Re: help with virtualbox
On Tue, 28 Jun 2011 10:33:47 -0400
William Hopkins <we.hopkins@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 06/28/11 at 03:16pm, Kristoffer Gustafsson wrote:
> > Hi.
> > Since I'm blind, I can't use the graphical interface with
> > virtualbox. Can you help me to find a tutorial for me about how I
> > do with the vboxmanage command?
>
> I found a few introductory tutorials by googling 'creating VMs with
> vboxmanage'
>
> > I know the help for the command in the manual, but I need a step by
> > step tutorial. I need also information about how to set up usb, and
> > how to choose the correct sound card emulation.
>
> the relevant options are --usb on|off, and --audiocontroller
> ac97:sb16 (from the man page)
>
> I just ran through the basic process, you use createvm, registervm,
> modifyvm, startvm. I enabled sound with modifyvm --audio alsa
> --audiocontroller ac97. I only have virtualbox-ose available, so I
> can't test USB (OSE doesn't have USB support, among other things).
>
The current free version does have USB support, and remote desktop
control even on an X-less host, though for personal use only. There's
no OSE now, the current full version (without the personal-use
extensions) is under GPL. Not in Debian yet, but there is a .deb.
Several other new features also, including the ability to use an entire
drive partition rather than just part of a huge file on the host.
The manual and web tutorials the OP found are probably all there is,
but I found them a lot easier to follow than most, and I'm a newcomer
to the concepts of virtualisation. At least one of them is a reasonable
step-by-step, which you do really need to get a feel for creating and
using storage. The OP describes them as 'introductory', but I think
there is no more than that involved in making and using VMs, and the
more advanced work is in exploring the parameters of the main commands.
These are explained fairly well in the manual. My VM is running on a
headless server, so I don't need USB, and know nothing about that. I
have a feeling that virtualbox before version 4 didn't do headless, and
insisted on X being present.
Quite apart from the OP's particular problem, the real interface to
virtualbox is the command line, and as usual the GUI makes it very easy
to do a subset of the possible tasks. If you want to do anything a bit
technical with networking or storage, it has to be the command line.
--
Joe
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