Virtualbox on a VMware guest

[jamesdean]

I know, the following sounds a bit weired, but this is what I am trying to do: Setting up a Windows XP Guest on a Virtualbox 2.2.2 Host on a Red Hat EL 5.1 VMware guest. That means Virtualbox is running on RHEL. This RHEL linux host itself is a VMware guest. I have choosen this approach because of the lack of time and the lack of hardware.

The installation of Virtualbox was successful. But when I am trying to install a Windows XP SP3 guest (mounted ISO image on Virtualbox VM) it is failing at the beginning of the setup routine, during the blue Windows Setup page when all the devices are being read.
Virtualbox is crashing with a Guru Meditation "Guru Meditation -2403 (VERR_TRPM_DONT_PANIC)".
I have already tried to disable all the hardware stuff (audio, usb, etc.) but the installation is still failing.

I assume using Virtualbox on a VMware guest (RHEL) will not work for a proper installation of Virtualbox guests.
Does anyone have experience with things like that?

[Sasquatch]

Nested virtualization is not working. A guest inside a Guest won't work. Same reason VB can't run on Xen or any other hypervisor.

What do you mean by 'lack of hardware'? You know that you can run VB at the same time as VMWare, as long as you use software virtualization, and not hardware (enable VT-x/AMD-V). You only need to keep an eye on your resources. Please don't come here stating that a VMWare guest can't run at the same time as a VB Guest, as it's not tested. It might not work.

[jamesdean]

According to ..

Please don't come here stating that a VMWare guest can't run at the same time as a VB Guest, as it's not tested. It might not work.

.. the only thing I stated was an assumption.

Anyway, thnx for the information that guest inside a guest will not work.

For further information, here in my environment I am not able to install VB besides VMware because the VMware installation I am referring to is an ESX farm, where I am not allowed to install anything else. Furthermore I assume VB might not run on the ESX OS.

I now gonna try to get a piece of hardware where I can install native RHEL as host OS for VB.

[mevans]

I ran into a similar situation. We are evaluating vmware ESXi for guest host versioning and configuration management to test compatibility with a tool bundle offering. Part of the tool bundle installation relies on the latest virtual box installation running an emulator guest. This is where I see the same error when trying to run a virtual box emulator OS on a vmware ubuntu guest. Since we have not made investment in Vmware ESXi yet, I was wondering if running a virtualbox guest OS within a virtual box guest would present any problems? An end-to-end virtual box solution would be attractive and certainly the right price.

[Perryg]

Same thing applies. You can not run a Virtual guest inside a virtual guest with host installed. You can however run more than one virtual host in the same computer as long as they are 32 bit. They can not be hardware-v aware and try to hook into the processor together. Bad things will happen.