Listmates, Just had my first experience with XP running in VirtualBox and ...wow... this is the greatest thing since sliced bread. Most all of the following information was taken from the VirtualBox help file provided in /usr/share/doc/packages/VirtualBox. Here is a quick howto I put together while installing and configuring virtualbox. I hope you find it useful: Pre-Install: (1) If you would like to take a look at the user manual before taking the plunge, grab it here: wget http://www.virtualbox.org/download/UserManual.pdf Install: (1) If you have installed vbox OSE, Remove remove it and download the binary SuSE rpm from VirtualBox (for both 10.2 and 10.3). The openSuSE vb will work fine, but the binary from virtualbox provides a few additional features. Software Management to remove OSE; or sudo rpm -e $(rpm -qa | grep virtual) (2) Check/Install pam-devel sudo zypper in pam-devel (3) Download the vb binary from the virtualbox web site for usb functionality wget http://www.virtualbox.org/download/1.5.4/VirtualBox-1.5.4_27034_openSUSE103-... (4) Install vb sudo rpm -Uvh VirtualBox-1.5.4_27034_openSUSE103-1.i586.rpm The kernel modules are automatically built by: /etc/init.d/vboxdrv setup Post Install: (1) 20:07 Rankin-P35a~> sudo modprobe vboxdrv (2) Edit your /etc/group file and add yourself to the vboxusers group or use Yast->Group Management to do the same thing. 20:14 Rankin-P35a~> grep vbox /etc/group vboxusers:x:113:david (3) Starting VirtualBox and Setting up your First Virtual Machine: (1) Start vb from: the start menu "System->Emulator->innotek VirtualBox" or; the commandline with "VirtualBox" (2) Create your first virtual machine by choosing "New" from the menu bar (3) Follow the prompts to allocate RAM and the virtual hard disk space for your guest OS. For windows XP as a guest OS 512M of RAM and 10G of virtual hard disk space is sufficient. You can get away with 384M of ram and still have a fast virtual machine, just don't go crazy with simultaneous applications. To see what you can spare, from a console, check your available ram with "free -tm" and disk free space with "df -h") Note: the RAM allocated is taken away from your Host OS (openSuSE) while the guest OS is running. So if your total RAM is 1G and you allocate 512M for your guest OS, that leaves you only 512M for your original host OS. Also Note: the virtual hard disk space is allocated by default under your home directory which places the virtual disk on your /home parition. This is a good thing since under the default openSuSE install your /home partition has the greatest amount of disk space. Laptop Note: by default vb assigns the "right control" key as the "hostkey" that is used to transfer keyboard and mouse control to and from the virtual machine when it is running. Many laptops do not have a "right control" key. In vb under File->Preferences, you can easily set the hostkey to the "right alt" key which is a good logical replacement. Installing Windowx XP as the guest OS: You can either install XP using the install cd or you can create and .iso file from the cd and mount the image as the cd drive for installing XP. The benifit of installing from the .iso image is that file transfer rates are much better than reading from the actual cd and allows the XP install to be completed in as little as 10 minutes instead of the usual 40-60 minutes. To create the iso, simply use dd. (example dd if=/dev/cdrom of=~/win_install_disk.iso) You can then mount the iso directly as the cdrom seen by the gues machine. Installing XP is the same as the regular install: (1) Just pop the cd in your drive or select the .iso to mount as the cd drive. (2) Press "Start" to boot the guest os and start the install, continue as usual. (3) Configure Windows to your liking; Installing the VirtualBox "guest additions" Install VBoxGuestAdditions.iso which contains the additions that integrate the host and guest mouse and provide virtual display drivers that allow you to resize your guest window to virtually any size. The iso is located in: /usr/share/virtualbox/VBoxGuestAdditions.iso (1) use the "Devices" menu to Mount CD/DVD-ROM and then navigate to and select the /usr/share/virtualbox/VBoxGuestAdditions.iso file. The installer will automatically run if you have autoload enabled, if not go the cdrom and run setup.exe (2) After the install has completed shutdown and restart your guest os and you will have all of the additional mouse/keyboard and display additions. (they are cool) If for some reason the driver install hangs on your hardware, just use the "Machine Menu" and "Reset" the guest os. The changes will take effect on restart. Thats it! I have been running virtualbox for a couple of days XP, Quickbooks Pro all work great! No rebooting ever just to get to the accounting software now. A thanks to all that pointed me towards VirtualBox! -- David C. Rankin, J.D., P.E. Rankin Law Firm, PLLC 510 Ochiltree Street Nacogdoches, Texas 75961 Telephone: (936) 715-9333 Facsimile: (936) 715-9339 www.rankinlawfirm.com -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org