Tips on Virtualbox

Things on this page are fragmentary and immature notes/thoughts of the author. Please read with your own judgement!

sudo mount -t vboxsf -o uid=$(whoami),gid=$(whoami),fmask=177,dmask=077

If the graphics resolution is not correct and you cannot see the whole desktop when installing a Linux distribution in VirtualBox, quit the installation, enable the EFI mode for the virtual machine in VirtualBox, and try installing the Linux distribution again.
use command line to export guest machines (see vbvm.export.sh), not recommended, directly copy everything is easier, especially for windows machines
Check if you set a UUID for virtualbox, whether re-activation is still needed for MS word. Another thing is too see whether VM can access usb.
The activation has to do with the uuid change when creating the guest. Windows sees this as a changed motherboard and that is enough to trigger activation. However, instead of exporting and importing which does trigger this you can (since version 4.x of VirtualBox) simply copy the entire guests folder out to a saved location, then copy it back into the new install and place it back in the VirtualBox VMs folder and dbl click the *.vbox file. Since this does not re-install anything it does not require re-activation.
Word 2010 require reactivation on Virtualbox even if you COPY The entire virtual machine Word 2007 not sure, probably will work
If you install a backported linux image, the usually version of Virtualbox might not work. You can try the backported version of Virtualbox which will probably work.
The "Shared Clipboard" functionality relies on the VirtualBox Guest Additions to work.
you probably need to restart after if you encounter problems in virtualbox and are required to install dkms to solve it ...

Settings

You'd better check "Enable PAE/NX" under the "Processor" tab in the "System" settings group when you use a Linux guest machine on a Windows host. This is because a Linux machine usually support Physical Address Extension (PAE), and if PAE is not enable in VirtualBox, the Linux guest machine might fail to start.

Enable Fullscreen

Install gcc and make.
```
wajig install gcc make
```
Install VBoxAdditions.
Reboot.
Set the scale of the virtual display to something other than "100% (unscaled output)".

Error Messages

VirtualBox Version 4.3.10

 mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on UbuntuShared,
        missing codepage or helper program, or other error
        (for several filesystems (e.g. nfs, cifs) you might
        need a /sbin/mount.<type> helper program)
        In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try
    dmesg | tail  or so

This is probably because of a bad symbolic link. Adding a symblic link might solve the problem.

sudo ln -s /opt/VBoxGuestAdditions-4.3.10/lib/VBoxGuestAdditions /usr/lib/VBoxGuestAdditions

Speedup Virtualbox

use fixed size disk
install guest additions

VBOXManage

to create a shared folder

VBoxManage sharedfolder add "VM name" --name "sharename" --hostpath "C:\test"
To change the UUID of a Virtual Machine disk.

VBoxManage internalcommands sethduuid WinTPC.vdi

If you change the UUID of a disk of an existing Virtual Machine, it probably won't work any more. You can simply create a new Virtual Machine using the disk.
Fail to install VirtualBox Guest Additions on antiX. Couldn't figure out what caused the problem. The problem is the Linux kernel. After installing an older version 3.2 of kernel, VirtualBox Guest Additions can be installed successfully.
Better to make 32 bit virtual machines as it runs OK on both 32 and 64 bit computers.
Virtual machine is a good way to learn new technologies, summary steps to learn Oracle SQL ... and big data, virtual machines ...

VBoxAdditions

Sometimes the virtual machine fails to load VBoxAdditions iso image into the CD/DVD drive. You can manually download the image, mount it (using mount) and then install it.

Issues

it seems that VirtualBox has caused the blue screen problem on the office laptop, avoid using it for a while to see whether the problem comes up again. NEVER appeared. So VirtualBox caused the problem.
sometimes cannot run .exe from ... This is usually a problem when running .exe files from a virtual box shared folder on the windows guest. The solution is to run the .exe using UNC paths ie In your Explorer (in Windows) go to \Vboxsvr\your shared folder\path\to\folder\with\exe and run the .exe from there. problematic for CygwinPortable, as you cannot install to a network folder

Multiscreen

View -> Virtual screen 1 -> use host screen 1/2

Network

http://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch06.html covers the virtualbox networking quite well.

To make the guest virtual machine behave like a machine in the local network, you have to use the bridged network. You must choose the right network device when you use bridged network. For example, if the host machine is using the wireless network, you might have to choose wlan0 (different according to network settings of the host machine).

NAT - Your host will act as a router (firewall) and your hosts will be on a private subnet. Use this if you are not running servers on the guests.

Bridged - Your guests will get a ip address on the same subnet as your host. Use this if you are running servers on the guest and wish to connect from other computers on the LAN.

Host Only - Sort of a hybrid. As the name implies, with this option you can connect to the guest servers from the host only. Use this for "private" (host only) servers. I use this if I am running a test web server.

To make a long story short, assuming you have a router, I would use bridged networking.

Ben Chuanlong Du's Blog

It is never too late to learn.