Install VB Guest Additions before booting Ububtu-based OS - virtualbox

I'm trying to install Elementary OS in VirtualBox, but the minimum resolution of the OS is 1024x768 and VirtualBox always boots in a much lower resolution. I can't install Guest Additions until the OS has been fully installed and I am on the desktop. I can't go through with the installation, though, because I only see about 60% of the screen in the top left corner. I've tried increasing video resolution to 128mb, but as I thought, that didn't work. Is there a way to increase the resolution with Guest Additions or something else before booting the system to install it?

I had an issue with the installation of Elementary OS 6 with VirtualBox for the same reason. The right side and bottom portion of the installer screens were cutoff. That area of the screen has buttons for back, submit, cancel.
I resolved this by making to selection to erase/complete install, then using the tab key twice followed by the enter key. Apparently this sequence of keystrokes allowed me to initiate the full installation script successfully.

same issue here,
end up add boot kernel parameter to fix this,
when first boot prompt(5 secs),
hit any key within the 5 secs count down to show boot options,
hit TAB to edit first option,
add the vga=ask to the end of boot kernel lines.
then it will show another 30 secs count down for VGA mode selection,
hit ENTER to choose proper one, in my case I choose 1280x800x32.
that's all,
more detail regarding boot vga parameters can refer to this URL.
https://linuxhint.com/set_screen_resolution_linux_kernel_boot/

Related

Cannot resume saved Virtualbox state

I get the following error after upgrading via Migration Assistant my laptop from a 2-core to a 4-core processor:
cpum#1: X86_CPUID_FEATURE_ECX_MOVBE is not supported by the host but
has already exposed to the guest [ver=17 pass=final]
(VERR_SSM_LOAD_CPUID_MISMATCH).
How can i resolve the same?
The solution may be as simple as clicking the big yellow "Discard" button, which will delete the saved state (same as pulling the power cord).
Reference: https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=19351
For people working via a terminal.
The accepted answer correctly mentions to discard the current state of the VM. This basically means pull the power cord, so that the next time you start it, the machine reboots.
You can do this using
VBoxManage discardstate "your machine's name"
Click on the name of the virtual machine, right click on the menu and discard saved status
The Discard button worked for me. Thanks #Justin!
I've been chasing this exact error message off and on for months (fortunately my VM is not part of my daily work). The whole time I thought that it was an issue of being on a new CPU (based on CPUID_MISMATCH) so I was looking at how to move a VM from one CPU to another and how to change the expected CPUID. But everything I found in that searching required that you save and shut down properly on the original CPU, which I no longer have.
Simply "Discard"-ing the "Current State (changed)" version worked for me on all of my saved machines.
Whoda thunk that the fix for a virtual Windows machine was a hard reboot? Not like that works for hardware-based Windows boxes, right? ;-) I guess that's why they call rebooting "the Windows Panacea".
Thanks again.

VirtualBox Fullscreen Host OS Toolbar still visible

Im trying very hard to like virtualbox, but so far I find it so much worse than vmplayer in so many ways. If it wouldnt take me hours to install everything back into vmplayer i would have moved back days ago
When I open my ubuntu vm my host OS's (windows 10) toolbar is still visible at the bottom of the screen, cutting off the actual virtualbox toolbar
Please help me
(edit) It is in fullscreen mode already, it just still shows the toolbar/taskbar from the host OS
Open Task Manager of Windows 10, Select "Windows Explorer" and Restart.
Reference Link
I had this same issue. The Windows 10 taskbar was still showing when I had VirtualBox in fullscreen mode, and what caused it for me was I had a program called Rufus (for creating bootable USBs) open and it was keeping the taskbar from hiding. Once I closed Rufus, everything worked as it should. So, maybe you had a program keeping focus on the taskbar, something that needed attention, and wouldn't let the taskbar hide.
I ran into the problem once. Not sure what had caused the that but I managed to find a solution by enabling "task bar" hiding option in host windows 10 machine.
Right Click on Task Bar -> Task Bar Setting -> Enable Task Bar hiding Option.
You are able to switch to fullscreen mode on the VM, this should hide the Host OS.
This image shows you where you can find the option:
If this is not what you are looking for, please elaborate on your problem, maybe add a screenshot showing the problem you are having.
I just experienced this exact problem, namely Windows 10 host taskbar would not go away despite the guest being in full screen. Even though this question is old, since this question got the top google page rank, I thought I would share how I fixed it.
I fixed it by shutting down Virtualbox and then rebooting the Windows 10 host. It is possible as others have pointed out that some app was keeping the taskbar active, but I couldn't find any such app. If it was some rogue app that was just running as a process (with no taskbar presence), the reboot nuked it from orbit and fixed the problem.
After installation virtualbox tools You can press
host + F (in my case Ctrl + F)
buttons to run fullscreen in virtualbox.

How to set up, maintain and distribute a template VM in VMware

(i posted this question on VMware community forums, with no response)
All of my developers use VMware workstation 11 for running their Visual Studio development environments in Windows. I originally created a base VM, and then simply shared it around to all the users, unbeknown to all the issues it would cause with computer name conflicts, joining the domain, etc. Apparently I didn't 'sysprep' it. Someone with some VMware knowledge tried to help me out to set it up, but im still not sure if it is 100% correct.
I am now at a point where I need to make changes/updates to the base VM (new VS, run Windows Updates, etc) and distribute a new one around to all the developers again, and I need some help to make sure I do it properly this time:
I have 2 VM images currently: 1) a ‘base’ one that opens up to this screen http://screencast.com/t/tBO0IUvwtpbY and 2) one that opens up to this screen http://screencast.com/t/DLV71PeNygrk . I’m assuming it is the ‘base’ one that I make the ‘edits’ to?
If I do edit the ‘base’ VM, what option(s) should I choose in that sys prep dialog?
Once I make the necessary updates to the base VM, what do I need to do to 'prepare' it for distribution to my developers (do I need to run sys prep, do I need to make a copy of VM beforehand, etc)?
Currently the VM has 2 HD's: 1) used for the OS and applications (Persistent and non-Independent), and 2) used to store data files (Persistent and Independent) . Is this the best way to set it up and use the VM (and then use 'snapshots' to revert back to previous states), or should the OS disk be set up as 'non-persistent' after the user has set up the VM for first use (i.e. joined the domain, set up VS Workspace, etc) ? Basically we have had a few scenarios recently where the OS and VS have been corrupted and it took the devs a while to fix it, so I want them to have some sort of way to revert back to a known clean working state.
Thank you
In answer to your questions you are on the right track.
the first screen that opens is correct, customise everything you require in the OS then run the OOBE before distribution
Choose OOBE and tick Generalise, then choose shutdown.
Once the VM is shutdown export it and pass it round your developers. they will need to complete the wizard and then join to the domain if required, this will ensure all the sids are different on each server, remember they must still change the Servers name before joining the domain
Snapshots are best, if your dev needs to reboot etc he doesn't want to loose his changes, he then has the option to revert to a snapshot.
Hopefully this has answered your question, let me know if there is anything else you need :)

Programatically waking up the OS from energy saving or screen saver

Supose my Qt application is running in background and I want to wake up the operating system when the screen saver is active or the monitor is blank for energy saving.
Is there any way to do it under Linux? concretely I would like to do it for a Raspberry Pi under Raspbian but a cross-platform method using Qt will be better.
I'm not sure if you're ok with it never going into sleep mode in the first place, but this is what I use:
sudo leafpad /etc/kbd/config
change BLANK_TIME=0
change POWERDOWN_TIME=0
sudo leafpad /etc/xdg/lxsession/LXDE-pi/autostart
Add line: #xset s noblank
Add line: #xset s off
Add line: #xset -dpms
Edit Just realized how old this question was. I hope I ended your 20 months of waiting and page refreshing.

Migrating from VMWARE to VirtualBox [closed]

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I'm trying to migrate an existing VM from VMWARE to VirtualBox. I've made a copy of the Virtual Machine folder for the VM (so I can experiment and not destroy the original) and have successfully created a VM in VirtualBox. I've got everything booting and running, but the issue is that VM is using the "flat" disk image instead of the correct disk image causing the disk image to be from the past (I know this because all the files on the machine have a timestamp of 2009).
To elaborate, in the VM's folder i have the following vmdk files:
Win2003.vmdk (1 K)
Win2003-flat.vmdk (15 gigs)
Win2003-000002.vmdk (10 gigs)
NOTE: the disk is dynamic.
Looking in the configuration of the VM under VMWARE, it says that it's using the win2003-000002.vmdk as the disk image.
When I import the disk image into VirtualBox (the Win2003.vmdk file), it uses the Win2003-flat.vmdk disk image.
My question is, what can I do to either combine or import the Win2003-000002.vmdk disk image into the Win2003-flat.vmdk disk image so that VirtualBox will use the correct disk image?
I've some instructions on using vmware-vdiskmanager.exe to accomplish this, but I get an error stating "The parent of this virtual disk could not be opened."
After many attempts I was finally able to get this working. Essentially what I did was download and use the vmware converter to merge the two disks into one. After that I was able to attach the newly created disk to VitrualBox.
The steps involved are very simple:
BEFORE YOU DO ANYTHING!
1) MAKE A BACKUP!!! Even if you follow these instruction, you could screw things up, so make a backup. Just shutdown the VM and then make a copy of the directory where VM resides.
2) Uninstall VMware Tools from the VM that you are going to convert. If for some reason you forget this step, you can still uninstall it after getting everything running under VirtualBox by following these steps. Do yourself the favor and just do it now.
NOW THE FUN PART!!!
1) Download and install the VMware Converter. I used 5.0.1 build-875114, just use the latest.
2) Download and install VirtualBox
3) Fire up VMWare convertor:
4) Click on Convert machine
6) Browse to the .vmx for your VM and click Next.
7) Give the new VM a name and select the location where you want to put it. Click Next
8) Click Next on the Options screen. You shouldn't have to change anything here.
9) Click Finish on the Summary screen to begin the conversion.
10) The conversion should start. This will take a LOOONG time so be patient.
11) Hopefully all went well, if it did, you should see that the conversion is completed:
12) Now open up VirtualBox and click New.
13) Give your VM a name and select what Type and Version it is. Click Next.
14) Select the size of the memory you want to give it. Click Next.
15) For the Hard Drive, click Use and existing hard drive file and select the newly converted .vmdk file.
16) Now Click Settings and select the Storage menu. The issue is that by default VirtualBox will add the drive as an IDE. This won't work and we need as we need to put it on a SCSI controller.
17) Select the IDE controller and the Remove Controller button.
18) Now click the Add Controller button and select Add SCSI Controller
19) Click the Add Hard Disk button.
20) Click Choose existing disk
21) Select your .vmdk file. Click OK
22) Select the System menu.
23) Click Enable IO APIC. Then click OK
24) Congrats!!! Your VM is now confgiured! Click Start to startup the VM!
I will suggest something totally different, we used it at work for many years ago on real computers and it worked perfect.
Boot both old and new machine on linux rescue Cd.
read the disk from one, and write it down to the other one, block by block, effectively copying the dist over the network.
You have to play around a little bit with the command line, but it worked so well that both machine complained about IP-conflict when they both booted :-) :-)
cat /dev/sda | ssh user#othermachine cat - > /dev/sda
QEMU has a fantastic utility called qmeu-img that will translate between all manner of disk image formats. An article on this process is at http://thedarkmaster.wordpress.com/2007/03/12/vmware-virtual-machine-to-virtual-box-conversion-how-to/
I recall in my head that I used qemu-img to roll multiple VMDKs into one, but I don't have that computer with me to retest the process. Even if I'm wrong, the article above includes a section that describes how to convert them with your VMWare tools.
Note: I am not sure this will be of any help to you, but you never know.
I found this link:http://www.ubuntugeek.com/howto-convert-vmware-image-to-virtualbox-image.html
ENJOY :-)
This error occurs because VMware has a bug that uses the absolute path of the disk file in certain situations.
If you look at the top of that small *.vmdk file you'll likely see an incorrect absolute path to the original VMDK file that needs to be corrected.