VirtualBox 6.0 on Fedora 29/28, CentOS/RHEL 7.5/6.10

VirtualBox 6.0 on Fedora 29/28, CentOS/RHEL 7.5/6.10

Updated on January 18, 2019 by JR 737 comments

Oracle VirtualBox is a powerful x86 and AMD64/Intel64 virtualization product for enterprise as well as home use. VirtualBox is a general-purpose full virtualizer for x86 hardware. Targeted at server, desktop and embedded use, it is now the only professional-quality virtualization solution that is also Open Source Software.

VirtualBox supports a large number of guest operating systems:

 

• Windows 3.x
• Windows NT 4.0
• Windows 2000
• Windows XP
• Windows Server 2003
• Windows Server 2008
• Windows Vista
• Windows 7
• Windows 8
• Windows 8.1
• Windows 10
• DOS
• Linux (Kernel 2.4, 2.6, 3.0, 3.2, 3.4, 3.10, 3.16, 3.18, 4.1, 4.4, 4.7, 4.8, 4.9, 4.10, 4.11, 4.12, 4.13, 4.14, 4.15, 4.16, 4.17, 4.18, 4.19)
• Solaris
• OpenSolaris
• OpenBSD

This guide shows howto install VirtualBox 6.0 (currently 6.0.2) on Fedora 29/28/27/26, CentOS 7.5/6.10, Red Hat (RHEL) 7.5/6.10. This guide uses Virtual Box own yum repositories.

1. Change to root User

su -
## OR ##
sudo -i

2. Install Fedora or RHEL Repo Files

cd /etc/yum.repos.d/

## Fedora 29/28/27/26 users
wget http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/rpm/fedora/virtualbox.repo

## CentOS 7.5/6.10 and Red Hat (RHEL) 7.5/6.10 users
wget http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/rpm/rhel/virtualbox.repo

3. Update latest packages and check your kernel version

Update packages

## Fedora 29/28/27/26 ##
dnf update

## CentOS/RHEL 7/6 ##
yum update

Check that that you are running latest installed kernel version
Output of following commands version numbers should match:

rpm -qa kernel |sort -V |tail -n 1

uname -r

Note: If you got kernel update or run older kernel than newest installed then reboot:

reboot

4. Install following dependency packages

CentOS 7/6 and Red Hat (RHEL) 7/6 needs EPEL repository, install it with following command:

## CentOS 7 and RHEL 7 ##
rpm -Uvh https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-7.noarch.rpm

## CentOS 6 and RHEL 6 ##
rpm -Uvh https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-6.noarch.rpm

## Fedora 29/28/27/26 ##
dnf install binutils gcc make patch libgomp glibc-headers glibc-devel kernel-headers kernel-devel dkms qt5-qtx11extras libxkbcommon

## CentOS/RHEL 7/6 ##
yum install binutils gcc make patch libgomp glibc-headers glibc-devel kernel-headers kernel-devel dkms

## PAE kernel users install ##
## CentOS/RHEL 7/6 ##
yum install binutils gcc make patch libgomp glibc-headers glibc-devel kernel-headers kernel-PAE-devel dkms

 

5. Install VirtualBox Latest Version 6.0 (currently 6.0.2)

## Fedora 29/28/27/26 ##
dnf install VirtualBox-6.0

## CentOS/RHEL 7/6 ##
yum install VirtualBox-6.0

Note:
This command create automatically vboxusers group and VirtualBox user must be member of that group.
This command also build needed kernel modules.
Package is VirtualBox-6.0 not VirtualBox.

Rebuild kernel modules with following command:

## Fedora 29/28/27/26 and CentOS/RHEL 7 ##
/usr/lib/virtualbox/vboxdrv.sh setup

## CentOS/RHEL 6 ##
/etc/init.d/vboxdrv setup
## OR ##
service vboxdrv setup

6. Add VirtualBox User(s) to vboxusers Group

Replace user_name with your own user name or some another real user name.

usermod -a -G vboxusers user_name

7. Start VirtualBox

Use launcher from menu or simply run VirtualBox as normal user:

VirtualBox

Troubleshooting

If you have problems with KERN_DIR parameter or your kernel directory is not automatically detected then set KERN_DIR environment variable manually, using following method:

## Current running kernel on Fedora ##
KERN_DIR=/usr/src/kernels/`uname -r`
 
## Current running kernel on CentOS and Red Hat (RHEL) ##
KERN_DIR=/usr/src/kernels/`uname -r`-`uname -m`
 
## Fedora example ##
KERN_DIR=/usr/src/kernels/2.6.33.5-124.fc13.i686
 
## CentOS and Red Hat (RHEL) example ##
KERN_DIR=/usr/src/kernels/2.6.18-194.11.1.el5-x86_64
 
## Export KERN_DIR ##
export KERN_DIR