Installing VirtualBox on Fedora 15 (Lovelock) Host

Update 16 Nov 2011

Hi, check out my new post Install VirtualBox on Fedora 16 Host. The procedure is very much the same, you can use the instructions below for Fedora 15 and Fedora 16.

Installing VirtualBox on Fedora 15 Host System Using YUM

• First you need to download the repository file for yum located at http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/rpm/fedora/virtualbox.repo
• Then you need to copy the repo file to yum depository folder

$sudo cp virtualbox.repo /etc/yum.repos.d/

• Install dkms using the command

$sudo yum install dkms

• Unlike the previous practice, now you need to specify the version number in order to install VirtualBox. This allows user flexibility to install the previous version of VirtualBox instead of the latest version. The following versions are available:

• virtualbox-4.0 (latest)
• virtualbox-3.2
• virtualbox-3.1
• virtualbox-3.0
• virtualbox-2.2
• virtualbox-2.1
• virtualbox-2.0

• To install the latest version of VirtualBox use the command

$sudo yum install virtualbox-4.0

Automation

An installation script was created to automatically configures the repository file and install VirtualBox 4.0. If you would like to use earlier version of VirtualBox, please modify the script yourself. You can download the script at FC15-vbox-install-noarch

***End***

VirtualBox – Sharing Folder between Windows Host and Linux Guest (Fedora)

Sharing Folder with Host System

To share network folders, you need to configure a share folder with a share name in the virtual machine settings.

Then in Linux, you need to mount the share folder using VirtualBox file system:

#mount –t vboxfs name_of_share_folder /mnt/mount_point

Please note that the above mounted folder is owned by root. To allow user to own the files and folder use the command:

#mount -t vboxsf -o uid=1000,gid=1000 name_of_share_folder /mnt/mount_point

Where uid is the user id and gid is the group id. If you want to have it mount automatically upon each boot, put the mount command in /etc/rc.local. Using /etc/fstab has little effect, because that  file is processed before the SF module is loaded and will fail to mount the share.

Install VirtualBox Linux Guest Addition in Fedora 15 (Lovelock) Guest OS

This is for those who have installed Fedora 15 as guest system in VirtualBox. Without the Linux guest additions from VirtualBox, you would still have mouse and keyboard integration. However, you need Linux Guest Additions from VirtualBox in order to run GNOME 3 and to share folders between the host and guest operating system.

Pre-Installation

• Before installing Linux Guest Additions for VirtualBox, you need to ensure that you have the latest kernel installed. To ensure that, use the command:

$sudo yum update

• Reboot your system after update.
• Then, you need to install dkms, gcc and kernel-devel. Use the following command:

$sudo yum install -y kernel-devel dkms gcc

• Finally, you need to load Linux Guest Additions ISO disc to your virtual CD-ROM

Installation of Linux Guest Additions

• Once the disc image is mounted, the folder should be located at /media/VBOXADDITIONS* . The * being the version number.
• Use the following command:

cd /media/VBOXADDITIONS*
./VBoxLinuxAdditions.run

• After the installation is complete, reboot the system.

To share folders between Windows host and Linux guest system, please refer to the post VritualBox Sharing Folders between Windows Host and Linux Guest

Automation

As usual, I have created an auto installation script for advanced user. You can download it from here.