%all.entities; ]> As installation of &product-name; varies depending on your host operating system, the following sections provide installation instructions for Windows, macOS, Linux, and Oracle Solaris. For the various versions of Windows that are supported as host operating systems, please refer to . In addition, Windows Installer must be present on your system. This should be the case for all supported Windows platforms. The &product-name; installation can be started in either of the following ways: By double-clicking on the executable file. By entering the following command: VirtualBox-<version>-<revision>-Win.exe -extract This will extract the installer into a temporary directory, along with the .MSI file. Run the following command to perform the installation: msiexec /i VirtualBox-<version>-<revision>-Win.msi Using either way displays the installation Welcome dialog and enables you to choose where to install &product-name;, and which components to install. In addition to the &product-name; application, the following components are available: USB support. This package contains special drivers for your Windows host that &product-name; requires to fully support USB devices inside your virtual machines. Networking. This package contains extra networking drivers for your Windows host that &product-name; needs to support Bridged Networking. This enables your VM's virtual network cards to be accessed from other machines on your physical network. Python support. This package contains Python scripting support for the &product-name; API, see . For this to work, an already working Windows Python installation on the system is required. See, for example: . Python version at least 2.6 is required. Python 3 is also supported. Depending on your Windows configuration, you may see warnings about unsigned drivers, or similar. Click Continue for these warnings, as otherwise &product-name; might not function correctly after installation. The installer will create an &product-name; group in the Windows Start menu, which enables you to launch the application and access its documentation. With standard settings, &product-name; will be installed for all users on the local system. If this is not wanted, you must invoke the installer by first extracting as follows: VirtualBox.exe -extract Then, run either of the following commands on the extracted .MSI file. This will install &product-name; only for the current user. VirtualBox.exe -msiparams ALLUSERS=2 msiexec /i VirtualBox-<version>-Win.msi ALLUSERS=2 If you do not want to install all features of &product-name;, you can set the optional ADDLOCAL parameter to explicitly name the features to be installed. The following features are available: VBoxApplication Main binaries of &product-name;. This feature must not be absent, since it contains the minimum set of files to have working &product-name; installation. VBoxUSB USB support. VBoxNetwork All networking support. This includes the VBoxNetworkFlt and VBoxNetworkAdp features. VBoxNetworkFlt Bridged networking support. VBoxNetworkAdp Host-only networking support VBoxPython Python support For example, to only install USB support along with the main binaries, run either of the following commands: VirtualBox.exe -msiparams ADDLOCAL=VBoxApplication,VBoxUSB msiexec /i VirtualBox-<version>-Win.msi ADDLOCAL=VBoxApplication,VBoxUSB The user is able to choose between NDIS5 and NDIS6 host network filter drivers during the installation. This is done using a command line parameter, NETWORKTYPE. The NDIS6 driver is the default for most supported Windows hosts. For some legacy Windows versions, the installer will automatically select the NDIS5 driver and this cannot be changed. You can force an install of the legacy NDIS5 host network filter driver by specifying NETWORKTYPE=NDIS5. For example, to install the NDIS5 driver on Windows 7 use either of the following commands: VirtualBox.exe -msiparams NETWORKTYPE=NDIS5 msiexec /i VirtualBox-<version>-Win;.msi NETWORKTYPE=NDIS5 As &product-name; uses the standard Microsoft Windows installer, &product-name; can be safely uninstalled at any time. Click the program entry in the Add/Remove Programs list in the Windows Control Panel. Unattended installations can be performed using the standard MSI support. Public properties can be specified with the MSI API, to control additional behavior and features of the Windows host installer. Use either of the following commands: VirtualBox.exe -msiparams NAME=VALUE [...] msiexec /i VirtualBox-<version>-Win.msi NAME=VALUE [...] The following public properties are available. VBOX_INSTALLDESKTOPSHORTCUT Specifies whether or not an &product-name; icon on the desktop should be created. Set to 1 to enable, 0 to disable. Default is 1. VBOX_INSTALLQUICKLAUNCHSHORTCUT Specifies whether or not an &product-name; icon in the Quick Launch Bar should be created. Set to 1 to enable, 0 to disable. Default is 1. VBOX_REGISTERFILEEXTENSIONS Specifies whether or not the file extensions .vbox, .vbox-extpack, .ovf, .ova, .vdi, .vmdk, .vhd and .vdd should be associated with &product-name;. Files of these types then will be opened with &product-name;. Set to 1 to enable, 0 to disable. Default is 1. VBOX_START Specifies whether to start &product-name; right after successful installation. Set to 1 to enable, 0 to disable. Default is 1. For macOS hosts, &product-name; ships in a dmg disk image file. Perform the following steps to install on a macOS host: Double-click on the dmg file, to mount the contents. A window opens, prompting you to double-click on the VirtualBox.pkg installer file displayed in that window. This starts the installer, which enables you to select where to install &product-name;. An &product-name; icon is added to the Applications folder in the Finder. To uninstall &product-name;, open the disk image dmg file and double-click on the uninstall icon shown. To perform a non-interactive installation of &product-name; you can use the command line version of the installer application. Mount the dmg disk image file, as described in the installation procedure, or use the following command line: hdiutil attach /path/to/VirtualBox-xyz.dmg Open a terminal session and run the following command: sudo installer -pkg /Volumes/VirtualBox/VirtualBox.pkg -target /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD For the various versions of Linux that are supported as host operating systems, see . You may need to install the following packages on your Linux system before starting the installation. Some systems will do this for you automatically when you install &product-name;. Qt 5.3.2 or later. Qt 5.6.2 or later is recommended. SDL 1.2.7 or later. This graphics library is typically called libsdl or similar. These packages are only required if you want to run the &product-name; graphical user interfaces. In particular, VirtualBox, the graphical VirtualBox Manager, requires both Qt and SDL. If you only want to run VBoxHeadless, neither Qt nor SDL are required. In order to run other operating systems in virtual machines alongside your main operating system, &product-name; needs to integrate very tightly with your system. To do this it installs a driver module called vboxdrv into the system kernel. The kernel is the part of the operating system which controls your processor and physical hardware. Without this kernel module, you can still use &vbox-mgr; to configure virtual machines, but they will not start. Network drivers called vboxnetflt and vboxnetadp are also installed. They enable virtual machines to make more use of your computer's network capabilities and are needed for any virtual machine networking beyond the basic NAT mode. Since distributing driver modules separately from the kernel is not something which Linux supports well, the &product-name; install process creates the modules on the system where they will be used. This means that you may need to install some software packages from the distribution which are needed for the build process. Required packages may include the following: GNU compiler (GCC) GNU Make (make) Kernel header files Also ensure that all system updates have been installed and that your system is running the most up-to-date kernel for the distribution. The running kernel and the kernel header files must be updated to matching versions. The following list includes some details of the required files for some common distributions. Start by finding the version name of your kernel, using the command uname -r in a terminal. The list assumes that you have not changed too much from the original installation, in particular that you have not installed a different kernel type. With Debian and Ubuntu-based distributions, you must install the correct version of the linux-headers, usually whichever of linux-headers-generic, linux-headers-amd64, linux-headers-i686 or linux-headers-i686-pae best matches the kernel version name. Also, the linux-kbuild package if it exists. Basic Ubuntu releases should have the correct packages installed by default. On Fedora, Red Hat, Oracle Linux and many other RPM-based systems, the kernel version sometimes has a code of letters or a word close to the end of the version name. For example "uek" for the Oracle Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel or "default" or "desktop" for the standard kernels. In this case, the package name is kernel-uek-devel or equivalent. If there is no such code, it is usually kernel-devel. On some SUSE and openSUSE Linux versions, you may need to install the kernel-source and kernel-syms packages. If you suspect that something has gone wrong with module installation, check that your system is set up as described above and try running the following command, as root: rcvboxdrv setup If you are running on a system using UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) Secure Boot, you may need to sign the following kernel modules before you can load them: vboxdrv vboxnetadp vboxnetflt vboxpci See your system documentation for details of the kernel module signing process. &product-name; is available in a number of package formats native to various common Linux distributions. See . In addition, there is an alternative generic installer (.run) which you can use on supported Linux distributions. Download the appropriate package for your distribution. The following example assumes that you are installing to a 64-bit Ubuntu Xenial system. Use dpkg to install the Debian package,as follows: sudo dpkg -i virtualbox-version-number_Ubuntu_xenial_amd64.deb The installer will also try to build kernel modules suitable for the current running kernel. If the build process is not successful you will be shown a warning and the package will be left unconfigured. Look at /var/log/vbox-install.log to find out why the compilation failed. You may have to install the appropriate Linux kernel headers, see . After correcting any problems, run the following command: sudo rcvboxdrv setup This will start a second attempt to build the module. If a suitable kernel module was found in the package or the module was successfully built, the installation script will attempt to load that module. If this fails, please see for further information. Once &product-name; has been successfully installed and configured, you can start it by clicking VirtualBox in your Start menu or from the command line. See . The alternative generic installer performs the following steps: Unpacks the application files to the target directory /opt/VirtualBox/, which cannot be changed. Builds and installs the &product-name; kernel modules: vboxdrv, vboxnetflt, and vboxnetadp. Creates /sbin/rcvboxdrv, an init script to start the &product-name; kernel module. Creates a new system group called vboxusers. Creates symbolic links in /usr/bin to a shell script /opt/VirtualBox/VBox which does some sanity checks and dispatches to the actual executables: VirtualBox, VBoxVRDP, VBoxHeadless and VBoxManage. Creates /etc/udev/rules.d/60-vboxdrv.rules, a description file for udev, if that is present, which makes the USB devices accessible to all users in the vboxusers group. Writes the installation directory to /etc/vbox/vbox.cfg. The installer must be executed as root with either install or uninstall as the first parameter. For example: sudo ./VirtualBox.run install Or if you do not have the sudo command available, run the following as root instead: ./VirtualBox.run install Add every user who needs to access USB devices from a VirtualBox guests to the group vboxusers. Either use the OS user management tools or run the following command as root: sudo usermod -a -G vboxusers username The usermod command of some older Linux distributions does not support the -a option, which adds the user to the given group without affecting membership of other groups. In this case, find out the current group memberships with the groups command and add all these groups in a comma-separated list to the command line after the -G option. For example: usermod -G group1,group2,vboxusers username. If you cannot use the shell script installer described in , you can perform a manual installation. Run the installer as follows: ./VirtualBox.run --keep --noexec This will unpack all the files needed for installation in the directory install under the current directory. The &product-name; application files are contained in VirtualBox.tar.bz2 which you can unpack to any directory on your system. For example: sudo mkdir /opt/VirtualBox sudo tar jxf ./install/VirtualBox.tar.bz2 -C /opt/VirtualBox To run the same example as root, use the following commands: mkdir /opt/VirtualBox tar jxf ./install/VirtualBox.tar.bz2 -C /opt/VirtualBox The sources for &product-name;'s kernel module are provided in the src directory. To build the module, change to the directory and use the following command: make If everything builds correctly, run the following command to install the module to the appropriate module directory: sudo make install In case you do not have sudo, switch the user account to root and run the following command: make install The &product-name; kernel module needs a device node to operate. The above make command will tell you how to create the device node, depending on your Linux system. The procedure is slightly different for a classical Linux setup with a /dev directory, a system with the now deprecated devfs and a modern Linux system with udev. On certain Linux distributions, you might experience difficulties building the module. You will have to analyze the error messages from the build system to diagnose the cause of the problems. In general, make sure that the correct Linux kernel sources are used for the build process. Note that the /dev/vboxdrv kernel module device node must be owned by root:root and must be read/writable only for the user. Next, you install the system initialization script for the kernel module and activate the initialization script using the right method for your distribution, as follows: cp /opt/VirtualBox/vboxdrv.sh /sbin/rcvboxdrv This example assumes you installed &product-name; to the /opt/VirtualBox directory. Create a configuration file for &product-name;, as follows: mkdir /etc/vbox echo INSTALL_DIR=/opt/VirtualBox > /etc/vbox/vbox.cfg Create the following symbolic links: ln -sf /opt/VirtualBox/VBox.sh /usr/bin/VirtualBox ln -sf /opt/VirtualBox/VBox.sh /usr/bin/VBoxManage ln -sf /opt/VirtualBox/VBox.sh /usr/bin/VBoxHeadless Before updating or uninstalling &product-name;, you must terminate any virtual machines which are currently running and exit the &product-name; or VBoxSVC applications. To update &product-name;, simply run the installer of the updated version. To uninstall &product-name;, run the installer as follows: sudo ./VirtualBox.run uninstall As root, you can use the following command: ./VirtualBox.run uninstall You can uninstall the .run package as follows: /opt/VirtualBox/uninstall.sh To manually uninstall &product-name;, perform the manual installation steps in reverse order. The Debian packages will request some user feedback when installed for the first time. The debconf system is used to perform this task. To prevent any user interaction during installation, default values can be defined. A file vboxconf can contain the following debconf settings: virtualbox virtualbox/module-compilation-allowed boolean true virtualbox virtualbox/delete-old-modules boolean true The first line enables compilation of the vboxdrv kernel module if no module was found for the current kernel. The second line enables the package to delete any old vboxdrv kernel modules compiled by previous installations. These default settings can be applied prior to the installation of the &product-name; Debian package, as follows: debconf-set-selections vboxconf In addition there are some common configuration options that can be set prior to the installation. See . The RPM format does not provide a configuration system comparable to the debconf system. See for how to set some common installation options provided by &product-name;. To configure the installation process for .deb and .rpm packages, you can create a response file named /etc/default/virtualbox. The automatic generation of the udev rule can be prevented with the following setting: INSTALL_NO_UDEV=1 The creation of the group vboxusers can be prevented as follows: INSTALL_NO_GROUP=1 If the following line is specified, the package installer will not try to build the vboxdrv kernel module if no module fitting the current kernel was found. INSTALL_NO_VBOXDRV=1 The Linux installers create the system user group vboxusers during installation. Any system user who is going to use USB devices from &product-name; guests must be a member of that group. A user can be made a member of the group vboxusers either by using the desktop user and group tools, or with the following command: sudo usermod -a -G vboxusers username The easiest way to start an &product-name; program is by running the program of your choice (VirtualBox, VBoxManage, or VBoxHeadless) from a terminal. These are symbolic links to VBox.sh that start the required program for you. The following detailed instructions should only be of interest if you wish to execute &product-name; without installing it first. You should start by compiling the vboxdrv kernel module and inserting it into the Linux kernel. &product-name; consists of a service daemon, VBoxSVC, and several application programs. The daemon is automatically started if necessary. All &product-name; applications will communicate with the daemon through UNIX local domain sockets. There can be multiple daemon instances under different user accounts and applications can only communicate with the daemon running under the user account as the application. The local domain socket resides in a subdirectory of your system's directory for temporary files called .vbox-<username>-ipc. In case of communication problems or server startup problems, you may try to remove this directory. All &product-name; applications (VirtualBox, VBoxManage, and VBoxHeadless) require the &product-name; directory to be in the library path, as follows: LD_LIBRARY_PATH=. ./VBoxManage showvminfo "Windows XP" For the specific versions of Oracle Solaris that are supported as host operating systems, see . If you have a previously installed instance of &product-name; on your Oracle Solaris host, please uninstall it first before installing a new instance. See for uninstall instructions. &product-name; is available as a standard Oracle Solaris package. Download the &product-name; SunOS package, which includes the 64-bit version of &product-name;. The installation must be performed as root and from the global zone. This is because the &product-name; installer loads kernel drivers, which cannot be done from non-global zones. To verify which zone you are currently in, execute the zonename command. To start installation, run the following commands: gunzip -cd VirtualBox-version-number-SunOS.tar.gz | tar xvf - The &product-name; kernel package is integrated into the main package. Install the &product-name; package as follows: pkgadd -d VirtualBox-version-number-SunOS.pkg The installer will then prompt you to enter the package you wish to install. Choose 1 or all and proceed. Next the installer will ask you if you want to allow the postinstall script to be executed. Choose y and proceed, as it is essential to execute this script which installs the &product-name; kernel module. Following this confirmation the installer will install &product-name; and execute the postinstall setup script. Once the postinstall script has been executed your installation is now complete. You may now safely delete the uncompressed package and autoresponse files from your system. &product-name; is installed in /opt/VirtualBox. If you need to use &product-name; from non-global zones, see . The installer creates the system user group vboxuser during installation for Oracle Solaris hosts that support the USB features required by &product-name;. Any system user who is going to use USB devices from &product-name; guests must be a member of this group. A user can be made a member of this group either by using the desktop user and group tools or by running the following command as root: usermod -G vboxuser username Note that adding an active user to the vboxuser group will require the user to log out and then log in again. This should be done manually after successful installation of the package. The easiest way to start an &product-name; program is by running the program of your choice (VirtualBox, VBoxManage, or VBoxHeadless) from a terminal. These are symbolic links to VBox.sh that start the required program for you. Alternatively, you can directly invoke the required programs from /opt/VirtualBox. Using the links provided is easier as you do not have to enter the full path. You can configure some elements of the VirtualBox Qt GUI, such as fonts and colours, by running VBoxQtconfig from the terminal. Uninstallation of &product-name; on Oracle Solaris requires root permissions. To perform the uninstallation, start a root terminal session and run the following command: pkgrm SUNWvbox After confirmation, this will remove &product-name; from your system. To perform a non-interactive installation of &product-name; there is a response file named autoresponse. The installer uses this for responses to inputs, rather than prompting the user. Extract the tar.gz package as described in . Then open a root terminal session and run the following command: pkgadd -d VirtualBox-version-number-SunOS-x86 -n -a autoresponse SUNWvbox To perform a non-interactive uninstallation, open a root terminal session and run the following command: pkgrm -n -a /opt/VirtualBox/autoresponse SUNWvbox Assuming that &product-name; has already been installed into your zone, you need to give the zone access to &product-name;'s device node. This is done by performing the following steps. Start a root terminal and run the following command: zonecfg -z vboxzone Replace vboxzone with the name of the zone where you intend to run &product-name;. Use zonecfg to add the device resource and match properties to the zone, as follows: zonecfg:vboxzone>add device zonecfg:vboxzone:device>set match=/dev/vboxdrv zonecfg:vboxzone:device>end zonecfg:vboxzone>add device zonecfg:vboxzone:device>set match=/dev/vboxdrvu zonecfg:vboxzone:device>end zonecfg:vboxzone>exit On Oracle Solaris 11 or later, you may also add a device for /dev/vboxusbmon, similar to that shown above. If you are not using sparse root zones, you will need to loopback mount /opt/VirtualBox from the global zone into the non-global zone at the same path. This is specified below using the dir attribute and the special attribute. For example: zonecfg:vboxzone>add fs zonecfg:vboxzone:device>set dir=/opt/VirtualBox zonecfg:vboxzone:device>set special=/opt/VirtualBox zonecfg:vboxzone:device>set type=lofs zonecfg:vboxzone:device>end zonecfg:vboxzone>exit Reboot the zone using zoneadm and you should be able to run &product-name; from within the configured zone. Extension packs provide extra functionality to the &product-name; base package, such as extended USB device support and cloud integration features. See . To install an &product-name; extension pack, do the following: Double-click on the extension package file name. &product-name; extension packs have a .vbox-extpack file name extension. Follow the on-screen instructions to install the extension pack. You can also use the Extension Pack Manager tool to install an extension pack. See . Extension packs can be installed and managed using the Extension Pack Manager tool in &vbox-mgr;. The Extension Pack Manager lists the extension packs that are currently installed on the host, and enables you to install and uninstall extension packs. To display the Extension Pack Manager, go to the global Tools menu and click Extensions. The Extension Pack Manager is shown. To install an extension pack using the Extension Pack Manager, click Install and select an extension package file. The extension pack is installed on the host and listed in Extension Pack Manager. To uninstall an extension pack with the Extension Pack Manager, do the following: Select the extension pack in the Extension Pack Manager window and click Uninstall. Click Remove in the prompt dialog. The extension pack is uninstalled from the host and removed from the Extension Pack Manager. Alternatively, you can use the VBoxManage command line to install and manage &product-name; extension packs. See .