Virtualbox OSE for Debian

Table of Contents

1. Different versions
2. How to provide networking to virtual machines
2.1. Mechanism
2.2. Host interface configuration
3. Incompatibilities with previous versions
4. See also

1. Different versions

The Open Source Edition of VirtualBox contains most but not all features of the closed-source VirtualBox product that is distributed under different terms and available from the Virtualbox homepage.

  • Remote Display Protocol (RDP) Server

    This component implements a complete RDP server on top of the virtual hardware and allows users to connect to a virtual machine remotely using any RDP compatible client.

  • USB support

    VirtualBox implements a virtual USB controller and supports passing through USB 1.1 and USB 2.0 devices to virtual machines.

  • USB over RDP

    This is a combination of the RDP server and USB support allowing users to make USB devices available to virtual machines running remotely.

  • iSCSI initiator

    VirtualBox contains a builtin iSCSI initiator making it possible to use iSCSI targets as virtual disks without the guest requiring support for iSCSI.

  • Emulation for Intel e1000 network devices

2. How to provide networking to virtual machines

2.1. Mechanism

VirtualBox can use three alternative mechanisms to provide Ethernet networking to its virtual machines:b

2.1.1. NAT

This is the easiest to use type of setup: The virtual ethernet interface is connected to a virtual NAT router including a DHCP server that is implemented within the VirtualBox host software.

This is the default mode. It usually does not require any extra configuration on the host.

2.1.2. Internal network

In this mode, there is only connectivity within an emulated network shared between two or more virtual machines running in the same VirtualBox instance.

2.1.3. Host interface

The virtual ethernet interface is connected to a TAP device on the host. Adding this TAP device to a bridging or IP routing setup is the responsibility of the user.

2.2. Host interface configuration

By attaching the VM's interface to "Host Interface" and creating a corresponding TAP interface the VM can be made visible on the local network.

2.2.1. Using VBoxAddIF

The VirtualBox includes a helper script, VBoxAddIF that sets up a TAP device for a specified user and optionally connects it to a bridge. This needs to be done only once for a particular user. Settings for all defined interfaces are stored in the file /etc/vbox/interfaces and created by the /etc/init.d/virtualbox-ose init script whenever the host system is booted.

Figure 1. Sample commandlines for permanently setting up TAP interface

# VBoxAddIF vbox0 luser1 br0
# VBoxAddIF vbox1 luser2


These interfaces can be removed using the VBoxDeleteIF command.

You can of course create multiple interfaces per user, but interfaces must have unique names.

2.2.2. ifup / ifdown

Starting with version 1.5.6-3, the virtualbox-ose package contains helper scripts that allow TAP interfaces for host-based networking to be configured from /etc/network/interfaces. The names for such interfaces must start with vbox. The owner for this interface can be set using the virtualbox-user keyword.

Figure 2. Configuration of TAP interface for VirtualBox

iface vbox0 inet static
	address 192.168.3.1
	netmask 255.255.255.0
	virtualbox-user luser


3. Incompatibilities with previous versions

Unfortunately, the configuration files between version version 1.4.0-svn4130 and 1.5.0 the configuration files are incompatible. In order to fix this issue please delete the complete <Uart> section in any ~/.VirtualBox/Machines/NAME/NAME.xml files.

4. See also

Additional and updated information may be found on