Tech thinker Anil Dash gets "uncharacteristically nerdy" and breaks down the process he used to install Windows 7 in Boot Camp—and then get access to it from OS X, without rebooting, using the free virtualization software VirtualBox.

This isn't installing Windows 7 by itself into a new VirtualBox image/appliance—it's taking the hard disk installation made with Boot Camp and making it accessible from VirtualBox in OS X. It's only two terminal commands on top of the standard VirtualBox setup and startup, and it's a pretty handy tool for quickly opening a Windows 7 program you need or testing out a web site in a Windows-only browser. Hit the link for Dash's quick run-through, and tell us if you've got any additional VirtualBox-on-Mac tips in the comments.

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Access a Windows 7 Installation in Mac OS X with VirtualBox [Windows 7] originally appeared on Shai Perednik.com on October 22, 2009.

Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Linux, Freeware, Beta

VirtualBox has always enjoyed one key advantage over VMWare: it’s free. Sure, the VMWare Player is also free — but all it can do is boot virtual machines which have been previously by another app.

Rather, that’s all it could do until now. VMWare Player version 3 has hit the release candidate stage and is available for public download, and guess what? It’s now got the ability to create virtual machines. That’s pretty amazing news for virtualization hobbyists like myself.

Apart from the added VM creation chops, Player v3 also offers OpenGL support in guest machines, ALSA support on Linux guests, ThinPrint powered printing, Windows 7 support, and multiple monitor support.

And yes, it even supports Aero Glass in Vista and WIndows 7 just like its big brother.

Another great addition is the easy install wizard, which makes setting up popular operating systems on a new guest machine ridiculously easy. That is, when it works. The wizard should create a floppy configuration file which Ubuntu reads during the install process. When I tested with the Karmic Koala beta, though, Ubuntu’s installer wouldn’t recognize the floppy image and crapped out.

A regular install, on the other hand, worked just fine and completed in roughly the same amount of time as it took under VIrtualBox — if not slightly less.

The download is free, weighs in at about 90Mb, and you’ll need to have a registered account with VMWare to get access to the downloads.

Free VMWare Player 3 can now create virtual machines originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 06 Oct 2009 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Free VMWare Player 3 can now create virtual machines originally appeared on Shai Perednik.com on October 6, 2009.

Think you can make a better fast-booting, Chrome-focused OS than Google? Want to craft a custom Linux system that boots from a USB stick? SUSE Studio gives you 15 GB to do exactly that, and you do it all online.

SUSE Studio is what powered the fan-made “Chrome OS” we posted yesterday, which, in that case, was a semi-stripped-down system loaded with the developers’ version of Chrome, Google webapp links, and OpenOffice. If speed and cloud computing aren’t your bag, you can create a fully functional system with Firefox, 3D graphics, and whatever apps you can find installed. Want your system to start up with an AWN dock and Launchy keystroke launcher running? Not a problem.

Even if you don't know all that much about Linux, it's pretty easy to build a system you can boot from a USB stick or live CD/DVD, run inside a virtual machine program, or actually install it—or, heck, even test it out in your web browser.

Here’s a basic walkthrough of building a system with SUSE Studio. In this case, we’re looking to build a GNOME-based system that would boot fairly quick and use Chrome for most of its functions, and use GNOME-Do as the primary application launcher.

Get an account, choose your desktop

First things first, you’ll need to grab an invitation and account from SUSE Studio. While it’s invite-only at the moment, I received my invite only 10 minutes after registering and filling out a quick survey that suggested it would boost my invite reply time. Once your invite arrives, you can sign into SUSE Studio with your Google or Yahoo account, or any OpenID provider. Not sure how to nab an OpenID? Here’s a quick video tutorial.

Once you’re signed in, head to your “Home” screen and click the “Create new appliance” link in the upper-right. SUSE Studio calls each bootable system you create an “appliance” throughout the process. You’ll be asked to choose your “base template,” which includes the GNOME and KDE desktops, a Just Enough OS (jeOS) option, and server or command-line-only choices. Most folks will want to lean toward GNOME or KDE setups, as they're the most familiar graphical environments. If you're familiar with Linux enough to know how to build a login manager and desktop from a command line system, though, go ahead and play around—you can't really hurt anything.

Choose your software

This is the real meat and potatoes of creating a system. Click the “Software” tab and check out the packages already going into your system.

Based on your selection of a GNOME desktop, and SUSE Studio assuming you want the Linux basics needed to boot, a few packages and repositories are already installed for you. They’re based on a basic installation of OpenSUSE, but you could wipe the slate clean and start over with another RPM-based repository, if you so chose.

If you wanted to add Firefox to your system, simply search for it in the search bar farther down the page. Results from the repositories you've chosen appear, and you can click "Add+" to load them into your system, with dependencies and other needed packages automatically included. What if you don't see something you know runs on Linux—like, say, Google Chrome? Find an RPM-formatted package, like those I found at Ben Kevan’s blog, or add in a repository URL that carries regular updates. Generally, a good Google search for the name of your program and “OpenSUSE” should yield fruit. Hit the “Upload and Manage RPMs” link near the top of the Software page, and you’ll be able to upload from your computer, or point to a file on the web. What’s really neat is, once you upload your RPM files, you’ll have a special repository created for you that can be loaded into any system you build with SUSE Studio.

Change the look and feel

Once you’re done tinkering with your apps, head over to the Configuration tab to mess with your eye candy and determine how your system will boot up. Start at the “General” sub-section, making sure to change the user name at bottom to something other than “Tux” and change the password away from the standard “linux.” You can set how you want your system to find a network connection (anything other than the manual or no-network options should be fine), and whether to enable a firewall.

The Personalize section only has two parameters, but who doesn’t like to see their own logos and backgrounds stamped on a system? Next over, make sure the “Startup” section has you set to boot into a graphical login. Under “Desktop,” you can set the OS to automatically boot to a desktop for faster start-up times, and the “Configuration” field lets those planning to install to a disk or USB drive, or run in a virtual machine, fine-tune their memory and disk use settings. “Overlay files” and “Scripts” can mostly be skipped, unless you’ve got documents you need to have in your test system or already work at a high level of Linux knowledge.

Grab and boot your OS

The “Build” section is where you get the good stuff. Pick the format you’d like to download, whether an ISO for creating a CD/DVD, a disk image for hard disk or USB transfer, or a ready-made virtual machine file for VirtualBox or VMWare. Choose your format, set a version number, and that build will always be available for downloading or “cloning.” Not quite sure what to do with the files you received? Here’s SUSE Studio’s guide to using SUSE Studio appliances—though we'd certainly welcome more tips, especially on imaging USB drives with .RAW image files, in the comments.

Don’t have the time or patience to burn a CD or install a new virtual machine? SUSE Studio actually lets you run your custom-built appliances on their own virtualization servers, for up to one hour, for free. Hit the “testdrive” link on one of your builds, and wait for it to boot up.

I was fairly impressed with the performance of a virtual machine I created entirely online, running on servers likely a world away and controlled entirely through a browser.

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Use SUSE Studio to Build a Linux OS From Scratch [Operating Systems] originally appeared on Shai Perednik.com on September 30, 2009.

Photo from http://virtual-soft1.img.jugem.jp/

Sometimes I need to create a VM quickly and get it up and running.  I found this great post that broke the steps down:

VBoxManage createvm -name “Your VM” -register
VBoxManage modifyvm “Your VM” -memory “128MB” -acpi on -boot1 dvd -nic1 intnet
VBoxManage createvdi -filename “VM.vdi” -size 4000 -register
VBoxManage modifyvm “Your VM” -hda “VM.vdi”
VBoxManage registerimage dvd /full/path/to/iso.iso
VBoxManage modifyvm “Your VM” -dvd /full/path/to/iso.iso
VBoxManage modifyvm “Your VM” -vrdpport 3390
VBoxVRDP -startvm “Your VM”

ctrl + z and type “bg” to send it to the background.
fg brings it to the foreground
kill [PID] to stop it

VBoxManage Quick Guide originally appeared on Shai Perednik.com on September 29, 2009.

The VBoxWeb GUI

Part of the power built into VirtualBox is the VBoxHeadless. You can do everything you normally would do with the GUI from the command line.

This is great, but when I want to just start & pause a VM as I do 90% of the time, its much nicer to have a GUI.

After much digging I found the vboxweb project. Its being developed by a team inside SUN and has great promise.

It’s a freash app and is only available via SVN, but definately worth checking out.

It’s worth nothing that there was another solution called vboxweb that was created a few months back but discontinued.

Mange VirtualBox Server with a Web Gui originally appeared on Shai Perednik.com on August 31, 2009.

In this article we will look at tools that can help those of you who want to develop websites on a Linux platform, from powerful text editors to desktop and system features. How do you edit files remotely without FTP plug-ins? What are package managers, and why they are cool? In which Web browsers can you test your applications?

I wish I could cover many more topics: using the command line, basics of Vim, Nautilus features in detail, Nautilus scripting, neat command line tools, basic server configuration and many others. But if I addressed all of the issues that arise from time to time on the Internet, this article would turn into a small book. This isn’t an article on “How to do X or Y on Linux” or “How to use [insert app name here].” And we cannot cover more comprehensive IDEs such as Eclipse and NetBeans, each of which requires separate articles.

You probably already have some idea of how to find and install applications for your favorite distros. However, we will point you to the right place anyway to download, for example, scripts and plug-ins.

So, let’s begin!

1. Our Tools

Below, for your quick reference, is a list of tools that we will mention or explain in this article.

Text Editors:

• Gedit
• Geany

Browsers:

• Opera
• Mozilla Firefox
• Epiphany (with the WebKit engine)
• Chromium (for some other WebKit examples)

General and command line tools:

• FUSE
• SSHFS
• Vim
• Parcellite

2. Gedit

Gedit is the default and simplest text editor for the GNOME environment. The default installation already comes with some good resources, although not all of them are activated by default. It is bundled with some plug-ins; however, you can add many more plug-ins to make it a nice simple IDE. If you go to Edit > Preferences > Plugins, you’ll see which plug-ins are installed by default. There, you can configure and activate them. On the same screen, you can configure other elements of the text editor, such as indentation, line numbering and current line highlighting.

Your default installation probably won’t have many plug-ins by default other than those. Check if your distro has a package to automatically install a set of plug-ins. The package would be named gedit-plugins. I recommend installing it because it adds at least five helpful plug-ins: bracket completion, color picker (quite helpful with your CSS), session saver, smart spaces and terminal. These are all of the plug-ins installed with the package:

• Bracket completion
• Charmap select
• Code comment
• Color picker
• Join and split lines
• Session saver
• Smart spaces
• Show tabbar
• Terminal

See the plug-ins section for a fuller overview of them.

Let’s look at the most useful of these basic plug-ins for developers and see how we can configure them, in needed.

Snippets

Snippets inserts frequently used pieces of text quickly. To configure it, check it on the plug-in tab and hit “Configure Plugin.” You can edit existing snippets, add new ones, import and export snippets and create global snippets. It is also possible to add tab triggers, shortcuts and drop targets. To activate a snippet, you must be editing a file with a corresponding snippet (e.g. if it is a Python snippet, you should be editing a Python file). If it is a blank pure-text file, just change its syntax on View > Highlight Mode. Many good snippets are on the Internet; some that I use are Django and RoR snippets.

External Tools

External tools executes external commands and shell scripts. As with snippets, you can configure those that ship with the plug-in or create your own. For more complex tasks, you will need some knowledge of shell-scripting and how to use some of the shell tools. We won’t go into how to master Gedit and its amazing plug-ins (we recommend reading Gedit manuals for that), but we will give you links to some scripts that you can play with.

Modelines

If you use Vim or Emacs in your daily work, you may know what modelines are. If you wish you could import them to other text editors, modelines lets you do exactly that.

For those who aren’t familiar with them, modelines are “definitions” of tabbing, spacing, line ending, tabbing level and so on.

The basic and gedit-plugins packages are the ones I use most often. Some other functionality can be added only through third-party plug-ins, which you can find all over the Web; GNOME Live’s Gedit section is a good start. Have a look at AutoComplete, Better Python Console (the Python Console that ships with Gedit is only useful for developing gedit plug-ins), ClassBrowserPlugin and Autosave editing sessions.

Finally, you can customize the look of Gedit with color themes. Gedit comes with a few, but you can find many more.

Further Reading

• Modelines:
  Modelines page at GNOME library website.
• Gedit Plug-ins
  Gedit plug-ins repository at GNOME Live
• External Tools Plug-in
  External Tools plug-in page at Live GNOME.
• Text-mate like Gedit in a few steps
  
  A guide with resources for making Gedit look more like Text-mate.
• Using Gedit with Django:
  A guide to using Gedit for Django programming
• Django Snippets:
  Snippets for Django.
• RoR Development with Gedit
  A guide to using Gedit for Ruby On Rails programming.
• RoR Snippets
  Snippets for Ruby On Rails. There are also more snippets here.
• RHTML integration:
  A guide to integrating RHTML in Gedit.

3. Geany

Unlike Gedit, Geany is more of a general purpose “minimalist” IDE than text editor. It already comes with such resources as an embed terminal, compiler tab, messages tab and note-taking tab (Scribble). You also have a side-pane listing of file symbols (i.e. classes and methods in Java files, sections and sub-sections in LaTeX files) and documents that can be extended to include a tab with file browsing. In addition, Geany comes with a simple completion tool, color picker, finder, simple project builder and tools for some languages. Its search tool is capable of searching the whole session or only the current file, with or without regex, and a “Find in files” option if the browser files plug-in is on.

Yet one of the nicest features of Geany is its Compile and Execute buttons. Based on the file you are editing, Geany tries to find the corresponding compiler/interpreter. So, if you are editing a Java file, you can compile it with javac and run it right after the compilation ends. At the same time, you can compile a LaTeX file and preview it in a really simple DVI viewer without having to change any configuration parameters. For interpreted languages, you don’t even have to run the compiler: just hit “Execute.” Of course, if your executable has a different name (let’s say, ruby1.8 instead of ruby), it will fail and report that it couldn’t find ruby. But you simply need to configure that to make things work wonderfully again.

Another interesting aspect of Geany is its built-in tags information. You can create *.tags files for a language or framework that Geany does not support by default, as well as add support for auto-completion and call tips. Consult Geany’s documentation for more details

Finally, you can extend Geany with plug-ins (find the plug-ins manager in the Tools menu) and themes. Or simply configure everything the way you want: just go to “Preferences” and adjust things to your taste, from the browser to your shortcuts.

Further Reading

• Geany snippets
  A collection of snippets to use with Geany.
• Integrating with SVN/Git:
  How to use Geany with SVN or Git version control systems.
• Geany extras
  Extra goodies to extend Geany.

4. What About Remote File Editing?

Nowadays, things are pretty easy, and you almost don’t need to install plug-ins to access FTP and SSH accounts or to edit files, because most modern distros comes with FUSE. And if you have GVFS installed, GNOME integrates it so that you can use it on Nautilus.

“But what is it?” you may be asking. In short, it allows you to mount a virtual file system on your system and work there just as you would in common directories.

You would just click on a file and start editing it. When you’re finished, just save and everything is done. A big advantage of this method over the FTP plug-in method is that you make things available to more than one application.

Note: since my server has only SFTP access, I’m not sure how stable this is with simple FTP, but it works flawlessly with SFTP. Nevertheless, when I need to edit a remote file, I prefer to connect via SSH using a terminal and use Vim to edit the file, only because the method reminds me that I’m not working locally and to be careful.

Further Reading

• Mounting FUSE file system
  A quick guide to mounting a FUSE system and adding it to fstab.
• Creating file systems with Ruby and FUSE
  Using FUSE with Ruby

5. File Browsing FTP and SSH, Natively

In more recent versions of Nautilus, the GNOME file browser, you have native access to network protocols, such as WebDAV, FTP, SSH and Windows shares. You can add other protocols, like SVN, or extend it through its plug-ins and scripts. (Unfortunately, I cannot cover this topic here but only point you to an extensions and scripts website.)

You can browser different servers at the same time on different windows, which can be really helpful for transferring files from one server to another.

Of course, you don’t need to be stuck in the graphical portion of Linux. You can use the command line to perform most of these tasks.

Further Reading

• SVN on Nautilus:
  Nautilus SVN integration project page.
• Nautilus subversion integration tool. Execute SVN commands with Gnome scripts
  A tutorial on how to integrate and use SVN on Nautilus.
• Nautilus File Manager Scripts
  A page with a good collection of Nautilus scripts.
• Nautilus on GNOME Live
  Nautilus page on GNOME Live.
• Extending Nautilus
  A guide on how to write scripts and extensions for the Nautilus File Browser.

Web Browsers

Linux has a lot of Web browsers to play with, from Mozilla’s family to console-based browsers. All of them have their pros and cons. But most of the time, we need only a few for testing, probably Firefox, Opera and one with the WebKit/KHTML engine.

Because I’m covering the GNOME environment, I chose Epiphany, with the WebKit engine (Epiphany’s project developers switched from Gecko to WebKit in the latest versions). Epiphany with WebKit is named epiphany-webkit on Debian and probably on some other distros

If you are on KDE, though, Chromium would probably suit you better because it does not depend on GNOME libraries or even use Konqueror (KHTML).

Note: I’m no specialist on rendering engines, so I can’t say for sure whether testing on more recent versions of Konqueror (which uses KHTML) would be sufficient for WebKit tests. I do all my testing on Epiphany.

If you really need to test your website in Internet Explorer, you can use the Wine library with Wine Tricks. Or use VirtualBox images, which is provided by Microsoft itself. For now, IE8 on Wine is still too buggy. But IE7 can run on Wine: check the “Further Reading” section below for more information. Running them on VirtualBox should work flawlessly.

Further Reading

• Chromium
  Chromium project page.
• Epiphany WebKit
  Epiphany WebKit page at GNOME Live.
• IE 7 on Wine
  How to run IE7 on Wine.
• HOWTO: run IE6, IE7, IE8 on Linux in VirtualBox
  How to use VirtualBox to run Microsoft browsers. Another guide is here.
• Wine Tricks
  Wine tricks page at Wine HQ wiki.

Package Manager: Your Best Friend

If there is one thing I really love on every Linux distro I have used, it is the package management. Okay, some are better than others, but generally speaking you need only the command line to take control of your system applications. Package managers help you find, install and keep track of security updates and new versions of your applications. And you can install more than one application at a time, even if they are not related.

Depending on the package manager, when you search for and install new applications, others that might work well with the ones you have found are suggested to you, such as GUIs for configuring and managing an FTP server.

Some bundles for installing AMP include too many applications (even on Linux) or are strict in what they have packed. But when using a package manager on Linux, installing a server environment can be easier and flexible: you can tailor your installation more efficiently, choosing only what you need. Why would you install PHP if you are not a PHP developer? Why install MySQL if SQLite serves your needs? You probably don’t need an FTP server or an email service either. Nevertheless, you can install any of them easily if you need to in future. Also, you needn’t be restricted to Apache if you plan to use, say, lighttpd.

Open-source version control systems are available for Linux and, even better, in distro repositories. For Debian, you have Git (as git-core), Mercurial, CVS, Subversion and Bazaar all in the official repository (though Bazaar is over the backports and unstable). No need to go to a bunch of different websites.

Further Reading

• The Perfect Server: Debian Lenny
  Tips and instructions on how to set up a complete server on Debian
• Debian lighttpd
  How to configure a lighttpd server on Debian
• Gentoo Tutorials
  A collection of tutorials at Getoo Wiki. Could be useful for others distro, too.
• CrossFTP Server
  An FTP server with an LDAP/database back end and GUI configuration/monitoring.
• GAdmin ProFTPD
  GAdmin module for administrating ProFTPD servers using a GUI.
• PureAdmin
  PureAdmin is a user and server administration for the pure-ftpd.

Native Multi-Paste And Multiple Desktops

I started using Linux seriously at the end of 2003, when I got sick of Windows 98 SE freezing after 20 minutes of use and having to be reinstalled after 2 weeks.

After installing Debian and exploring KDE features, I discovered how cool and useful the virtual multi-desktop concept was. Now when I use other operating systems, this is what I miss most. But really understanding how it can help you organize your windows and work takes some time.

Another thing I find really helpful and miss in every other system I use is being able to buffer two things on the clipboard with any external tools. (Okay, I know when using Vim you have as many buffers as keys, but I’d need a whole book to talk about Vim!) All I need to do is highlight a piece of text and press the middle button to paste it. And if I have something in the buffer (loaded previously with Control + C), I won’t lose it.

You have plenty of options for controlling multiple buffers in the clipboard. KDE already comes with Klipper, which is great. GNOME comes with no such tool, but you do have some good options (I use Parcellite).

One little thing I miss is a native way to call programs without having to click on their icons or menu entries or call them through the terminal. GNOME and KDE both have a native application runner that you can call by pressing Alt + F2. Then, just start typing and it shows your options. Even though QuickSilver, and programs like it, does something similar and even better, you have to install it.

Further Reading

• X Window System Multiple Desktops
  Wikipedia entry about multiple desktops on X Window System
• Glipper
  A GTK clipboard manager.
• Parcellite
  Another GTK clipboard manager.
• GNOME Launch Box
  A QuickSilver-like tool for the GNOME environment.
• GNOME Do
  Another tool inspired by QuickSilver.
• Katapult
  KDE’s tool inspired by QuickSilver.
• GNOME Deskbar
  Deskbar is an applet the comes bundled with GNOME with the goal of providing a common search interface.

A Note About KDE

Linux is a rich world and has many variables to experiment with. I have never used any of KDE’s specific tools. For programming, I use NetBeans. I have used KWriter for simple edits but never for programming (nor Kate). Though I haven’t used KDE4, I can say by experience that, for file browsing, Konqueror is a killer app: integrated preview for many file types, native access to SSH, (S)FTP and other network protocols, extensible, tabbed file browsing and many other great features.

Conclusion

We have seen a lot of simple tools to play with, a rich environment for building testing and development servers and a good range of tools to improve your workflow. Although Linux isn’t the most popular OS for desktops, it is not necessarily ill-suited to most kinds of development work — and it may even be better than more popular OS’s. It is up to you now to try it if you are not satisfied with your current environment.

Further Reading

• Vim
  Vim official page
• Vim doc
  A Vim documentation project, with references, tips, FAQs and tutorials. A good resource for any Vim user.
• Shlomi Fish’s Vim for begginers
  A good place to start if you want to learn Vim.
• VIM for Django
  Tips, plug-ins and scripts to make Vim more suitable for Django.
• Vim for Rails
  A plug-in to enhance Vim for Ruby On Rails.

Related posts

You may be interested in the following related posts:

• CSS Editors Reviewed
  This review includes JustStyle CSS Editor, CSSED and other CSS editors for Linux.
• 35 Useful Source Code Editors Reviewed
  This review includes Komodo Edit, Aptana Studio, Screem, Quanta Plus, Emacs and other editors for Linux.

About the Author

Ricardo is a systems information student from Brazil. He works as an intern at a local company developing JSF applications that help people keep track of many Brazilian companies’ stocks on BM&FBovespa. He is also starting a new website with some friends to talk about comics, video games, films, TV series and RPG in a way different from most Brazilian websites. You can contact him on Twitter or through vox.

(al)

© Ricardo Cappellano for Smashing Magazine, 2009. |
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Post tags: coding, linux, web-development

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How To Develop Websites On Linux originally appeared on Shai Perednik.com on August 29, 2009.

VBoxHeadless – Running Virtual Machines With VirtualBox 2 On A Headless Debian Lenny Server

This guide explains how you can run virtual machines with Sun xVM VirtualBox 2
on a headless Debian Lenny server. Normally you use the VirtualBox GUI
to manage your virtual machines, but a server does not have a desktop
environment. Fortunately, VirtualBox comes with a tool called
VBoxHeadless that allows you to connect to the virtual machines over a
remote desktop connection, so there’s no need for the VirtualBox GUI.

Go to Source

VBoxHeadless – Running Virtual Machines With VirtualBox 2 On A Headless Debian Lenny Server originally appeared on Shai Perednik.com on August 8, 2009.

Windows only: Free application uSbuntu Live Creator installs a Live CD from an ISO image onto your USB flash drive—much more useful, portable, and easy to deal with than carrying around a CD.

Once you’ve downloaded and extracted the application, you can pick a USB drive, pick the source for the copy of Linux, and even format the drive all in one simple application. There are options for creating persistent storage, so you can save your settings between uses, and you can even boot from VirtualBox if you want to.

uSbuntu Live Creator is a free download for Windows only. For more, check out the previously mentioned Unetbootin utility, which does the same thing in a similar way.

Go to Source

Usbuntu Live Creator Makes Bootable Linux USB Drives [Downloads] originally appeared on Shai Perednik.com on July 22, 2009.

VBoxHeadless – Running Virtual Machines With VirtualBox 3.0 On A Headless Ubuntu 9.04 Server

This guide explains how you can run virtual machines with Sun VirtualBox 3.0
(released on June 30, 2009) on a headless Ubuntu 9.04 server. Normally
you use the VirtualBox GUI to manage your virtual machines, but a
server does not have a desktop environment. Fortunately, VirtualBox
comes with a tool called VBoxHeadless that allows you to connect to the
virtual machines over a remote desktop connection, so there’s no need
for the VirtualBox GUI.

Go to Source

VBoxHeadless – Running Virtual Machines With VirtualBox 3.0 On A Headless Ubuntu 9.04 Server originally appeared on Shai Perednik.com on July 16, 2009.

After installing VirtualBox on my laptop with Ubuntu 8.04 I ran into the problem were the virtual NIC on my XP machine did not have the proper drivers installed, and I was not able to update the driver using the standard Windows drivers.

The description for the device was “AMD PCNET Family PCI Ethernet Adapter”.

After doing a search on the net I found a couple of people having the same problem. Their solutions was to install either an Intel driver or an AMD:

Intel
AMD

The problems I had was that the AMD driver did no get recognized by the device, and the Intel driver did no recognize the device. That’s when I stumbled on the “proper” device. You can download it here.

Install the executable on your virtual machine and then do a driver update on the network card under Device Manager. This should automatically recognize the device and give you network access.

Victor’s Blog: VirtualBox – XP NIC Driver problem.

VirtualBox – XP NIC Driver Problem originally appeared on Shai Perednik.com on July 10, 2009.