Installing VirtualBox on VMWare Virtual Linux

FredJones · Post by **FredJones** » 28. May 2008, 10:08

I run Win 2000 and I therefore can't find any version of VBox to install on my machine. So I made an Ubuntu guest via VMWare and tried to install VBox there, but it fails.

Details of the errors and steps I tried to fix it are here http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=5054763

Does anyone know if this is possible to do? Install VBox on a virtual Linux? It doesn't have to be Ubuntu--any distro (or even BSD) is fine with me.

Thanks.

Post by **TerryE** » 28. May 2008, 10:29

All the mainstream VMs use JiT binary translation of the guest code to implement virtualisation. Very few use the hardware assistance offered by the latest 64-bit chips. BT usually perform better anyway with the current generation of chip architectures. You typically pay about a 5% performance hit for user mode code. This can be over 30% for executing typical Ring 0 code such as the OS and drivers. A VM environment is a pretty extreme type of Ring 0 case. I have seen examples both of MSVS and VMware where a guest is itself acting as a host to second guest. So these can work, BUT the second guest runs like a drain (I can't remember exactly how slow but it was something like 5x slower).

So my advice is if you need to run Ubuntu as a VM under Win2K then choose a virtualisation product which supports this probably. I think that you are stuck with VMware for this one.

MaTrIx-X · Post by **MaTrIx-X** » 28. May 2008, 10:44

Curious..did you actually try to run VirtualBox (XP version) on Windows 2000 yet?

FredJones · Post by **FredJones** » 28. May 2008, 10:55

Yes, I tried to install--the installer says that it won't work on less than XP and it won't install.

The issue is not running Ubuntu--I have that. I want to open a VirtualBox machine that someone gave me. I therefore must install VirtualBox on this PC, but it runs Win 2K. Qemo or whatever it is seems like the Windows port is dead, all I can find (for free) is VMWare to run a virtual Linux, but it doesn't (yet) seem to work...

Post by **TerryE** » 28. May 2008, 11:10

It does seem to me that trying to run a VirtualBox VM inside a WMware VM inside W2K is a particularly masochistic approach to this. You will waste days on trying to get this to work, and even if you do then the guest+guest OS and applications will be pretty unusable.

Don't you have access to a native WinXP or Linux host PC? W2K isn't even supported by MS now.

FredJones · Post by **FredJones** » 28. May 2008, 11:15

TerryE wrote:It does seem to me that trying to run a VirtualBox VM inside a WMware VM inside W2K is a particularly masochistic approach to this.

LOL. I can not disagree actually.

TerryE wrote: You will waste days on trying to get this to work, and even if you do then the guest+guest OS and applications will be pretty unusable.

Don't you have access to a native WinXP or Linux host PC? W2K isn't even supported by MS now.

I will never upgrade--the other Windows are terrible. I hope to use Linux natively one day, but not yet. Anyway, yes I could install a native Ubuntu--I only wanted to extract some files from the VBox I got and it would have been easier to just run VB in my virtual Ubu, but if it can't be done, then OK.