The VirtualBox is the most used Virtualization platform by the users. It is free and opensource hypervisor for x86 computers. You can easily install VirtualBox on a Debian Linux system with simple steps.

This article helps you to install VirtualBox on Debian 9 (Stretch) Linux machine.

Step 1 – Prerequsities

Login to your Debian server with root or sudo privileged user and update current packages of your system to the latest version.

Download Debian Package

Step 2 – Add VirtualBox PPA

When you download an image, be sure to download the SHA256SUMS and SHA256SUMS.gpg files that are next to the downloaded image (i.e. In the same directory on the Kali Linux Download Server).Before verifying the checksums of the image, you must ensure that. VirtualBox for Debian (64-bit) is a cross-platform virtualization application. Which means it installs on your existing Intel or AMD-based computers, whether they are running Windows, Mac, Linux.

Download Debian. Debian is a free operating system (OS) for your computer. This version is known as 'Wheezy'.

Now, you need to add Oracle VirtualBox PPA to Ubuntu system. You can do this by running the below command on your system.

At the time of writing this article, the latest version of VirtualBox is version 6.0. Before continuing with the next steps you should check the VirtualBox download page to see if a newer version is available. Installing VirtualBox on Debian Linux is a relatively straightforward process and will only take a few minutes. Performance cookies are used to analyze the user experience to improve our website by collecting and reporting information on how you use it. They allow us to know which pages are the most and least popular, see how visitors move around the site, optimize our website and make it easier to navigate.

This command will create a file and make entry to /etc/apt/sources.list.d/virtualbox.list.

Step 3 – Import Sign Key

After adding the required apt repository on your system, download and import the Oracle public key for apt-secure using following commands.

Step 4 – Install VirtualBox on Debian

You are ready now to install VirtualBox on a Debian system. Run the following commands on the terminal to complete the VirtualBox installation on a Debian system.

Step 5 – Launch VirtualBox

We can use launcher link on your Desktop system to start VirtualBox or simply use command from a terminal.

VirtualBox

This page will help you get started with using FreedomBox on a virtual machine using VirtualBox. While VirtualBox images are primarily used for testing and development, they can also be used for regular use if you have spare resources on one of your machines. This setup is useful if:

• You don't own one of the supported hardware devices.

• You don't use Debian GNU/Linux as your operating system.

• You don't want to disturb your Debian installation to try out FreedomBox.

Prebuilt FreedomBox images for VirtualBox are routinely made available in VirtualBox's own VDI image file format. They contain a Debian GNU/Linux operating system and an installation of FreedomBox with all dependencies ready to run on any OS supported by VirtualBox (Windows, Linux, Macintosh, and Solaris).

A more adventurous alternative to downloading one of these images is to install Debian on VirtualBox and then install FreedomBox on it.

VirtualBox itself is available from https://www.virtualbox.org/ (or your distribution's package manager).

1. Download

Follow the instructions on the download page to download and verify a VirtualBox image. The latest images are available on freedombox.org.

2. Creating a Virtual Machine

1. Decompress the downloaded VDI image (tool for Windows, Mac).

2. Create a new VM in the VirtualBox UI with OS type Linux and Version Debian (32/64-bit according to the downloaded image).

1. In the Hard disk dialog choose Use an existing virtual hard disk file and select the .vdi file you extracted in step 1.

1. When created, go to the virtual machine's Settings -> [Network] -> [Adapter 1]->[Attached to:] and choose the network type your want the machine to use according to the explanation in Network Configuration below. The recommended type is the Bridged adapter option, but be aware that this exposes the FreedomBox's services to your entire local network.

Note: It is important to make sure that you have provided the correct network interface in the above step. For example, if the virtual machine is running on a laptop connected to a Wi-Fi network, then the wireless interface (starts with wlp) must be chosen as shown in the screenshot.

3. First Boot

When satisfied with the VM settings click the start button in the VirtualBox UI and your new FreedomBox will boot.

The console of the VM will show the textual screen below when finished booting, from here most interaction with FreedomBox will be through the web interface in a browser.

If everything went well so far, you should be able to access the web interface of FreedomBox by pointing a browser on the host machine to https://freedombox.local.

In case freedombox.local cannot be resolved, you need to find out your FreedomBox's IP address as described in Finding out the IP address of the virtual machine. Then access this IP from a web browser which is on the same network as the VM (for example, the host). If all is well, you are now presented with a welcome message and invited to complete the first boot process.

This mainly consist of creating an administrative user for the system.

4. Using

See the FreedomBox usage page for more details.

You can log in to the Debian GNU/Linux system as the user created during FreedomBox first boot on the VirtualBox console or remotely via ssh.

After logging in, you can become root with the command sudo su.

5. Build Image

If you wish to build your own images instead of downloading available images, it can be done using Freedom Maker.

6. Tips & Troubleshooting

6.1. Network Configuration

VirtualBox provides many types of networking options. Each has its advantages and disadvantages. For more information about how various networking types work in VirtualBox, see VirtualBox's networking documentation. https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch06.html

For a simple setup, it is recommended that you use a single network interface in your guest machine. This will make the first boot script automatically configure that interface as an internal network with automatic network configuration. Inside the guest machine, the networking is configured automatically and all the services are made available on this network interface. For more information on how networks are configured by default in FreedomBox, see Networks section.

What remains is to make those services available to the host machine or to other machines in the network. You must then choose one of the following types of networking for the network interface on your guest machine. To set a particular type of network for the guest's network adapter, go to the guest VM's settings then the network options and then select the adapter you wish to configure. There, set the network type from the available list of networks.

1. First and the recommended option is to use the Bridged type of network. This option exposes the guest machine to the same network that host network is connected to. The guest obtains network configuration information from a router or DHCP server on the network. The guest will appear as just another machine in the network. A major advantage of this of setup is that the host and all other machines in the network will be able to access the services provided by guest without requiring any further setup. The only drawback of this approach is that if the host is not connected to any network, the guest's network will remain unconfigured making it inaccessible even from the host.

2. Second method is Host only type of networking. With a guest's network interface configured in this manner, it will only be accessible from the host machine. The guest will not able access any other machine but the host, so you do not have internet access on the guest. All services on the guest are available to the host machine without any configuration such as port forwarding.

3. The third option is to use the NAT type of network. This the networking type that VirtualBox assigns to a freshly created virtual machine. This option works even when host is not connected to any network. The guest is automatically configured and is able to access the internet and local networks that host is able to connect to. However, the services provided by the guest require port forwarding configuration setup to be available outside.

   To configure this go to VM settings -> [Network] -> [Adapter] -> [Port Forwarding]. Map a port such as 2222 from host to guest port 22 and you will be able to ssh into FreedomBox from host machine as follows:

   Map 4443 on host to 443 on the guest. This make FreedomBox HTTPS service available on host using the URL https://localhost:4443/You will need to add a mapping for each such services from host to guest.

4. The final option is to create two network interfaces, one host onlyand one NAT type. This way you can access the guest without any additional configuration, and you have internet access on the guest. The guest will be invisible to any other machines on the network.

Summary of various network types:

6.2. Finding out the IP address of the virtual machine

This depends on the network configuration you chose. With a bridged adapter, your virtual machine gets its IP address from the DHCP server of your network, most likely of your Router. You can try the first couple of IP addresses or check your router web interface for a list of connected devices.

If you chose host-only adapter, the IP address is assigned by the DHCP server of your VirtualBox network. In the VirtualBox Manager, go to File -> Preferences -> Network -> Host-only Networks. You can see and edit the DHCP address range there, typically you get assigned addresses close to the Lower Address Bound.

Another possibility of finding the IP address is to login via the VirtualBox Manager (or similar software). The FreedomBox images do not have any default user accounts, so you need to set an initial user and password using the passwd-in-image script.

See also QuickStart for instructions on how to scan your network to discover the IP of the VM.

6.3. Networking Problems with macchanger

The package macchanger can cause network problems with VirtualBox. If you have a valid IP address on your guest's host network adapter (like 192.168.56.101) but are not able to ping or access the host (like 192.168.56.1), try uninstalling macchanger:

You might have to manually remove the script /etc/network/if-prep-up/macchanger. If Debian complains about unmet dependencies when you use a package manager (apt-get, aptitude, dpkg), try to remove 'macchanger' from the dependencies of 'freedombox-setup' in the file /var/lib/dpkg/status.

6.4. Mounting Images Locally

If you want to mount images locally, use the following to copy built images off the VirtualBox:

6.5. Fixing the time after suspend and resume

The virtual machine loses the correct time/date after suspending and resuming. One way to fix this is to create a cron-job that restarts the time service ntp. You can add a crontab entry as root to restart ntp every 15 minutes by typing 'crontab -e' and adding this line:

Do not restart this service too often as this increases the load of publicly and freely available NTP servers.

6.6. UUID collision in VB

Whenever this happens VirtualBox shows following error message: Cannot register the hard disk A with UUID ... because a hard disk B with UUID ... already exists in the media registry

Creating several VMs from the same image causes collisions due to ID's (hostname, IP, UUID, etc) that are expected to be universally unique. Most can be handeled operating the running VM. But VirtualBox complains before that (at the very creation of the VM) about the hard disk's UUID. This is usual stuff when you develop/test e.g. FreedomBox.

Debian 10 Download

You can change a clone's UUID in the terminal as follows:

Debian Vdi Download App

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CategoryFreedomBox