HOW TO CONFIGURE VIRTUALBOX ON A HEADLESS SERVER

To install a headless VirtualBox on an Ubuntu-host, follow this guide from burnz.

1. On the headless server, create a new virtual machine:

VBoxManage createvm --name "Windows XP" --ostype WindowsXP --register

Note that you do not need to specify --ostype, but doing so selects some sane default values for certain VM parameters, for example the RAM size and the type of the virtual network device. To get a complete list of supported operating systems you can use:

VBoxManage list ostypes

2. Make sure the settings for this VM are appropriate for the guest operating system that we will install. For example:

VBoxManage modifyvm "Windows XP" --memory 256 --acpi on --boot1 dvd --nic1 nat --vrdpmulticon on --accelerate3d on

3. Create a virtual hard disk for the VM (in this case, 10GB in size):

VBoxManage createhd --filename "WinXP.vdi" --size 10000

4. Add an IDE Controller to the new VM:

VBoxManage storagectl "Windows XP" --name "IDE Controller" --add ide --controller PIIX4

5. Set the VDI file created above as the first virtual hard disk of the new VM:

VBoxManage storageattach "Windows XP" --storagectl "IDE Controller" --port 0 --device 0 --type hdd --medium "WinXP.vdi"

6. Attach the ISO file that contains the operating system installation that you want to install later to the virtual machine, so the machine can boot from it:

VBoxManage storageattach "Windows XP" --storagectl "IDE Controller" --port 0 --device 1 --type dvddrive --medium /full/path/to/WinXP.iso

7. Start the virtual machine using VBoxHeadless:

VBoxHeadless --startvm "Windows XP"

If everything worked, you should see a copyright notice. If, instead, you are returned to the command line, then something went wrong. You can list all registered machines with:

VBoxManage list vms

--- OPTIONAL EXTRAS ---

To easy start, stop, autostart one or more VMs install Vboxtool from http://sourceforge.net/projects/vboxtool/

On my Ubuntu-host I had problems with kvm-intel, and VirtualBox would not start. I had to remove the driver from the kernel with:

sudo rmmod kvm-intel

And then rebuild the VBox-driver:

sudo /etc/init.d/vboxdrv setup

You may also try installing dynamic kernel module on the host:

sudo apt-get install dkms

You can change the boot order of the VM with:

VBoxManage modifyvm "Windows XP" -boot1 dvd -boot2 disk -boot3 floppy -boot4 net

Look up virtualbox.org for some additional commands, and here you can download some pre-build images: virtualboxes.org