Installing VirtualBox on Hardy is easy. From a terminal session, run the following commands to install Virtualbox.

sudo apt-get install virtualbox-ose virtualbox-ose-source virtualbox-ose-modules-generic

Add yourself to the vboxusers group. You can add more usernames after “whoami” if you wish:

sudo gpasswd -a `whoami` vboxusers

or

sudo usermod -Gvboxusers -a `whoami`

You will now have to log out of your desktop session and log back in order to update your group membership.

Networking

To start, NAT is by far the easiest way to get your guests connected to the interweb, but you may want to use the guests as servers, for this you need Host Networking. You will need to install bridge-utils and uml-utilities so that you can make a tap device and add it to a bridge.

sudo apt-get install bridge-utils uml-utilities

Now make a bridge, and put your current interface into it:

sudo tunctl -t tap1 -u fred #where fred is the user you will be running vbox as
sudo chown root.vboxusers /dev/net/tun
sudo chmod g+rw /dev/net/tun

Set the permission to persist across reboots, by editing as root /etc/udev/rules.d/20-names.rules and changing:

KERNEL=="tun", NAME="net/%k"

to

KERNEL=="tun", NAME="net/%k", GROUP="vboxusers", MODE="0660"

Make a new bridge called br0:

sudo brctl addbr br0

Put your current interface (in this case eth0) into promiscuous mode, then add it to the bridge and give the bridge a dhcp address.

sudo ifconfig eth0 0.0.0.0 promisc
sudo brctl addif br0 eth0

If you are using DHCP to automatically get an IP address, set the bridge to use DHCP.

sudo dhclient br0

If you are using a static IP, specify the IP address, netmask and add the default gateway route
#Where 192.168.1.105 is your static IP and 255.255.0.0 is your netmask

sudo ifconfig br0 192.168.1.105 netmask 255.255.0.0
#Where 192.168.1.1 is your default gateway
sudo route add default gw 192.168.1.1 br0

Add the new tap1 device to the bridge and activate tap1 (the second line appears to be necessary)

sudo brctl addif br0 tap1
sudo ifconfig tap1 up

You should now be able to use host networking in vbox, just change “attached to” to “host interface” and add the interface name of tap1 in your networking settings. Read the manual as well, there are some other nifty ways to do this. Do not forget to use the root account when doing this. Also reboot your computer afterwords.

Wireless Networking

Setting up a normal bridged network generally doesn’t work if you’re bridging from a wireless card to VirtualBox. A simple script that utilises the parprouted tool will allow your VM full access to the wireless network.

You will require parprouted to do this:

sudo apt-get install parprouted

Next, using your favorite text editor, create and edit the script, for example:

sudo nano /etc/network/if-up.d/vbox_network

Then, enter the script (replacing $USER with your username (or whoever you intend to run virtualbox as)). Replace wlan0 with the name of your wireless interface. Use an available IP address on your network for tap0 (I have used 192.168.1.100 in this case):

#!/bin/bash
sysctl net.ipv4.ip_forward=1
VBoxTunctl -b -u $USER
ip link set tap0 up
ip addr add 192.168.1.100/24 dev tap0
parprouted wlan0 tap0

Finally, make sure the new file is executable by root:

sudo chmod 700 /etc/network/if-up.d/vbox_network

Now your networking script is installed, the virtual interface tap0 will be available on boot for VirtualBox. Rather than reboot, let’s just run the script now:

sudo /etc/network/if-up.d/vbox_network

The final thing to do is tell VirtualBox to use the new virtual device tap0.

Open VirtualBox, highlight a VM and click Settings. Now choose the Network option and select Host Interface on the “attached to” drop-down menu. In the Interface Name text box, enter tap0.

Click OK and start your VM. The VM should now behave as though it was another physical machine on your network!!

Unfortunately, at the time of writing I don’t think DHCP auto configuration will work in the VM, so make sure you set a static IP in the virtual machine.

For more information, please visit http://home.nyc.rr.com/computertaijutsu/vboxbridge.html.

USB

To get USB support, you need the PUEL version. Via the GUI, there is an option to enable USB.

Furthermore, your user must be able to access /proc/bus/usb/* and the best way I’ve found to do this is to give run chown on /proc/bus/usb.

sudo chown -R root:vboxusers /proc/bus/usb

Now just make sure your user is part of the group [i:1ec32mpn]vboxusers[/i:1ec32mpn], and all is well. I’m assuming this solution doesn’t work when you restart your computer so we’ve got a fix for that as well.

sudo nano /etc/init.d/mountdevsubfs.sh

Append “,devgid=1003”, where 1003 is the number if your vboxusers group in /etc/group, to the end of the “domount usbfs …” line, and change the devmode to 0664.

Sharing Folders Between Host and Guest

Note: The client OS cannot be open when adding shares.

On the host (ubuntu) computer, run:

mkdir ~/VirtualBoxShare
vboxmanage sharedfolder add "XP" -name "share" -hostpath ~/VirtualBoxShare/

On the Windows client, run:

net use x: \\vboxsvr\share

If the client is Linux, run

mount -t vboxsf share mountpoint

For the above command if you get error as

mount: unknown filesystem type 'vboxfs'

Then just change the vboxfs to vboxsf means the command will be

mount -t vboxfs share mountpoint

For the above command if you get error as

mount: unknown filesystem type 'vboxfs'

Then just change the vboxfs to vboxsf means the command will be

mount -t vboxsf share mountpoint

(See Section 4.4 Folder Sharing in the VirtualBox documentation.)