Sun VirtualBox

A few quick tips on Sun VirtualBox, their open virtualization platform. I'm runing a host with Windows XP, and I want to host some Linux servers for various purposes (more on that later).

Anyhow, a few quick hits. First, I installed VirtualBox, and immediately went for Fedora 11 from RedHat. Never could get Fedora to see the virtual drives I had created. I switched from Fedora 11 to the latest version of Ubuntu and it works fine.

Second, I was working on creating a shared folder on my Windows host that could be seen by the Linux box, using the provided command:

mount -t vboxsf [-o OPTIONS] sharename mountpoint

This was returning an error that it did not know about vboxsf as a type. I found that the 'missing' step was, once you install the 'Guest Additions', to issue the following command on your guest Linux server...

sudo /media/cdrom/VBoxLinuxAdditions-x86.run

This will let Ubuntu know about the vboxsf type.

I'm liking VirtualBox so far, it appears to be a useful tool in the toolbox.