Building VirtualBox 7.0.x on Linux-x86 (32-bit i686)

[dan_dare]

I'm trying to build VirtualBox 7.0 Open Source from sources taken from the official download page.

I need a 32-bit version for Debian 32-bit, and since there are no 32-bit binaries officially available I decided to build from source.

So far I tried building versions 7.0.0 and 7.0.6, with the same result each time: the frontend binaries do not get built.

Actually most of the executable files are missing from the "out/linux.x86/release/bin/" directory, which has the following content:

additions/
testcase/
tools/
bldRTLdrCheckImports
VBoxAudioTest
VBoxDDU,so
VBoxEFI32,fd
VBoxEFI64,fd
vbox-img
VBoxNetDHCP
VBoxRT,so

(sorry, I had to replace dots with commas in order for the post to go through... it thinks those are URLs !!!)
As far as I can tell from the configure / compilation output, there are no errors, building ends successfully.

I would like to know if this is the intended behaviour or if maybe I'm missing something.
I'm attaching the console output from the ./configure and kmk commands.

The command used for ./configure is:

./configure --disable-hardening --with-qt-dir=/opt/Qt-5.9.2

and the commands (two of them) used for building are:

kmk all
kmk packing

[klaus]

The 32-bit support in VirtualBox is gone for many years (last version which officially had 32-bit host OS support was 5.2.x which had its last release almost 5 years ago). I wouldn't expect it is buildable in any supported version.

[vbx18]

I also tried to build a 32 bit version for Slackware 15_32 bit unsuccessfully.

As an alternative, would it be possible to run the old 5.2 version with the Linux kernel 5?
I tried to do that as well but it asks for kernel headers. That's an unknown world to me.

[klaus]

Can someone clearly explain why virtualization software (which makes most sense with CPUs less than 10 years old - all of which are 64-bit ones!) must be working on a 32-bit OS which is severely limiting memory size and so on?

You can run 32-bit OSes inside the VM(s)...

That said - in the changelog for VirtualBox 5.2.40 there's mention of support for Linux kernel 5.6. The Slackware 15.0 release notes claim that it uses kernel 5.15.19 which won't work with any VirtualBox 5.x.

[vbx18]

Thank you Mr Klaus for your reply.

Among the reasons for using 32 bit PCs I consider at least the following:

- Millions of people in developing countries still use 32 PCs, and they are not just "poor" users: they are a market.
- Passion for old stuffs, exactly like who restore old cars. Running an old Windows version (e.g. 2000 and earlier) on an old PC may be somehow useful. With time, tons of valid software have been abandoned while could still work effectively.

[klaus]

If it were a market (for VirtualBox) then the customer demand wasn't noticeable. For the VirtualBox dev team there would be only the cost of keeping another complicated code path working. We already supported 32-bit host OSes for several years longer than anyone else doing desktop virtualization on AMD or Intel CPUs (besides QEMU which has deprecated it about 2 years ago).