Skip to content

VirtualBox_setup.md

Latest commit

 

History

History
116 lines (81 loc) · 3.31 KB

VirtualBox_setup.md

File metadata and controls

116 lines (81 loc) · 3.31 KB

VirtualBox Complete Setup Guide (Windows Host)

VirtualBox is installed on Windows via Chocolatey as part of this project (install_virtualbox: true in group_vars/windows.yaml).

VM Creation

  1. Open VirtualBox and click New.
  2. Enter a name, select the OS type and version.
  3. Allocate RAM and CPU cores (4096 MB and 4 CPUs recommended).
  4. Create a VDI virtual disk.
  5. Before starting the VM, open Settings:
    • Display → Screen → Video Memory: 128 MB, enable 3D Acceleration
    • General → Advanced → Shared Clipboard: Bidirectional
    • General → Advanced → Drag and Drop: Bidirectional

Guest OS Setup — Install Guest Additions

Guest Additions provide clipboard sharing, folder sharing, display scaling, and better mouse integration.

Linux Guests

Arch Linux:

sudo pacman -S virtualbox-guest-utils
sudo systemctl enable --now vboxservice

Ubuntu/Debian:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install virtualbox-guest-utils virtualbox-guest-x11

Fedora:

sudo dnf install virtualbox-guest-additions
sudo systemctl enable --now vboxservice

Alternatively, use the ISO method for any Linux distro: in VirtualBox menu go to Devices → Insert Guest Additions CD Image, then inside the guest run:

sudo /media/cdrom/VBoxLinuxAdditions.run

Windows Guests

  1. In the VirtualBox menu, click Devices → Insert Guest Additions CD Image.
  2. Inside the Windows guest, open File Explorer and run VBoxWindowsAdditions.exe from the mounted CD.
  3. Complete the installer and reboot the guest.

Clipboard Sharing

Clipboard is enabled via the VirtualBox Settings → General → Advanced → Shared Clipboard: Bidirectional setting (set this before starting the VM).

Linux guest — if clipboard is not working after reboot:

Start the clipboard client manually:

VBoxClient --clipboard

To make it start automatically, add to ~/.bashrc or your desktop autostart:

VBoxClient --clipboard &

With vboxservice enabled (Arch, Fedora), the clipboard client starts automatically. The manual command above is only needed on distros that install virtualbox-guest-x11 without a systemd service.

Filesystem Folder Share (vboxsf)

Host Setup (Windows)

  1. In VirtualBox VM settings, go to Shared Folders and click Add.
  2. Set:
    • Folder Path: C:\Users\<username>\Documents\VM-Share (create the folder first if it does not exist)
    • Folder Name: VM-Share
    • Auto-mount: checked
    • Make Permanent: checked
  3. Click OK and start the VM.

Guest Setup (Linux)

  1. Create the mount point inside the guest (replace <username> with your actual username):

    mkdir -p ~/Documents/VM-Share

  2. Test the mount manually to confirm it works:

    sudo mount -t vboxsf VM-Share ~/Documents/VM-Share

  3. To make the mount permanent, add this line to /etc/fstab inside the guest (replace <username> with your actual username):

    VM-Share /home/<username>/Documents/VM-Share vboxsf defaults,uid=1000,gid=1000,dmode=0755,fmode=0755 0 0

  4. Apply:

    sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo mount -a

The uid and gid values map the shared folder to your Linux user. Run id inside the guest to confirm your UID and GID if they differ from 1000.