This is written for Ubuntu hardy 8.04 and virtualbox 1.6.2

• Download the deb package from virtualbox/sun.  Or install with apt

deb http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian hardy non-free
wget -q http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian/sun_vbox.asc -O- | sudo apt-key add –

• Install the package: dpkg -i package name, or apt-get install virtualbox-2.0 bridge-utils uml-utilities
• create any machines you want and make any customizations you would like.
• add a few lines to rc.local

# change permissions for vbox

chmod 0666 /dev/net/tun

• add the following to /etc/network/interfaces “that will get you 2 tap devices, enough for two machines”

auto tap1 tap2
iface tap1 inet manual
tunctl_user desktop
iface tap2 inet manual
tunctl_user desktop
auto br0
iface br0 inet dhcp
bridge_ports eth0 tap1 tap2
bridge_maxwait 0

• create /etc/vbox
• nano /etc/vbox/machines_enabled
• put a list of all virtual machines you want started and stopped at boot and shutdown/reboot
• nano /etc/init.d/virtualbox

contents of above file

#! /bin/sh
### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides: virtualbox_vms
# Required-Start:    $local_fs $syslog $remote_fs
# Required-Stop:     $local_fs $syslog $remote_fs
# Default-Start:     2 3 4 5
# Default-Stop:      S 0 1 6
# Short-Description: Control VirtualBox Virtual Machine instances
### END INIT INFO
#
# Version 20080531-0 AR
#
################################################################################
# INITIAL CONFIGURATION
VBOXDIR="/etc/vbox"
RUNAS_USER=desktop
SU="su $RUNAS_USER -c"
VBoxMDAEMON="VBoxManage"
VBoxSDAEMON="VBoxHeadless"

. /lib/lsb/init-functions

# Are we running from init?
run_by_init() {
([ "$previous" ] && [ "$runlevel" ]) || [ "$runlevel" = S ]
}

################################################################################
# RUN
case "$1" in
start)
cat $VBOXDIR/machines_enabled | while read VM; do
log_action_msg "Starting VM: $VM ..."
#                su $RUNAS_USER -c "$VBoxSDAEMON startvm \"$VM\" -type vrdp &"
su $RUNAS_USER -c "$VBoxSDAEMON --startvm \"$VM\" &"
done
;;
stop)
# NOTE: this stops all running VM's. Not just the ones listed in the
# config
cat $VBOXDIR/machines_enabled | while read VM; do
log_action_msg "Shutting down VM: $VM ..."
su $RUNAS_USER -c "$VBoxMDAEMON controlvm \"$VM\" savestate"
done
;;
start-vm)
log_action_msg "Starting VM: $2 ..."
su $RUNAS_USER -c "$VBoxSDAEMON --startvm \"$2\" > /dev/null 2 >&1"
;;
stop-vm)
log_action_msg "Stopping VM: $2 ..."
su $RUNAS_USER -c "$VBoxMDAEMON controlvm \"$2\" savestate"
;;
poweroff-vm)
log_action_msg "Powering off VM: $2 ..."
$VBoxMDAEMON "controlvm \"$2\" poweroff"
;;
status)
log_action_msg "The following virtual machines are currently running:"
echo "Still thinking about what to do here."
#$VBoxMDAEMON "list runningvms" | while read VM; do
#echo -n "$VM ("
# not yet figured this out
#echo -n `"$VBoxMDAEMON showvminfo $VM|grep Name:|sed -e 's/^Name:\s*//g'"`
#echo ')'
#done
;;
*)
log_failure_msg "Usage: $0 {start|stop|status|start-vm <VM name>|stop-vm <VM name>|poweroff-vm"
exit 3
esac
exit 0

• chmod 755 /etc/init.d/virtualbox
• update-rc.d virtualbox defaults
• one last adjustment to make sure there is enough time between the vboxdrv and vboxnet starting and virtualbox: mv /etc/rc2.d/S20virtualbox /etc/rc2/d/S99virtualbox
• That should be it. Now when you shutdown the virtualmachines should be saved and when you boot the virtualmachines should start up.

Init script created by a great co-worker of mine. Could not have done this without his help. It works great, think I like this setup better than vmware.

apt-get install setserial

When you run a lspci -v it will list your lava card and it should look something like this:

Serial controller: Lava Computer mfg Inc Unknown device 0900 (prog-if 02 [16550])
Flags: slow devsel, IRQ 16
I/O ports at 9800 [size=256]
I/O ports at 9400 [size=256]
From this info you can create a command with setserial.  For me the command I run is below

setserial /dev/ttyS0 port 0×9800 irq 16 uart 16550a baud_base 115200

If that works you can now just create a file:

/etc/serial.conf

/dev/ttyS0 port 0x9800 irq 16 uart 16550a baud_base 115200

Is the only thing in the file.   You should be up and running. That is all I had to do.

This always gets me.  The nagios2 package for ubuntu (hardy and many others) is broken.  If you want to submit any commands from the web interface do the following.

/etc/nagios2#/etc/init.d/nagios2 stop
/etc/nagios2# dpkg-statoverride –update –add nagios www-data 2710 /var/lib/nagios2/rw
/etc/nagios2# dpkg-statoverride –update –add nagios nagios 751 /var/lib/nagios2
/etc/nagios2# /etc/init.d/nagios2 start