virtualbox.org

This is a question pertaining to server consolidation using Virtualbox.

Is it possible to have two installations of Virtualbox on a single host?

Why do this? Upgrade fears on servers! It would be nice to install a new Virtualbox version and just try one test guest to see if it works. OK, it seems work, reboot another guest under the new Virtualbox installation, etc.

It seems prudent to move multiple guests to a new Virtualbox version one at a time. Is this possible? (It is easy with Qemu...)


Thanks,

-kb

Sadly not. On Windows VBox uses COM and looks up the VirtualBox.VirtualBox COM resource. Likewise on Linux all the key drivers do not embed version numbers in their names. So you'd really need to run the different versions in different VMs. Bugger, you can't do that either!!

It's only possible when you reinstall the drivers and reregister the COM components every time you switch the version. Depending on which versions you try, you might also run into configuration file incompatibilities. (when going from a newer to an older version of VBox)

I am running Virtualbox on a Linux (Ubuntu) host and am willing to do some hacking if it isn't too ugly.

For example, might I stick to the open source version and pass some magic environment variable to the compile? Think about it: Are the developers who work on Virtualbox not able to easily switch between versions when chasing some bug?


Thanks,

-kb, the Kent who really doesn't want to have to reboot every guest, all at once, into a new Virtualbox version and *hope* they will all be happy.

You have four issues to address

• Making pathing to binaries, shares, .VirtualBox hierarchy, etc. version relative
• The TAP device driver is version specific
• The XPCOM implementation and socket
• Host/guest interoperabilty

But if you have access to the source, you can do what you are capable of doing.