

Ask HN: How do you use Virtualbox? - swah

I installed the same Ubuntu that I run on linode on a Virtualbox on my Mac. But I couldn't find out exactly how folks work with Virtualbox.<p>Do you make VBox fullscreen, and just work completely inside the graphical environment? Or do you edit on the Mac and compile on the VBox? Or you have your VBox only for testing <i>deployment</i>, not development?<p>The motivation for trying out VBox was this comment: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1998389
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robflynn
I pretty much use it in all of the ways specified above:

Sometimes I use it for development: I may need a development environment that
I can not set up on my desktop for some random reason.

Other times, I use it to test software on various OS installs. As an example,
I recently had the need to test an installer and software on Vista 32/64, XP,
Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008. That would've been a pain in the
butt for me without VMs. (Handy tip that I use, I often take snapshots of my
VMs after I first set them up. This allows me to roll back to a 'fresh'
install any time I want.)

Other times, I'm setting up multiple linux boxes to test how I want the
multiple machines to interact or to test multi-server deployment without
actually having to pay to bring up more servers.

Sometimes I just need to set something up that matches my production
environment so that I can test possible changes and see what's going to work
and what's going to break.

I have a full dual monitor linux development environment setup on my windows
box as well so that I can do my development from there if I need to.

Essentially: Your options are limitless.

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tfitzgerald
I have a CentOS box that runs a few headless VBox VM's. I use them for
development / testing before pushing changes live. I have one of them setup
pretty much exactly like our production server.

I do all of that work over ssh. None of the VMs have an X window system
installed.

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jonah
I don't right now...

There are issues [1] with running VirtualBox mac under the 64bit kernel.
Disabling VT-x helps for some people but that precludes you from running a
64bit client.

It's a reported issue [2] but in the meantime you can boot your shiny new i7
MBP into the 32bit kernel.

[1]
[http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=39368](http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=39368)
[2] <http://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/8474>

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ichilton
Check out Vagrant - <http://vagrantup.com>

Quote:

Vagrant is a tool for building and distributing virtualized development
environments.

By providing automated creation and provisioning of virtual machines using
Oracle’s VirtualBox, Vagrant provides the tools to create and configure
lightweight, reproducible, and portable virtual environments.

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jonah
For backend work I run virtualbox minimized with a mapped drive on the host
where I run my IDE, etc.

For front-end testing I run various windows virtual boxen windowed on the
second monitor while my IDE is up on the main monitor. In this case my work
files are local on the mac and shared to the Vbox for previewing on Windows
(including IE6 sadly).

~~~
swah
I'm more interested in backend work now. When you say mapped do you mean the
"shared folders" via guest additions ?

~~~
jonah
Yes. Setup networking between guest and host, then on the host connect to the
share on the guest.

~~~
wladimir
I'm not sure whether you're doing this on purpose, but just incase: you don't
need to set up networking on the guest to have shared folders. Virtualbox has
native functionality for this (using the guest additions that the grantparent
mentions).

~~~
jonah
Hmm, I guess I didn't know that.

(I've always setup networking anyway since I need HTTP in and out of the guest
as well.)

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binarymax
I installed it this weekend. I use it to run node on Ubuntu from Win7. I run
it fullscreen and use emacs. Works great so far.

~~~
jessmchung
I do that too. Also, I use it to run ruby / rails because trying to set that
up on Win7 sucked too much. Sometimes, a vm is just better.

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wladimir
I use virtualbox for running Windows, which I sometimes need for testing or
when I have to use MS Office for some reason... In that case I make it
fullscreen and work in the graphical environment.

To pass files from/to the virtual OS I use a virtualbox shared folder, I have
networking inside the box disabled for security reasons.

