www.fridu.net

While Virtuabox is mostly used as a GUI frontend to run either Windows from Linux, or Linux from Windows, with network access going from VBOX to internet, nothing enforce this behaviour. Virtualbox is a very complete virtualization tool, that can be used in a complete remote environment. Furthermore VBOX includes in its standard distribution, every necessary components to implement a fully virtualized remote hosted environment. This paper explains how to setup VBOX on a remote server [development or internet hosted] and how to expose network applications [ex: apache, tomcat, mysql, ...] hosted within those virtual machines to the external world.

Installation of VirtualBox

For Debian/Ubuntu:

•  apt-get install linux-headers-`uname -r` build-essential
• wget -q http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian/sun_vbox.asc -O- | sudo apt-key add
• apt-get install virtualbox
• apt-get install bridge-utils   ;# needed for bridging interfaces

OpenSuSE-11

• download directly drivers from build-service (here)
• install virtuaserver from (sun) or directly from opensuse build-service.
• zypper install bridge-utils  ;# needed for network bridging

Manual configuration of a guest via SSH

Step by step operation

I do not recommend you to make this manually, but in case of problem, you may have to know what automatic script does.

1. Connect on to remote server via SSH [ssh This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ]
2. Create a network bridge [brctl  addbr vbox-br]
3. Create a TUN network NIC [ VBoxTunctl -t vbox-1 -u $USER; ifconfig vbox-1 up]
4. Add Tun into network bridge [brctl addif vbox-br vbox-]
5. Create VBOX virtual machine [VBoxManage createvm -name "vbox-one" -register]
6. Update VBOX configuration [VBoxManage modifyvm "vbox-one" -memory "2556MB" -acpi "on" -boot1 "dvd" -usb off -hostifdev1 vbox-1]
7. Create VDI disk image [VBoxManage createvdi -filename "/var/virtualbox/vbox-one.vdi" -size 1000 -register]
8. Attach VDI disk to virtual machine [VBoxManage modifyvm "vbox-one" -hda "/var/virtualbox/vbox-one.vdi"]
   
9. Download a minimal ISO distribution [cd /space/iso; wget http://www.fridu.org/download/mktinylinux/httpd-sshd-qwerty.iso]
10. Register ISO image as VBOX DVD [VBoxManage registerimage dvd /space/iso/httpd-sshd-qwerty.iso]]
11. Attach ISO DVD to VBOX [VBoxManage modifyvm "vbox-one" -dvd /space/iso/httpd-sshd-qwerty.iso]
12. Start VBOX [VBoxHeadless -startvm "vbox-one"]

Automated configuration of a guest via SSH

This is probably what you want. VBoxRemoteInstall.sh is a small script, that does automatically every step explain before, It allow you to create, install and configure a VirtualBox guest OS, in a mater of seconds. In most situation 3 parameters are enough: vboxname, nicname and iso image.

Download VBoxRemoteInstall from (here)

Syntax:    ./VBoxRemoteInstall.sh vbox=vbox-one nic=vbox-1 bridge="vbox-br" [options]

Example:

• ./VBoxRemoteInstall.sh  config=linux-tiny.conf        vbox=vbox-tiny   nic=vbox-1   keyboard=qwerty|azerty
• ./VBoxRemoteInstall.sh config=ubuntu-jeos.conf   vbox=vbox-jeos  nic=vbox-2
• ./VBoxRemoteInstall.sh config=solaris-mila.conf    vbox=vbox-mila  nic=vbox-1
• ./VBoxRemoteInstall.sh vbox=vbox-qwerty nic=vbox-99 bridge=vbox-br verbose=1 repository=http://www.fridu.org/download/mktinylinux template=httpd-sshd-qwerty.iso

Note: sample distributions have been selected to be small enough to allow quick tests, feel free to use your own preferred ISO distribution. Tiny-Linux is an 8MB skimmed version of OpenSuSE-11 that only supports ssh+http services, it should be more than enough to test your network configuration (less than 30s to install). Jeos is an Ubuntu distribution tailor for virtualization and Milax is the smallest distribution of OpenSolaris I found, both are around 100MB in size, and while they are still very fast to install, they are nevertheless real operating system that support standard package management, and thus can be used in production.

Host local network configuration

Bridge configuration on the host

To keep configuratin simple, we bridge all virtualbox instances on the same network bridge. 

• brctl addbr vbox-br                                                                         ;# create a network bridge
• VBoxTunctl -u $USER  -t vbox-?                                                 ;# create a tun device for each vbox
• brctl addif vbox-r  vbox-?                                                               ;# add newly created tun in our bridge
• ifconfig 10.0.0.99 netmask 255.255.255.0 vbox-br                  ;# provide a valid adress to our bridge

Note: when using VBoxRemoteInstall.sh bridge and tun are created and configure automatically, the only manual thing remaining is to provide an ip address to the bridge with ifconfig.

DHCP server on the host

While this is not mandatory, it will make your like much more simple. I recommend to use "dnsmasq" , a small network utility that is provided with every single distribtion. Install is with ("apt-get install dnsmasq", "zypper install dnsmasq", ...) When installed rename original config file and create a new "/etc/dnsmasq.conf" with something like:

start dnsmasq "/etc/init.d/dnsmasq start" and verify is listen your interface "netstat -na | grep 53"

Network manual configuration on the target

If you do not want a local DHCP to serve your guest virtual machines, then you need to set network manual after target boot. The other option would to  bridge your guest TUN interfaces with your main Ethernet board within vbox-br and use your router DHCP. While this should work in most lab environments, it generally fail miserably within an internet hosted context.

• lsmod | grep e1000 ;# if no driver [modprobe e1000]  ;# check your NIC kernel module is loaded
• ifconfig eth0  10.0.0.51 netmask 255.255.255.0           ;#provide an ip-addr+netmak within vbox-br range
• route add default gw 10.0.0.99                                         ;# point default route onto vbox-bridge-IP
• ping 10.0.0.99                                                                      ;# verify we can ping our gateway
• vi /etc/resolv.conf                                                                 ;# update nameserver for DNS request
• ping www.google.com                                                        ;# check your dns resolution works

Quick start to remote VirtualBox via SSH

While you may start your guest remotly with SSH, you still need to use RDC to connect in VGA on guest OS. This mean that you will need an open TCP port in beetween your workstation and your virtualbox host, each guest will requirer a unique port. After installtion if VGA is not needed anymore you can nevertheless stop RDC.

Create a minimal guest with ssh+http

Start  guest target with a private RDP port

Connect with RDC desktop client from local workstation

Stop guest target

OpenSolaris (Milax minimized version)

Milax is the striped down version of OpenSolaris (~100MB), that I use for my test. Installation and life-cd should work out of the box, nevertheless is you later want to install it on hard-disk, few things need to be known.

Note while Milax is a minimized OpenSolaris, it is nevertheless a standard OpenSolaris, and allows you to later install any packages with pkgadd.

Prepare your hard disk and create a root partition and eventually a swap partition

Start ZFS installation your VirtualBox VDI disk

Ethernet driver not loaded. For some strange reasons, after installation from Live-CD to disk Ethernet driver for e1000 is not loaded. 

For further information on Milax virtualization check documentation  [here]

Make guest applications visible from Internet

We have now virtualbox guest that run in a router mode within our host. In order to route data from outside (internet) to a given guest we need to configure our firewall. For this we will use VM-firewall