[OpenIndiana-discuss] running VirtualBox headless

[Jim Klimov]

On 2013-06-24 04:24, Jan Owoc wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm running a home NAS using OI 151a7 "server" (vs. "desktop"). I was
> thinking of running Ubuntu Server in a virtual machine on OI, ideally
> configured to startup/shutdown when OI starts/shuts down. I can
> connect a monitor to the machine, but it generally should run
> headless.
>
> I found there is a very helpful entry on the wiki [1] describing most
> of the steps. Has anyone successfully installed VirtualBox on a
> headless OI and have any other tips before I dive in?
>
> [1] http://wiki.openindiana.org/oi/7.2+VirtualBox

I believe there should be no problems, except that your host OS
installation might need some X11 libraries to be present in order
to install and/or start VirtualBox. In particular, I do have some
Solaris 10 and OpenSolaris SXCE haadless servers with VNC+twm,
and an OI laptop with JDS, which run VirtualBox successfully.

The VBoxHeadless processes are wrapped by my vboxsvc (as described
on the Wiki) and don't care about a running X11 server; however if
I do need to bring up the VM in interactive mode (vbox.sh startgui)
then an X11 session such as VNC is needed. Note that the startgui
action savestate's the VM and then resumes it with interactive GUI,
and if your X11 environment is not set up properly (i.e. DISPLAY
value is bad) then the VM crashes with abort. If your VMs are
stored on ZFS in datasets owned by the VM SMF context user, the
vbox.sh script tries to make snapshots after stop and before start,
so you can revert to the pre-aborted saved state in such cases.

HTH,
//Jim Klimov