Install VirtualBox/VMware

Hello, I’d like to know how do I install either VirtualBox or VMware on Clear Linux? As far as I looked around, there are no guides how to do it, and will there be a one? Thanks in regards.

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Hi @davisd, welcome to the Clear Linux* Forum!

There is already a thread about using Clear as VM host, maybe it’s helpful :smile:

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Personally I use kvm-qemu with virt-manager… From my experience KVM-Qemu/Virt-Manager is far out better than Virtualbox, and VMware.

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In what sense ? Stability, Speed, Convenience ?

Alot of it comes down for me on my Machine, is it seems to be speed for me. Never had any luck with speed on Virtualbox, and VMware is usually a no go for me unless I’m running it on a Windows Host. Also I like the customization that KVM-Qemu and Virt-Manager offer me.

Windows Guest VMs run fine?

@FabioMen10 @Businux I’ve run windows 10 in KVM -Qemu it seems to be pretty good especially if you have a rig run with multiple GPU’s then you can you use GPU pass-through. Linux Distro’s can take advantage of GPU pass-through as well. Also there are other types of hardware pass-through that KVM can take advantage of to which is another plus using KVM. Using Virt-Manager gives you basically a GUI Front-End to manage machines. I believe Virt-Manager works with Xen as well, however I have only used it with KVM.

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Yes, I’ve just installed a windows 10 for KVM through virt-manager. It doesn’t have all the bells and whistels of VirtualBox though - notable are unable to suspend also linked clones.

I need run Windows plus Hyper-V nested in a hypervisor. On Windows, I already got it before a while ago. Windows 10 Home + VMWare Workstation + Windows 10 Pro/Hyper-V. Windows 10 Pro/Hyper-V new builds run inner on VMWare too, but not in libvirt. But new builds of Windows 10 Pro don’t run Hyper-V and VMWare together.

I’m very surprised to read that. I would be interested in the errors or any data you could provide to that would help me to believe it.

Oh! Pardon my mistake. I am already portraying myself in my post.

Unfortunately, I already have a VirtualBox VM that I would like to use rather than building a new one from scratch. Am I at a dead end? Could I just install the apt package manager and use the Debian repo?

In virt manager

If you are using xml instead of gui

<cpu mode="host-passthrough"/>
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I was able to install VirtualBox in CL.

  1. download the “all distributions” version of virtualbox
    https://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/6.1.4/VirtualBox-6.1.4-136177-Linux_amd64.run
  2. install dkms
    sudo swupd bundle-add kernel-native-dkms
    or for lts
    sudo swupd search kernel-lts2018-dkms
  3. run /sbin/vboxconfig

easy as that!

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I’ve been running VirtualBox in CL using the instructions above and it works great.

I’d like to try out kernel 5.8, but I don’t believe there’s a dkms bundle for that yet. Is that correct?

6.1.14 working great with 5.8+

I’ll give that a shot. I appreciate it.

Doesn’t work in 2.7.1 (13400)

Errors on build, requires signed kernel modules on run.

Edit: Never mind, the GUI seems to be working anyhow. :wink:

Edit again (much later): Current 6.1 version doesn’t work on my Xeon Phi x200 due to lack of virtualization hardware. A Google search revealed that the ability to turn off virtualization support was available in 6.0 so I downloaded that. Unfortunately for me I then discovered that compiling it requires smp_lock.h which is a VERY old header. A search of the manifests with ‘sudo swupd search-file smp_lock.h’ revealed that it has never been part of Clear Linux.

Since turning off VT support would only have allowed use of 32-bit ISO files this isn’t much of a loss, I’ll just load my OSes onto separate drives and adjust the BIOS between runs. Meh, life on the bleeding edge…

i got error when execute /sbin/vboxconfig

/tmp/vbox.0/linux/VBoxNetFlt-linux.c: In function ‘vboxNetFltPortOsXmit’:
/tmp/vbox.0/linux/VBoxNetFlt-linux.c:2314:23: error: implicit declaration of function ‘netif_rx_ni’; did you mean ‘netif_rx’? [-Werror=implicit-function-declaration]
 2314 |                 err = netif_rx_ni(pBuf);
      |                       ^~~~~~~~~~~
      |                       netif_rx
cc1: some warnings being treated as errors
make[2]: *** [scripts/Makefile.build:288: /tmp/vbox.0/linux/VBoxNetFlt-linux.o] Error 1
make[1]: *** [Makefile:1838: /tmp/vbox.0] Error 2
make: *** [/tmp/vbox.0/Makefile-footer.gmk:117: vboxnetflt] Error 2

how to fix it?
thanks.

This is a different issue; it would be best to open it as a new topic. Meanwhile, though, see virtualbox.org • View topic - VirtualBox-6.1 on Fedora 36 - Installation failed

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