How to install VirtualBox on CentOS 7

Learn how to install VirtualBox on CentOS 7 with our comprehensive guide. Follow step-by-step instructions to set up and configure VirtualBox efficiently on your CentOS 7 system. #centlinux #linux #virtualbox

What is VirtualBox?

VirtualBox is a free and open-source hypervisor, developed by Oracle Corporation. VirtualBox supports all popular operating system platforms. VirtualBox is also used as the Provider for Vagrant, a server orchestration software.

What is phpVirtualBox?

phpVirtualBox is a web interface for administration of VirtualBox servers. phpVirtualBox is a free and open source web application. phpVirtualBox is written in PHP thus requires a Web Server with PHP language support for deployment.

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Environment Specification

We have configured a CentOS 7 virtual machine with following specifications.

• CPU – 3.4 Ghz (2 cores)
• Memory – 2 GB
• Storage – 20 GB
• Operating System – CentOS 7.6
• Hostname – virtualbox-01.example.com
• IP Address – 192.168.116.185/24

Install VirtualBox on CentOS 7

Connect with virtualbox-01.example.com using ssh as root user.

Install VirtualBox prerequisite packages using yum command.

# yum install -y kernel-devel-$(uname -r) kernel-headers gcc make perl wget

The vboxdrv.service requires same kernel-devel modules as of running Kernel. Otherwise, after installation vboxdrv.service will throw errors. Therefore, we have used $(uname -r) with above yum command

VirtualBox is distributed via its own yum repository. Therefore, we have to install VirtualBox yum repository first and then we will be able to install VirtualBox on CentOS 7.

Download and add VirtualBox yum repository in our Linux server.

# wget https://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/rpm/el/virtualbox.repo -O /etc/yum.repos.d/virtualbox.repo
--2019-07-15 21:24:40--  https://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/rpm/el/virtualbox.repo
Resolving download.virtualbox.org (download.virtualbox.org)... 104.103.58.103
Connecting to download.virtualbox.org (download.virtualbox.org)|104.103.58.103|:443... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 259 [text/plain]
Saving to: â/etc/yum.repos.d/virtualbox.repoâ

100%[======================================>] 259         --.-K/s   in 0.05s

2019-07-15 21:24:42 (4.88 KB/s) - â/etc/yum.repos.d/virtualbox.repoâ saved [259/259]

Build cache for VirtualBox yum repository.

# yum makecache fast
Loaded plugins: fastestmirror
Loading mirror speeds from cached hostfile
 * base: ftp3.isra.edu.pk
 * extras: ftp3.isra.edu.pk
 * updates: ftp3.isra.edu.pk
base                                                     | 3.6 kB     00:00
extras                                                   | 3.4 kB     00:00
updates                                                  | 3.4 kB     00:00
virtualbox/7/x86_64/signature                            |  181 B     00:00
Retrieving key from https://www.virtualbox.org/download/oracle_vbox.asc
Importing GPG key 0x98AB5139:
 Userid     : "Oracle Corporation (VirtualBox archive signing key) <info@virtualbox.org>"
 Fingerprint: 7b0f ab3a 13b9 0743 5925 d9c9 5442 2a4b 98ab 5139
 From       : https://www.virtualbox.org/download/oracle_vbox.asc
Is this ok [y/N]: y
virtualbox/7/x86_64/signature                            | 2.9 kB     00:05 !!!
virtualbox/7/x86_64/primary_db                             | 130 kB   00:01
Metadata Cache Created

Now we can install VirtualBox on CentOS 7 by using yum command.

# yum install -y VirtualBox-6.0.x86_64

vboxdrv.service is automatically enabled and started by VirtualBox installation process.

Check status of vboxdrv.service.

# systemctl status vboxdrv.service
â vboxdrv.service - VirtualBox Linux kernel module
   Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/virtualbox/vboxdrv.sh; enabled; vendor preset: disabled)
   Active: active (exited) since Mon 2019-07-15 21:38:55 PKT; 53s ago
  Process: 33168 ExecStart=/usr/lib/virtualbox/vboxdrv.sh start (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)

Jul 15 21:38:55 virtualbox-01.example.com systemd[1]: Starting VirtualBox Lin...
Jul 15 21:38:55 virtualbox-01.example.com vboxdrv.sh[33168]: vboxdrv.sh: Star...
Jul 15 21:38:55 virtualbox-01.example.com systemd[1]: Started VirtualBox Linu...
Hint: Some lines were ellipsized, use -l to show in full.

VirtualBox 6.0 has been installed on our CentOS 7 server.

Install VirtualBox Extension Pack on CentOS 7

VirtualBox is splitted into two components.

• Base Package
• Extension Packs

We have already installed VirtualBox Base Package above. Now, we are installing VirtualBox Extension Pack to extend the functionality of VirtualBox software.

VirtualBox Extension Pack is available at VirtualBox Official Download Page. It consist of a single universal package that supports all platforms.

We are downloading it using wget command.

# cd /tmp
# wget https://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/6.0.8/Oracle_VM_VirtualBox_Extension_Pack-6.0.8.vbox-extpack
--2019-07-15 21:43:24--  https://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/6.0.8/Oracle_VM_VirtualBox_Extension_Pack-6.0.8.vbox-extpack
Resolving download.virtualbox.org (download.virtualbox.org)... 104.69.150.156
Connecting to download.virtualbox.org (download.virtualbox.org)|104.69.150.156|:443... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 23309069 (22M) [text/plain]
Saving to: âOracle_VM_VirtualBox_Extension_Pack-6.0.8.vbox-extpackâ

100%[======================================>] 23,309,069   459KB/s   in 65s

2019-07-15 21:44:29 (352 KB/s) - âOracle_VM_VirtualBox_Extension_Pack-6.0.8.vbox-extpackâ saved [23309069/23309069]

Install VirtualBox Extension Pack using VBoxManage command.

# VBoxManage extpack install Oracle_VM_VirtualBox_Extension_Pack-6.0.8.vbox-extpack
VirtualBox Extension Pack Personal Use and Evaluation License (PUEL)

License version 10, 20 July 2017

PLEASE READ THE FOLLOWING ORACLE VM VIRTUALBOX EXTENSION PACK PERSONAL
USE AND EVALUATION LICENSE CAREFULLY BEFORE DOWNLOADING OR USING THE
ORACLE SOFTWARE. THESE TERMS AND CONDITIONS CONSTITUTE A LEGAL AGREEMENT
BETWEEN YOU AND ORACLE.

ORACLE AMERICA, INC. ("ORACLE") IS WILLING TO LICENSE THE PRODUCT DEFINED
IN SECTION 1 BELOW ONLY ON THE CONDITION THAT YOU ACCEPT ALL OF THE TERMS
CONTAINED IN THIS VIRTUALBOX EXTENSION PACK PERSONAL USE AND EVALUATION
LICENSE AGREEMENT ("AGREEMENT").

IF YOU ARE AGREEING TO THIS LICENSE ON BEHALF OF AN ENTITY (RATHER THAN
AS AN INDIVIDUAL HUMAN BEING), YOU REPRESENT THAT YOU HAVE THE APPROPRIATE
AUTHORITY TO ACCEPT THESE TERMS AND CONDITIONS ON BEHALF OF SUCH ENTITY.

1 SUBJECT OF AGREEMENT. This Agreement governs your use of the binary
software package called "Oracle VM VirtualBox Extension Pack" (the
"Product"), which contains a set of additional features for "Oracle
VM VirtualBox" that enhance the operation of multiple virtual machines
("Guest Computers") on a single physical computer ("Host Computer"). The
Product consists of executable files in machine code, script files,
data files, and all documentation and updates provided to You by Oracle.

2 GRANT OF LICENSE. Oracle grants you a personal, non-exclusive,
non-transferable, limited license without fees to reproduce, install,
execute, and use internally the Product on Host Computers for
your Personal Use, Educational Use, or Evaluation. "Personal Use"
is noncommercial use solely by the person downloading the Product
from Oracle on a single Host Computer, provided that no more than one
client or remote computer is connected to that Host Computer and that
client or remote computer is used solely to remotely view the Guest
Computer(s). "Educational Use" is any use by teachers or students in
an academic institution (schools, colleges and universities) as part of
the institution's educational curriculum. "Evaluation" means testing the
Product for up to thirty (30) days; after expiry of that term, you are
no longer permitted to use the Product. Personal Use and/or Educational
Use expressly exclude any use of the Product for commercial purposes or
to operate, run, or act on behalf of or for the benefit of a business,
organization, governmental organization, or educational institution.

Oracle reserves all rights not expressly granted in this license.

3 RESTRICTIONS AND RESERVATION OF RIGHTS.

(1) The Product and copies thereof provided to you under this Agreement
are copyrighted and licensed, not sold, to you by Oracle.

(2) You may not do any of the following: (a) modify any part of the
Product, except to the extent allowed in the documentation accompanying
the Product; (b) rent, lease, lend, re-distribute, or encumber the
Product; (c) remove or alter any proprietary legends or notices contained
in the Product; or (d) decompile, or reverse engineer the Product
(except to the extent permitted by applicable law).

(3) The Product is not designed, licensed or intended for use in the
design, construction, operation or maintenance of any nuclear facility
and Oracle and its licensors disclaim any express or implied warranty
of fitness for such uses.

(4) No right, title or interest in or to any trademark, service mark, logo
or trade name of Oracle or its licensors is granted under this Agreement.

4 TERMINATION. The Agreement is effective on the date you receive the
Product and remains effective until terminated. Your rights under this
Agreement will terminate immediately without notice from Oracle if
you materially breach it or take any action in derogation of Oracle's
and/or its licensors' rights to the Product. Oracle may terminate this
Agreement immediately should any part of the Product become or in Oracle's
reasonable opinion likely to become the subject of a claim of intellectual
property infringement or trade secret misappropriation. Upon termination,
you will cease use of and destroy all copies of the Product under your
control and confirm compliance in writing to Oracle. Sections 3-9,
inclusive, will survive termination of the Agreement.

5 DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTY. TO THE EXTENT NOT PROHIBITED BY APPLICABLE LAW,
ORACLE PROVIDES THE PRODUCT "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER
EXPRESS OR IMPLIED. WITHOUT LIMITING THE FOREGOING, ORACLE SPECIFICALLY
DISCLAIMS ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A
PARTICULAR PURPOSE, TITLE, AND NON-INFRINGEMENT. The entire risk as
to the quality and performance of the Product is with you. Should it
prove defective, you assume the cost of all necessary servicing, repair,
or correction.

6 LIMITATION OF LIABILITY. TO THE EXTENT NOT PROHIBITED BY APPLICABLE LAW,
IN NO EVENT WILL ORACLE OR ITS LICENSORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY LOST REVENUE,
PROFIT, DATA, OR DATA USE, OR FOR SPECIAL, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL,
INCIDENTAL OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, HOWEVER CAUSED REGARDLESS OF THE THEORY
OF LIABILITY, ARISING OUT OF OR RELATED TO THE USE OF OR INABILITY TO
USE THE PRODUCT, EVEN IF ORACLE HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF
SUCH DAMAGES. In no event will Oracle's liability to you, whether in
contract, tort (including negligence), or otherwise, exceed the amount
paid by you for the Product under this Agreement.

7 SEPARATELY LICENSED THIRD PARTY TECHNOLOGY. The Product may contain
or require the use of third party technology that is provided with
the Product. Oracle may provide certain notices to you in the Product's
documentation, readmes or notice files in connection with such third party
technology. Third party technology will be licensed to you either under
the terms of this Agreement or, if specified in the documentation, readmes
or notice files, under Separate Terms. Your rights to use Separately
Licensed Third Party Technology under Separate Terms are not restricted
in any way by this Agreement. However, for clarity, notwithstanding the
existence of a notice, third party technology that is not Separately
Licensed Third Party Technology shall be deemed part of the Product and
is licensed to You under the terms of this Agreement. "Separate Terms"
refers to separate license terms that are specified in the Product's
documentation, readmes or notice files and that apply to Separately
Licensed Third Party Technology. "Separately Licensed Third Party
Technology" refers to third party technology that is licensed under
Separate Terms and not under the terms of this Agreement.

8 EXPORT. Export laws and regulations of the United States and any other
relevant local export laws and regulations apply to the Product. You
agree that such export laws govern your use of the Product (including
technical data) provided under this Agreement, and you agree to comply
with all such export laws and regulations (including "deemed export" and
"deemed re-export" regulations). You agree that no data, information,
and/or Product (or direct product thereof) will be exported, directly or
indirectly, in violation of these laws, or will be used for any purpose
prohibited by these laws including, without limitation, nuclear, chemical,
or biological weapons proliferation, or development of missile technology.

9 U.S. GOVERNMENT END USERS. Oracle programs, including the Product,
any operating system, integrated software, any programs installed on
hardware, and/or documentation, delivered to U.S. Government end users
are "commercial computer software" pursuant to the applicable Federal
Acquisition Regulation and agency-specific supplemental regulations. As
such, use, duplication, disclosure, modification, and adaptation of
the programs, including any operating system, integrated software,
any programs installed on the hardware, and/or documentation, shall
be subject to license terms and license restrictions applicable to the
programs. No other rights are granted to the U.S. Government.

10 MISCELLANEOUS. This Agreement is the entire agreement between you
and Oracle relating to its subject matter. It supersedes all prior or
contemporaneous oral or written communications, proposals, representations
and warranties and prevails over any conflicting or additional terms
of any quote, order, acknowledgment, or other communication between
the parties relating to its subject matter during the term of this
Agreement. No modification of this Agreement will be binding, unless in
writing and signed by an authorized representative of each party. If any
provision of this Agreement is held to be unenforceable, this Agreement
will remain in effect with the provision omitted, unless omission would
frustrate the intent of the parties, in which case this Agreement will
immediately terminate. This Agreement is governed by the laws of the
State of California, USA, and you and Oracle agree to submit to the
exclusive jurisdiction of, and venue in, the courts of San Francisco
or Santa Clara counties in California in any dispute arising out of or
relating to this Agreement.

Do you agree to these license terms and conditions (y/n)? y

License accepted. For batch installation add
--accept-license=56be48f923303c8cababb0bb4c478284b688ed23f16d775d729b89a2e8e5f9eb
to the VBoxManage command line.

0%...10%...20%...30%...40%...50%...60%...70%...80%...90%...100%
Successfully installed "Oracle VM VirtualBox Extension Pack".

VirtualBox Extension Pack have been successfully installed on CentOS 7 server.

Configure vboxweb-service on CentOS 7

phpVirtualBox admin communicate to our VirtualBox server using vboxweb-service. Therefore, we have to configure vboxweb-service before installing phpVirtualBox.

Create a user that will run the vboxweb-service process.

# useradd vbox
# passwd vbox
Changing password for user vbox.
New password:
BAD PASSWORD: The password is shorter than 8 characters
Retype new password:
passwd: all authentication tokens updated successfully.

Create a configuration file for vboxweb-service.

# echo "VBOXWEB_USER=vbox" > /etc/default/virtualbox
# echo "VBOXWEB_HOST=localhost" >> /etc/default/virtualbox

Restart vboxweb-service.

# systemctl restart vboxweb-service.service

Allow vboxweb-service port in Linux firewall.

# firewall-cmd --permanent --add-port=18083/tcp
success
# firewall-cmd --reload
success

Install phpVirtualBox on CentOS 7

phpVirtualBox is a PHP based web application. Therefore, it can be deployed on a web server with PHP language support.

We are installing Apache HTTP server and PHP 5.4 along with other required packages using yum command.

# yum install -y httpd php php-soap php-xml

Enable and start Apache service.

# systemctl enable httpd.service
Created symlink from /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/httpd.service to /usr/lib/systemd/system/httpd.service.
# systemctl start httpd.service

Allow HTTP service in Linux firewall.

# firewall-cmd --permanent --add-service=http
success
# firewall-cmd --reload
success

phpVirtualBox is free and open source web interface for VirtualBox. It is available at Github.

# cd /tmp
# wget https://github.com/phpvirtualbox/phpvirtualbox/archive/master.zip
--2019-07-16 21:21:18--  https://codeload.github.com/phpvirtualbox/phpvirtualbox/zip/master
Resolving codeload.github.com (codeload.github.com)... 192.30.253.120
Connecting to codeload.github.com (codeload.github.com)|192.30.253.120|:443... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: unspecified [application/zip]
Saving to: âmaster.zipâ

    [                             <=>       ] 4,247,924    175KB/s   in 40s

2019-07-16 21:21:59 (103 KB/s) - âmaster.zipâ saved [4247924]

Extract master.zip file to Apache document root.

# unzip master.zip -d /var/www/html/

Rename /var/www/html/phpvirtualbox-master directory for easy accessibility.

# mv /var/www/html/phpvirtualbox-master /var/www/html/phpvirtualbox

Rename phpVirtualBox configuration file as follows.

# mv /var/www/html/phpvirtualbox/config.php-example /var/www/html/phpvirtualbox/config.php

Obtain the username and password defined in config.php file.

# grep -e $username -e $password /var/www/html/phpvirtualbox/config.php
var $username = 'vbox';
var $password = 'pass';

The above values must match with the OS user vbox, that we have created above.

We have already created the OS user with the same username and password, otherwise you have to edit config.php to match it.

(Note: We are using an easy password for the sake of simplicity, but you are recommended to set a strong password here.)

Set SELinux boolean, so the Apache can access other network services.

# setsebool -P httpd_can_network_connect on

Access phpVirtualBox Web UI

Browse URL http://virtualbox-01.example.com/phpvirtualbox/ in a client’s browser.

Login with phpVirtualBox default username/password (i.e. admin/admin).

After login phpVirtualBox web interface may display a compatibility warning and advise us to install a latest version of phpVirtualBox.

Since, we are already installing the latest version of phpVirtualBox therefore, we have no other option to ignore this warning until a new version of phpVirtualBox is available.

We are now at the Dashboard of the phpVirtualBox web interface.

Click on New to create a new virtual machine.

Provide virtual machine name and select operating system thereon and click on Next >>.

Set memory size and click on Next >>.

Select hard disk setting and click on Create.

Select hard disk file type and click on Next >>.

Select Storage on physical disk and click on Next >>.

Select file location and size and click on Next >>.

Virtual machine has been created successfully.

One last thing is to change the default password of admin user.

Click on File > Change Password.

Set a strong password for admin user.

We have successfully installed VirtualBox and phpVirtualBox on CentOS 7 server.

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Final Thoughts

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