Virtual machines with VirtualBox

I've found VirtualBox to be very easy to create virtual machines - it's free, open source, and available on Windows, Linux, Macintosh and OpenSolaris. One of the features I particularly like is being able to create a virtual disk that grows as needed (dynamically expanding image). You can also mount an iso image for the CD/DVD drive - which is exactly what I want to do when installing the operating system on my new virtual machine.

Installing on Ubuntu is as easy as:

sudo apt-get install virtualbox


Now, from the Applications/Accessories/VirtualBox OSE menu item, you can start VirtualBox and create virtual machines.

Several things I need to remember after I've created a new machine:


  1. Under "Settings/General/Advanced" select "Enable PAE/NX" to avoid the "This kernel requires the following features not present on the CPU: 0:6 Unable to boot - please use a kernel appropriate for your CPU."

  2. Under "Settings/Network/Adapter 1" select "Attached to: Host Interface" to get networking going - this get me network access as I would expect

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