Shared VirtualBox

[bobzbobz]

Hi

We are an educational institution, which needs to install some old programs on a virtual XP machine, for them to run.
The problem is that a lot of users will use the physical machine, each with their own credentials, but all need to use the same virtual machine.
The installation of VirtualBox needs to be silent since it will be installed by a remote server.

For now i have successfully installed the program:

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msiexec /i virtualbox.msi /qb!

Disabled Auto Update (since we will administer updates):

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VBoxManage setextradata global GUI/UpdateDate never

Imported the virtual machine disk to a folder which all users can access:

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VBoxManage import VirtualXP.ova --vsys 0 --unit 11 --disk "C:\VMs"

But how do I change the "Default Machine Folder" for ALL USERS?

I have tried:

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vboxmanage setproperty machinefolder "C:\VMs"

but it is only done for the current user...

I hope you get what I am trying to do - if not, then tell me what data you need.

Best Regards,
Soren

[noteirak]

I think you explained very well what you are trying to achieve, but this is simply not supported by Virtualbox - it actually go AGAINST the design of Virtualbox.
The only alternative I can think of is either logging as a technical user to only run the VM, or to do a "runas", but you might encountrer some profile issue and I don't think is supported.

[mpack]

The silent install is IMHO a problem too: VirtualBox includes device drivers, so I would have thought a silent install of those is out of the question on a Windows host.

Other than that, provided multiple users are not accessing it at the same time, I know of no reason why the VM can't be accessed by multiple users at different times.

The VM would however need to be registered (Machine|Add) separately for each user. Incidentally the main file in the VM is the .vbox file. Yet again I detect an incorrect assumption that the disk is the only important VM file, even though VMs can have multiple disks.

[noteirak]

If several users run the same VM, you'll run into permissions issues most likely. It is technically possible, but definitly not the design of it.
We already had few cases on the forum about this - it WILL cause issues on Linux host, where it MIGHT cause issue on Windows host.

[bobzbobz]

The silent install is IMHO a problem too: VirtualBox includes device drivers, so I would have thought a silent install of those is out of the question on a Windows host.

Forgot to explain that part.

I installed VirtualBox on a client, where i acceptet all of the devices from "Oracle".
Then i exported the certificate, and set it to install before VirtualBox on all the other clients.