Using Windows Bootcamp Partition with VirtualBox?

[sofianito]

Sorry for that, I didn't try to boot directly through bootcamp. Regarding VBox guest additions, I didn't have problem installing it. I had to uninstall VMWare tools before.

Cheers.

[Jesus I]

I've seen there is some progress, but still not a successful solution. Any progress?

Greetings.

[jtalarico]

can this work the opposite way? can a XP image created in virtualbox be booted from bootcamp?

I'm in the same boat. I'd love to be able to take a VB VM and essentially convert it into a boot camp partition. I'd hate to go through the hassle of reinstalling the OS and getting it configured. I'm not even concerned about it being flexible enough to boot via VB afterward. Is there a way to do this?

[Jesus I]

Hey, check this out:

http://dashes.com/anil/2009/10/how-to-r ... -free.html

[Spike]

I've managed to get my Windows XP Boot Camp partition to operate within VirtualBox using a combination of tips found here and elsewhere. The key elements are

• 1. Using VMWare Fusion to create proper VMDK files since VB is inadequate to the task.
  2. Using "VBoxManage setextradata ..." to set BIOS info in the guest so the Windows activation isn't broken, along with
  3. Setting the MAC correctly on the guest network interfaces.

But no matter what I do, performance is pretty lousy. It takes a long time to boot, and the guest OS is pretty slow. I've tried a bunch of things: processor, video, and memory settings in VB, disabling the swap file in the guest, you name it. Via Activity Monitor I'm able to tell that VB is chugging away consuming cpu cycles on my machine but the guest OS isn't getting much of that activity. So I'm unable to determine which processes are the speed limiters.

Does anyone have suggestions for improving performance, and/or can you point me to methods for process monitoring that can tell me what's going on, both in the host (OS X) and in the guest (XP)?

[JimBushWhack]

> Does anyone have suggestions for improving performance, and/or can you point me to methods for process monitoring that can tell me what's going on, both in the host (OS X) and in the guest (XP)?
> Spike

From the host MacOS side, you could go into the FreeBSD Unix underpinnings via terminal and type in "top". This will give you cpu/memory and process usage statistics and show the most heavily used processes. From the XP guest, you should be able to get into the task monitor, assuming that your XP guest is completely booted up, via Ctrl, alt, delete.

[Spike]

From the host MacOS side, you could go into the FreeBSD Unix underpinnings via terminal and type in "top". This will give you cpu/memory and process usage statistics and show the most heavily used processes. From the XP guest, you should be able to get into the task monitor, assuming that your XP guest is completely booted up, via Ctrl, alt, delete.

Thanks for the reply. I've already done both of these things and found that on the Mac OS X side, "VirtualBox VM" pegs at about 100%, and on the Windows XP side the Windows Task Manager CPU bars are also pegged at 100%. There are number of processes (explorer.exe, some AVG services) that hop around at the top of the CPU usage list.

None of this leads me to a culprit, however. I'd like to know why this setup works well under Boot Camp but not under VirtualBox. If there are Boot Camp extensions that conflict with VB extensions, for example, I'd like to know. What other conflicts could there be, and how can I find out?

[breusshe]

Hey, folks;

The problem is that you must start a windows guest that has a raw disk partition being stubbed through a vmdk file as root. It has to do with how a true installation of Windows provides file ownership and how Linux works within that limitation. I know, I know... you're using a Mac. But, Mac's are nothing but highly vulnerable versions of FreeBSD linux setups anymore. Therefore, this also applies to you. Personally, I changed my .desktop startup file for Virtualbox so the commad was "gksudo virtualbox". This way, when I start VBox, I get prompted for my password and then VBox starts as root. I'm sure you Mac folks have something similar to gksudo, if not, sudo works just as well.

Brett Ussher

[Spike]

Hey, folks;

The problem is that you must start a windows guest that has a raw disk partition being stubbed through a vmdk file as root. It has to do with how a true installation of Windows provides file ownership and how Linux works within that limitation. I know, I know... you're using a Mac. But, Mac's are nothing but highly vulnerable versions of FreeBSD linux setups anymore. Therefore, this also applies to you. Personally, I changed my .desktop startup file for Virtualbox so the commad was "gksudo virtualbox". This way, when I start VBox, I get prompted for my password and then VBox starts as root. I'm sure you Mac folks have something similar to gksudo, if not, sudo works just as well.

Brett Ussher

1. You're wrong because even Parallels has managed to create a Boot Camp-booting virtual environment that works reasonably well within the same general context. You enter Administrator privileges to give yourself access to the Boot Camp drive, and you're off running with minimal performance penalty. VB is way behind in performance in comparison.
2. You're also wrong because I've tried running VB logged in as root. Same sluggish performance.
3. And you're even more wrong for purporting to know what the cause of the problem is when you obviously know so little about Macs. Please keep your suggestions and editorial comments out of the Mac OS X Host forum unless you have something useful to contribute.

[breusshe]

1. You're wrong because even Parallels has managed to create a Boot Camp-booting virtual environment that works reasonably well within the same general context. You enter Administrator privileges to give yourself access to the Boot Camp drive, and you're off running with minimal performance penalty. VB is way behind in performance in comparison.
2. You're also wrong because I've tried running VB logged in as root. Same sluggish performance.
3. And you're even more wrong for purporting to know what the cause of the problem is when you obviously know so little about Macs. Please keep your suggestions and editorial comments out of the Mac OS X Host forum unless you have something useful to contribute.

1. I'm right. I stated you needed to run as root. That's administrative privileges. Same thing. Macs use a hacked version of sudo to accomplish this. Once again, same thing.

2. As far as performance, yup, misread the post. Have you tried installing the VB client tools? I've noticed in the past (with both windows and linux hosts) that the client tools go a long ways to help with sluggish performance. No idea why, but it does make a big difference.

3. I'm not sure how you can say I know so little about Macs. I've been working with them since... well, since they came out back in the 80's. If you are referencing to my comment that Mac computers are just highly vulnerable versions of FreeBSD, well, I guess you should consider a recent competition between hackers. It only took 20 seconds to gain root access to a Mac. Hell, it even took Windows an hour to get that completely owned. I like Macs. I just don't like them on my network. Never have, doubt I ever will. But, great desktop publishing tools. Just gotta make sure they are completely segregated from the rest of the network.

Brett Ussher

[rpmurray]

3. I'm not sure how you can say I know so little about Macs. I've been working with them since... well, since they came out back in the 80's. If you are referencing to my comment that Mac computers are just highly vulnerable versions of FreeBSD, well, I guess you should consider a recent competition between hackers. It only took 20 seconds to gain root access to a Mac. Hell, it even took Windows an hour to get that completely owned. I like Macs. I just don't like them on my network. Never have, doubt I ever will. But, great desktop publishing tools. Just gotta make sure they are completely segregated from the rest of the network.

Sorry, guy, but this speaks volumes about how much you know about Macs. In the recent competition, none of the OSes themselves were hacked. The hack actually involved a vulnerability in Safari. But The under 10 seconds thing was only achieved because Miller simply provided a URL that took the user to the site where the exploit code he'd set up in advance was hosted. So it wasn't because of a "highly vulnerable version of FreeBSD". Sorry to burst your ego.

[breusshe]

Sorry, guy, but this speaks volumes about how much you know about Macs. In the recent competition, none of the OSes themselves were hacked. The hack actually involved a vulnerability in Safari. But The under 10 seconds thing was only achieved because Miller simply provided a URL that took the user to the site where the exploit code he'd set up in advance was hosted. So it wasn't because of a "highly vulnerable version of FreeBSD". Sorry to burst your ego.

Yup. It was Safari. Doesn't change anything, just means it was the highly vulnerable and hacked version of Mozilla that Apple uses instead of the O/S itself. However, they both suffer from the same problem: Apple went too far in creating the appearance and feel of their Mac platform at the cost of kernel and application security. Everybody in the Linux community knows this. I'm sorry that Mac users can't accept it.

Brett Ussher

[Spike]

...Apple went too far in creating the appearance and feel of their Mac platform at the cost of kernel and application security. Everybody in the Linux community knows this. I'm sorry that Mac users can't accept it.
Brett Ussher

OK, are you finished now?

Logging in as root doesn't help. Installing the VB tools doesn't help.

Anybody else have a demonstrated solution to making a Boot Camp XP run *well* via VB? No irrelevant opinions, please.

[breusshe]

OK, are you finished now?

Yeah, I've made my point. Have fun!

Brett Ussher

[reido]

This is the reply I posted here http://dashes.com/anil/2009/10/how-to-r ... ts-content
Here is what I did. Thanks to Anil and all of the posters (Anil's blog). This is merely a modified, copy pasted-thanks, and compiled version of what everyone has said already (Anil's Blog). So, to get VirtualBox to run my BootCamp’ed Windows 7 in OSX10.6, this is what I did.
In terminal, type these three commands (I just copy pasted them, except the 3rd one)…
First:
sudo chmod 777 /dev/disk0s3
Second:
sudo VBoxManage internalcommands createrawvmdk -rawdisk /dev/disk0 -filename win7raw.vmdk -partitions 3
Doing so will create two files in your home directory called win7raw.vmdk and win7raw-pt.vmdk. Because the second command is run via sudo, the two files created will be owned by root user. Perform the following command to change the ownership:
Third
sudo chown yourusernamehere win7raw.vmdk win7raw-pt.vmdk
After that you can proceed to run “VirtualBox”. In “VirtualBox”, start it up, and create a “new” virtual machine. On about the 3rd “Next>” click, click “use existing hard disk” and then browse, click “add” then under “yourusername” there is the file, “win7raw.vmdk”, select it and then click “open” then “select”. Finish “Create New Virtual Machine” setup. Your machine should be in that window, in the “Sun VirtualBox”, with whatever name you called it. Start your machine by double clicking it, or by selecting it and clicking “Start”. If you run your virtual computer and get the blue screen of death, then in the main “Sun VirtualBox” pane, select your new machine, select the “Details” section (if its not already), click on “Storage” and change the “IDE Controller” to “ICH6”. This got me running. I am running OSX10.6 as a host, and Win7 as a guest. Both are 64 Bit. Thanks to everyone who helped with this! I wrote this simple because this was my first time doing this, and I had to learn all of this as I went through it.