Need a viable licensed for free replacement for VirtualBox

[Yasha Karant]

I posted the following to the

 * Board index  *‹* General
    *‹* VirtualBox on
   Linux Hosts 

a VirtualBox list similar to this SL list.  Interestingly, the post 
currently has 11 views but 0 responses.
At this point, I am beginning to assume that VirtualBox has a 
significant limitation -- the typical VirtualBox NAT network driver
that used to work with both an IEEE 802.3 and 802.11 ISP connection on 
the host no longer works with 802.11 on the host.


Evidently because of the large number of non-professional enthusiasts 
(typical end-users) who post to the VirtualBox lists, one uses an alias

handle; this does not seem to be necessary on the SL list.

Assuming that VirtualBox cannot "virtualize" a 802.11 connection, is 
there any other virtualization system that is licensed for free (no 
longer the case
with VMWare) that can use an existing virtual machine (e.g., vdi, vmdk 
files), that will support the guest and host sharing resources (network, 
shared folders,
etc.) and provides a reasonably user friendly interface (in a worst 
case, a script that can encapsulate all of the text commands to the 
virtualization system)?

Note the host is X86-64, but the guest is IA-32.

Any assistance (based on "real world" experience) will be appreciated.

Yasha Karant


 no internet access MS Win 7 Pro guest
 


Post by 
*opensys 
* 
» 18. Oct 2015, 19:43


Base OS: X86-64 Scientific Linux 7.1 (SL -- RHEL 7 clone)
Virtualbox: VirtualBox-5.0-5.0.6_103037_el7-1.x86_64.rpm
Virtualbox extensions 
(Oracle_VM_VirtualBox_Extension_Pack-5.0.6-103037.vbox-extpack) installed

IA-32 MS Win 7 Pro, Virtualbox current guest additions installed

On the RHEL 6 IA-32 version of the above with an earlier Virtualbox and 
the same MS Win 7 Pro virtual machine (as well
as an earlier MS Win XP Pro virtual machine), "everything works", 
including when the Linux host is connected via IEEE 802.11 to
the Internet using DHCP configuration from the ISP. The stock Virtualbox 
networking configuration is:

Adapter 1, NAT, Intel PRO/1000 MT Desktop (82540EM)
Note that SL uses Network Manager as an enduser controllable application 
that supplies "automagic" connections to IEEE 802.11 networks when I am in
the field -- similar in functionality to what is provided with MS Win 
and Mac OS X host environments. I have attempted to disable Network 
Manager for
Wired Connection 1 at MAC address 0A:00:27:00:00:00 (vboxnet0), but upon 
each activation of Virtualbox, this wired connection is created and 
Network Manager
takes over. I very much would like Virtualbox NAT to point to the 802.11 
DHCP Internet connection that is "managed" by Network Manager and works 
on the SL host.
This setup in IA-32 SL 6 used to work. Does it work with the Oracle 
clone of X86-64 EL 7? Current Linux host desktop is MATE, although I can 
switch to others (e.g., KDE,

Gnome current) if forced to do so.

The MS Win 7 Pro guest reports that it cannot "see" the network, and the 
MS Win troubleshooter cannot find any specific problem.


My Virtualbox guests really do require Internet access, and I must use 
802.11 connectivity. Any assistance would be appreciated.

Re: Need a viable licensed for free replacement for VirtualBox

[David Sommerseth]

On 19/10/15 17:41, Yasha Karant wrote:
> I posted the following to the
> 
>   * Board index  *‹* General
>  *‹* VirtualBox on Linux
> Hosts 
> 
> a VirtualBox list similar to this SL list.  Interestingly, the post currently
> has 11 views but 0 responses.
> At this point, I am beginning to assume that VirtualBox has a significant
> limitation -- the typical VirtualBox NAT network driver
> that used to work with both an IEEE 802.3 and 802.11 ISP connection on the
> host no longer works with 802.11 on the host.
> 
> Evidently because of the large number of non-professional enthusiasts (typical
> end-users) who post to the VirtualBox lists, one uses an alias
> handle; this does not seem to be necessary on the SL list.
> 
> Assuming that VirtualBox cannot "virtualize" a 802.11 connection, is there any
> other virtualization system that is licensed for free (no longer the case
> with VMWare) that can use an existing virtual machine (e.g., vdi, vmdk files),
> that will support the guest and host sharing resources (network, shared 
> folders,
> etc.) and provides a reasonably user friendly interface (in a worst case, a
> script that can encapsulate all of the text commands to the virtualization
> system)?
> Note the host is X86-64, but the guest is IA-32.
> 
> Any assistance (based on "real world" experience) will be appreciated.

I manage three servers using KVM and managed using libvirt (virsh from the
command line or virtual-manager from the GUI).  Currently my bare-metal boxes
run SL6.x, but I'm running a variety of virtual machines (Windows, SL 6 and 7,
CentOS 5).  I have had no particular issues with this setup.  However I am
considering to test out oVirt as an alternative management tool, which also
makes use of KVM and libvirt under the hood.

Two of bare metal boxes have 4 physical NICs each, so I have isolated one NIC
for "management", which means that's the physical network and IP subnet I use
to log into the bare metal via SSH and such.  Then I have configured a bridge
on one of the other interfaces, which the virtual machines uses.  One of the
subnets actually have an external DHCP server, which these virtual machines do
pick up as if it was a physical stand alone machine.

With 802.11, I presume you mean wireless networking.  You can configure that
several ways with libvirt.  If you want the VMs to act/look like as physical
machines on your network, you will need to establish a bridge where the
wireless network is a member.  I have not tested that.

Another approach is to use the built in NAT support which libvirt can
configure automatically.  There you define a libvirt virtual network, with
it's own private network range and decide if this should be NATed or not.  If
your VMs are connected to this network (also configured as a bridge, often
virbr0...).

And you can also play with macvtap as well.  That behaves closer to bridging
with another physical network interface, but without using a bridge.  There
are several pitfalls with this approach, pretty much decided by your needs and
the rest of your network infrastructure.

Performance wise, I am quite satisfied with both bridging and the virtual
network support which is built into libvirt.  One of the sites have actually
virtualized the firewall, even though a native bare-metal firewall would
perform better the virtualized firewall isn't that far away.

It may not be as shiny and polished as VirtualBox or vmware.  But it ships
out-of-the-box on SL5, SL6 and SL7, all you need to do is to 'yum install
libvirt virtual-manager virsh'.  And any management tool supporting libvirt
should be able to manage all the KVM based VMs without much extra hassle.  And
the management tools doesn't necessarily need to run on the bare-metal host
either.  It can run on a completely different machine, just using either SSH
or the libvirt protocol directly.


--
kind regards,

David Sommerseth

Re: Need a viable licensed for free replacement for VirtualBox

[Lamar Owen]

On 10/19/2015 04:53 PM, Yasha Karant wrote:
Thank you for the kind reply; however, you seem to be addressing a 
somewhat different situation.


I am not virtualizing servers or anything like that.  For this use, I 
do not need a bare iron hypervisor that then can run various
OS (supervisor) virtual machine images.  I need a real Linux host (SL 
7) that can run MS Windows under it as a guest.  ...
Does anyone have a solution for using the host SL 7 802.11 (wireless, 
wifi) ISP network connection to provide the NAT used by VirtualBox?  
(At the university,
we are compelled to use Eduroam; at home, our ISP is Verizon -- both 
over 802.11 .)
KVM/libvirt virtualizes Win7 guests just as well as it does servers.  I 
use it, but with wired and wireless connections, both 802.11b/g/n 
(2.4GHz) and 802.11a (5GHz) wireless NICs.  The Win7 guest doesn't care 
and doesn't see the difference.  There are a number of HOWTOs out there 
showing how to get Win7 up as a guest, including with virtio disk, 
network, and video.  You will need the virtio driver CD; google for it, 
it's easy to find.  You need to do a bit of googling; all the 
information you need is already out there in easily accessible form on 
the KVM website.

Attempting to install SL 7 on Dell Precision T1700

[Yasha Karant]

We have just been "given" a Dell Precision T1700 workstation with Nvidia 
graphics, a wide format monitor, etc., that is configured to boot
MS Win 8 using a mirrored RAID configuration.  I have a SL 7 install DVD 
that is fine (passes startup testing, etc.) and has installed on other 
systems.
On this one, the install process starts (with some complaint from the 
stock noveau GPU driver), but simply hangs.  On a previous Dell thread, 
there

is some mention of waiting up to 8 minutes to boot

Re: Dell T310: 2.6.32-358.6.1.el6.x86_64 hangs on boot Mon, 29 Apr 2013 
20:25:22 -0500



 -- I have only waited two minutes or so.  The monitor screen simply 
goes black and there is no
indication of any activity from the hardware, making me guess that the 
install system is hung.


I have seen no indications of problems about this particular system with 
Linux -- it was available with RHEL 6.4 preinstalled (not the way it was 
delivered to us).

It also seems to work with OpenSUSE 13.2

https://en.opensuse.org/HCL:Dell_desktops --

Precision T1700 	13.2 	Icon-checked.png 
 	Icon-checked.png 
 	Icon-checked.png 




End Open SUSE


and Ubuntu

http://www.ubuntu.com/certification/hardware/201302-12684/

Ubuntu on Dell Precision T1700

Ubuntu 12.04.5 LTS 64-bit

Available from ubuntu.com

Download 
 




   Certification notes

There are no notes for this release.

BIOS
   Dell: A06 (Legacy)

End Ubuntu

Thus, I expect it should work with SL 7 .  If necessary, I could install 
with OpenSUSE 13.2, partition the drive system (probably all XFS except 
for swap), and then install SL 7 over that (MS Windows thus having been 
removed), but I would prefer simply to start with SL.


Does anyone have any experience with this platform?  Any suggestions?  
Are there BIOS (secure boot, whatever) configurations that must be used 
other

than what came with the MS Windows system?

Yasha Karant

Re: Need a viable licensed for free replacement for VirtualBox

[Yasha Karant]

On 10/19/2015 02:45 PM, Lamar Owen wrote:

On 10/19/2015 04:53 PM, Yasha Karant wrote:
Thank you for the kind reply; however, you seem to be addressing a 
somewhat different situation.


I am not virtualizing servers or anything like that.  For this use, I 
do not need a bare iron hypervisor that then can run various
OS (supervisor) virtual machine images.  I need a real Linux host (SL 
7) that can run MS Windows under it as a guest.  ...
Does anyone have a solution for using the host SL 7 802.11 (wireless, 
wifi) ISP network connection to provide the NAT used by VirtualBox?  
(At the university,
we are compelled to use Eduroam; at home, our ISP is Verizon -- both 
over 802.11 .)
KVM/libvirt virtualizes Win7 guests just as well as it does servers.  
I use it, but with wired and wireless connections, both 802.11b/g/n 
(2.4GHz) and 802.11a (5GHz) wireless NICs.  The Win7 guest doesn't 
care and doesn't see the difference.  There are a number of HOWTOs out 
there showing how to get Win7 up as a guest, including with virtio 
disk, network, and video.  You will need the virtio driver CD; google 
for it, it's easy to find.  You need to do a bit of googling; all the 
information you need is already out there in easily accessible form on 
the KVM website.

I have found:

http://iris77.net/?p=365

Migrating Windows 7 from VirtualBox to KVM
Posted on April 9, 2014  by C.D. 



First we convert the vbox image to a KVM format (qcow2) in 2 steps:
|*VBoxManage clonehd --format raw /path/to/image.vdi /path/to/image.img*|
|*qemu-img convert -f raw /path/to/image.img -O qcow2 /path/to/image.qcow2*|

If you get an error saying /Cannot register the hard disk becuase a hard 
disk with UUID already exists/

then we need to change the UUID:
|*vboxmanage internalcommands sethduuid /path/to/image.vdi*|
You should get a messagle like this one : UUID changed to: 
4fb96311-e694-4ae1-a5d3-60cd9e96f843


After you add the image.qcow2 to KVM Virtual Machine Manager you’ll 
probably notice that the new vm will not boot.
I had a Win7 iso image which I’ve added to KVM as an IDE CDROM and 
booted from it. Go to Repair Windows and select the command prompt.

Go to you your CD DRIVE (F in my case)
|*F:
cd boot
bootsect /ntsys60 /mbr||*| That will fix the mbr sector on your qcow 
image and Windows should boot now.


Install Windows VirtIO Drivers
http://www.linux-kvm.org/page/WindowsGuestDrivers/Download_Drivers
https://access.redhat.com/site/documentation/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/6/html/Virtualization_Host_Configuration_and_Guest_Installation_Guide/form-Virtualization_Host_Configuration_and_Guest_Installation_Guide-Para_virtualized_drivers-Mounting_the_image_with_virt_manager.html

Install Spice Guest Tools from http://www.spice-space.org/download.html

End instructions that I have found.

Are these instructions still current for the KVM system as currently 
available for SL 7?


Will this run an IA-32 MS Win 7 under a X86-64 SL7?

Does the running MS Win 7 under this system have:

1.  access to "shared folders" to the Linux host

2.  access to the USB ports on the Linux host (so that any device that 
runs from a USB port on native MS Win 7 still will run under

MS Win 7 under KVM under SL 7)?

3.  access to the Internet over the SL 7 host 802.11 Wifi ISP interface?

Is there a "better" migration procedure than that above?

Yasha Karant