VM inside a VM

[Saeba]

recently, I met a problem. Does anyone have such experience? I used a Window 7 Host to install virtualbox, and used virtualbox to install a debian 9 64 bit (recent release stable version). After that, I installed a virtualbox inside this debian 9, and used this virtualbox to install a windows 7. Everything went well, but there were couple problems happen here.

(1) Host Win7 64 bit => install virtualbox => (2) install debian9 64 bit console linux => (3) install VM win 7 32 bit

I use realvnc to install (3) VM win7 32 bit without any error. I even can install some applications to this VM win 7 and run them well.


(1) Host Win7: 192.168.1.12 (static)
(2) VM debian9: 192.168.1.132 (bridge dhcp)
(3) VM win7: 10.0.2.2 (NAT)

Problems happens:
(a) My Win7 Host is 64 bit, and I can install debian9 64 bit VM, but when I tried to use virtualbox inside debian9, I can only see 32 bit install OS list. No 64 bit item showed up.
Does debian9 need to do any kind of setting/patch adjustment to make virtualbox show 64 bit OS installation list ?

(b) while I change debian9 ip from 192.168.1.132 (dhcp) to 192.168.1.210 (static), debian9 still goes well, but (3) vm win7 can no longer use realvnc to connect any more, even I switching back to dhcp again. Somehow the stable state is broken forever. I can still see phpvirtualbox vm win7 is start up and running on right corner in a very small preview window, but realvnc remote desktop is out. this win 7 vm is dead, no connection from outside although it still is running.

any idea or help here?

-neo

[BillG]

That is called nested virtualization and it is not supported. If it works, that is fine but if you have problems, there is not much that can be done.

[andyp73]

(a) My Win7 Host is 64 bit, and I can install debian9 64 bit VM, but when I tried to use virtualbox inside debian9, I can only see 32 bit install OS list. No 64 bit item showed up.
Does debian9 need to do any kind of setting/patch adjustment to make virtualbox show 64 bit OS installation list ?

This is called Nested Virtualization which was a new feature introduced in VirtualBox v6.0.0. Currently (as of writing and v6.0.2) it is only supported on a subset of AMD processors. If you don't have an appropriate AMD CPU or have an Intel CPU then the AMD-V/VT-x can't be passed through and all you will have are 32bit guests.

(b) while I change debian9 ip from 192.168.1.132 (dhcp) to 192.168.1.210 (static), debian9 still goes well, but (3) vm win7 can no longer use realvnc to connect any more, even I switching back to dhcp again

Start at a lower level and make sure that you can ping each of the machines. If you set static IP addresses then you probably also have to manually specify DNS and routing manually too.

Why do you need the VMs nested this way anyway?

-Andy.

[Saeba]

The reason is that we want to deploy a VM (dVM) to remote site, but end user doesn't want to provide any other machine to allow us to do dVM monitor. For engineering point of view, we need to make sure this dVM functionally stable, the only way to do it is put a nested VM (nVM) inside this dVM. By doing this we can remote desktop login to that nVM and use DOS or some tools installed inside nVM to monitor dVM healthy status.

Anyway, we still need this function work well to make sure our functions inside dVM stable.

so, if anyone can help, please speak out.

debian9 (VM) is working find. can ping to 192.168.1.1 no problem, and can nslookup google.com no problem. Windows 7 Host can ping 192.168.1.210 also, which means debian9 and Windows 7 Host can see each other without error. My network interface is as follow.

Code: Select all

# Include additional interface stanzas.
source-directory interfaces.d

# The loopback network interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

# enp0s3 network interface
auto enp0s3
allow-hotplug enp0s3
iface enp0s3 inet static
    address 192.168.1.210
    gateway 192.168.1.1
    netmask 255.255.255.0
    dns-nameservers 8.8.8.8
    pre-down ethtool -s $IFACE wol g
iface enp0s3 inet6 manual
    pre-down ip -6 addr flush dev $IFACE

[socratis]

You didn't do one or two important things: tells us your CPU, and/or include a ZIPPED VBox.log from the VM.

[Saeba]

CPU: Intel i7 core 4 (BIOS Virtulization is enabled)
RAM: 32GB
HDD: 2T
Host OS: Windows 7 64 bit

Zipped Vbox.log. where is it located, please tell me. I can upload that. Is that this one ?

/var/lib/vbox/.config/VirtualBox/VBoxSVC.log

[ModEdit: Large copy/paste chunk of text removed]

The only thing I did is to change dhcp (192.168.1.132) to static ip (192.168.1.210). After that, I cannot use realvnc to login VM Windows 7 any more. Switching back to dhcp still not working.

[Saeba]

This file for VM Windows 7 32 bit is too big. I cut that into two pieces.

[ModEdit: Large copy/paste chunk of text removed]

[socratis]

include a ZIPPED VBox.log from the VM.

[Saeba]

Vbox.zip uploaded. Please check.

please help.