VirtualBox

VirtualBox for Fedora

Download the newest VirtualBox rpm file from the VirtualBox web site. I'm doing this on Fedora 12 Alpha and using VirtualBox-3.0.8. Once the file is downloaded you need to install it. This is done from a terminal, like so.

[glenn@leonardo ~]$ sudo rpm -ivh Download/VirtualBox-3.0.8_53138_fedora12-1.i686.rpm 
Password: 
warning: Download/VirtualBox-3.0.8_53138_fedora12-1.i686.rpm: Header V4 DSA signature: NOKEY, key ID 6dfbcbae
Preparing...                ########################################### [100%]
   1:VirtualBox             ########################################### [100%]

Creating group 'vboxusers'. VM users must be member of that group!

No precompiled module for this kernel found -- trying to build one. Messages
emitted during module compilation will be logged to /var/log/vbox-install.log.

Compilation of the kernel module FAILED! VirtualBox will not start until this
problem is fixed. Please consult /var/log/vbox-install.log to find out why the
kernel module does not compile. Most probably the kernel sources are not found.
Install them and execute

  /etc/init.d/vboxdrv setup

as root.

Compilation of the kernel module failed. This was expected. There are additional packages that need to be installed for all releases of Fedora before the kernel module will compile successfully. We need to install kernel-devel.

If you are using the .i386 kernel then run

sudo yum install kernel-devel gcc

If you are using the .PAE kernel then run

sudo yum install kernel-PAE-devel gcc

sudo yum groupinstall 'Development Tools'

Now run

/etc/init.d/vboxdrv setup

VirtualBox should compile a new kernel successfully. Add yourself to the vboxusers group. Look for Applications > System Tools > Sun VirtualBox.

Yum repository for VirtualBox

There is now a repository for yum / VirtualBox. To create the repo manually, open a terminal and type

sudo vi /etc/yum.repos.d/virtualbox.repo

Once the file is open paste in the following.

[virtualbox]
name=Fedora $releasever - $basearch - VirtualBox
baseurl=http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/rpm/fedora/$releasever/$basearch
enabled=1
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian/sun_vbox.asc

Save and exit. You can now install VirtualBox using yum.

yum install VirtualBox

Quoting my source ...

Note: Users of Fedora/Mandriva might want to install the dkms package (not available on openSUSE) to ensure that the VirtualBox host kernel modules (vboxdrv, vboxnetflt and vboxnetadp) are properly updated if the linux kernel version changes during the next kernel update.

In a terminal

yum install dkms

Even though there is now a VirtualBox repository, things don't work as I expected. Installing VirtualBox does not bring in the dependencies needed for a successful compile of the program. I still needed to manually install Development Tools and the correct kernel development package.

yum install kernel-PAE-devel
yum groupinstall 'Development Tools'

yum install kernel-PAE-devel dkms
yum groupinstall 'Development Tools'

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