Windows 7 running under VirtualBox in Linux Mint 10

Discussion in 'GNU/Linux' started by melbo, Jan 30, 2011.


  1. melbo

    melbo Hunter Gatherer Administrator Founding Member

    Took a couple screenshots while setting it up. You'll notice some of the install as well as some in 'seamless mode' where I have a Linux taskbar with a Windows 7 taskbar right above it. You can drag and drop files from one OS to the other. I was mistaken, not yet supported.

    VirtualBox is free and can be installed in Windows, Linux or OSX. You can create an unlimited amount of 'Guest' OS' to play with and it's my sandbox for testing different flavors of Linux.

    You'll see a pic of an OSX install within this Linux environment as well.
    Screenshot (Medium). Screenshot-1 (Medium). Screenshot-2 (Medium). Screenshot-3 (Medium). Screenshot-4 (Medium). Screenshot-5 (Medium). Screenshot-6 (Medium). Screenshot-7 (Medium). Screenshot-8 (Medium).
     
  2. BAT1

    BAT1 Cowboys know no fear

    Cool. I just use Ubuntu 10.04 Linux. Ubuntu studio rocks. Windows kept freezing when I cut audio CDs.
     
  3. melbo

    melbo Hunter Gatherer Administrator Founding Member

    Strangest thing is that i cannot rip a DVD iso in linux and always have to open a Windows window to do so. I have my house wired for streaming and whenever someone gives my 4 yr old daughter a new educational DVD, I rip it to put in the system. Windows can't mount the image but it sure can rip it...

    edit: I also have to have at least one Windows box available for iTunes as my phone depends on it.
     
  4. JaxShooter

    JaxShooter Monkey+

    I run a similar setup with VMs for Vista, XP, and Win 7.
     
  5. majgeek

    majgeek Monkey+

    Melbo this is awsome. Is this a new feature, and if so how do you get it working. What version of virtualbox are using?


     
  6. melbo

    melbo Hunter Gatherer Administrator Founding Member

    I'm not at my desk to check the version but it would have been the latest .deb at vbox website. I think I just installed Guest Additions as normal and toggled the settings until I found it.
    I'll check later although I've already deleted that W7 instance.


    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
     
  7. majgeek

    majgeek Monkey+

    Thanks Melbo, I have the exact same setup as you. Linux Mint 10 host, Win 7 guest, latest Vbox and most recent guest additions (r69551) I still can't implement drag and drop.

    When you say you "toggled the settings" are you talking about the settings in the VM Virtual Box Manager," or is there another set of settings that I am missing. Might you be able to post a screen shot?

    I have just recently begun using Virtualbox after using VMware. Drag and Drop is something I have really missed. I heard rumors about the possibility that they might be working on implementing it, and was searching for more info when I found your post.
     
  8. BayEagle

    BayEagle Monkey++

    Good to see V-box being recommended in lieu of WMWare. I made the switch a year ago and never looked back. I run Ubuntu 10.10 as a base with instances of 4 versions of Windows (i need sandboxes for what I do) BackTrack, SuSE and other linux distros as needed.

    VirtualBox is one of those things I wish we had like 10-15 years ago. Closest I ever came was running NetWare inside OS/2 Warp
     
  9. JaxShooter

    JaxShooter Monkey+

    With almost 3GB allocated to the VM what do you have in your machine?
     
  10. melbo

    melbo Hunter Gatherer Administrator Founding Member

    8 GB in a Latitude e4300 laptop
    64 bit OS

    Do you know that about 14 years ago, when our house only had one PC, I wanted to learn Linux so I actually bought a copy of VMWare for around $400 so I could let my wife run windows while I played with other OSs. I never got it to work... lol

    Big fan of VBox!
    Screenshot.
     
  11. melbo

    melbo Hunter Gatherer Administrator Founding Member

    majgeek,

    I just reinstalled 7 and started writing a tutorial only to discover that I was running vbox 4.0 beta when I discovered drag and drop. 3.2.12 (stable) does not have that feature although I can cut and paste text from one Host to Guest and Back again. Sorry for the confusion. I'm going to pull another copy of VirtualBox 4.0 tonight and play with it again. (I have 6 different systems running in here and I lost track)

    http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/4.0.0_BETA2/

    Here's what I was writing about the proper use of Guest Additions:

     
  12. majgeek

    majgeek Monkey+

    Thanks for all your trouble. I have the latest vbox installed. ver 4.0.2 r69518. Maybe that is the problem? Because the link you gave has r68743. Maybe the feature had a problem and they took it out? Or I am totally overlooking where the setting is. There is sure not much about the feature out there yet.

    Edit: I down graded to the beta at the link you gave, and still I find no setting. I did find this though. In one of the feature lists it said
     
  13. majgeek

    majgeek Monkey+

    OK figured out what the above quote refers to. It is a new feature for VBoxManage's Guestcontrol Command. Using the Terminal you can copy a file from host to the guest using the subcommand "copyto" Chapter 8. VBoxManage

    So it appears that you can copy files one direction host>guest. As far as I can tell the only other host to guest or guest to host copying is the shared clipboard feature that supports only text.

    Really shared folders are easy enough to use, to make drag and drop not all that important. I am a graphic artist so I do a lot with digital images, vector graphics etc. I really like using my image viewers in linux and it would be very nice to simply drag an image from a viewer into a Windows program for editing, rather than putting it in a folder and then opening it from the program. It would shave off 20 seconds or more from a very common task.

    I would use VMware player, but I like Vbox better for several reasons. Vbox seems to perform better on my system, and I can make snapshots.
     
  14. melbo

    melbo Hunter Gatherer Administrator Founding Member

    I've reinstalled my W7 guest OS and cannot recreate my drag and drop. There are two possibilities for this:

    1. I stumbled across a bug that made it work
    2. I had a few too many drinks and thought I could do it.

    In either case, browsing the vbox forums, this is not a supported feature at this time. I have not tried to configure the machine and virtual folder that allow copy and paste of files on this setup. Copy and paste does work for text.

    Sorry for the false alarm. It aint supported yet.

    What I was getting at above is that you need to actually 'run' the guest additions within the guest instead of just hitting Device > Install Guest Additions. Unless you run them from within the guest, you'll not get all that bidirectional and fullscreen goodness from vbox.

    I've taken it a step further tonight and created an image of a fully functioning (native) win 7 system, complete with files and documents. It's around 95 GB and I'm currently 'restoring from image' in vbox. It'll be interesting to see if the new system is an exact copy of the one I backup up or if I'll have problems due to the old system using real drivers for real hardware. I'm also installing Fedora on another VM at the same time, alongside Arch and Peppermint.

    I used to create partitions on unused disk space for all of this testing. I LOVE vbox to be able to do all of this at the same time from inside LM 10.
    Screenshot (Medium). Screenshot-1 (Medium). Screenshot-2 (Medium).
     
  15. melbo

    melbo Hunter Gatherer Administrator Founding Member

    Didn't work, wouldn't boot.

    Did another full disk backup with Clonezilla and am restoring the image to a new Win 7 virtualbox now. 23 hours left... My 1 TB USB drive kept failing so I'm pulling this ~100 GB image from the external USB plugged into another laptop via Samba.

    I should know if it worked around this time tomorrow.
     
  16. melbo

    melbo Hunter Gatherer Administrator Founding Member

    Second try over the network was a fail as well. Seems tricky to move a regular installation of Win to a VM. I've read that it can be down but haven't had any luck.
     
  17. BTPost

    BTPost Stumpy Old Fart,Deadman Walking, Snow Monkey Moderator

    Usually you will find that the Windows Installation process, sets the Hooks to the Hardware, and they are different when trying to run from a VM Setup. Basically you have to do the install directly to the VM....
     
survivalmonkey SSL seal        survivalmonkey.com warrant canary
17282WuJHksJ9798f34razfKbPATqTq9E7