f531 159cf6d5

You can do this to force the name back to what it should be:

wget -c http://download.virtualbox.org/virtu...ra9-1.i386.rpm -o VirtualBox-2.0.6_39765_fedora9-1.i386.rpm

Then do your yum localinstall as usual

[londo]

Hello again... thanks a lot for the time you all spended in order to help me! All the information you gave me were quite helpful and I finally managed to install Virtualbox on my machine!
Last night I even started thinking of going back to Fedora 9 because many things have gone wrong but now I think you should start preparing for my next questions (just joking)!

[marko]

One gotcha with VirtualBox is that VirtualBox depends on using its "vboxdrv" module
but Fedora also has a module called kvm that will load if you have a cpu that supports
hardware virtualization. To use vboxdrv, you have to unload the 'kvm' and kvm_intel or kvm_amd
modules (using _amd or _intel depends on if you have a Intel or AMD cpu).

vboxdrv and the kvm modules can't be loaded at the same time at least not when running
something that has to use hardware virtualization (windows is an example).

PS. KVM is a different virtual system, that is built into the kernel, you can try
that by running "virt-manager" as root