virtualbox.org

A high level question:
Is there an easy way to run your own application in an virtualbox machine on a user computer which doesn't have virtualbox installed?

My program needs to compile and run untrusted source code. In a bad case this code could delete all files on the harddisk. In a virtualbox machine this action only runes the virtual disk and not the user computer.

I can create a virtualbox machine file on my own computer running my application.

I can instruct my users to manually install virtualbox and my machine file and run it. But i rather want it all in one installable package.

Is such installable package allowed license wise (i'm not using Extension Pack) and is there a manual/instructions on how to create such installable package?
(no need for exact steps, high level is more than enough, i can figure out the exact steps)

You should take a look at "Portable VirtualBox". It's as close to what you're asking as possible. Mind you, VirtualBox will always require to be installed, with Administrator privileges mind you (just read the "Note" in their website). You can't have kernel drivers installed without installation and without administrator access. Which (in my opinion) defeats the whole purpose of portable VirtualBox.

Just a note on this ,for completion, we do not support "Portable VirtualBox" if you go that route.

Cheers @socratis and @Perryg , i took a peek at Portable VirtualBox and became a bit confused when i first ran it. I won't complain, but when i get confused my users will also likely be more confused. Looking at the source code i noticed it used automation tool to automate installation of virtualbox.

This reminded me of automatic installations and i did a search and found msiexec. After a bit a browsing through docs i found out that i can generate a msi from the virtualbox installation file. This msi file can be run with msiexec in quiet mode. This results in virtualbox being installed without any need for user input.

Although i did get a few popups to install drivers.

I suspect i can automate the download of virtualbox install file. Automate the extraction of the msi file, run the msiexec tool. After installation copy my virtualbox machine file to the virtualbox machine directory, next run virtualbox program.

With the api i can run the virtualbox machine.

What do you think will this work?

Network configuration of the virtualbox machine is still something i have to look at.

Moved to "Using VirtualBox" for the lack of better place (but API was clearly not)