How to install VirtualBox 6.x with phpVirtualbox web interface on Debian 11 bullseye/openmediavault

How to install VirtualBox 6.x with phpVirtualbox web interface on Debian 11 bullseye/openmediavault 6

The new Open Media Vault 6 uses Debian 11 as the base system. And for a long time, Virtual Box didn’t support it. After it did, everyone whose using OMV6 has gone to the KVM platform for virtualization needs. And for the cause of that, everything related to this topic is either fractions or incomplete. I have tried KVM for a short time, and the overall experience of that is just something off for me. So I am doing this with Virtual Box again and writing this down for later use, or maybe it just helps someone who’s in flavoured with me in Virtual Box.

1. Prerequisites:

A working system could be either a Debian 11 bullseye or the open media vault 6, which is essentially Debian 11.

2. Plans:

1. Install Virtual Box 6 headless version.
2. Install Docker to containerize the web interface coming from the project phpvirtualbox.
3. Setting up phpvirtualbox using Docker/Docker Compose.

3. Installations:

3.1 Install Virtual Box

First, before we install the Virtual Box itself, we need to tackle the dependencies for it to run without errors.

Use this command line to install them.

sudo apt install wget build-essential python2

Next, we need to download the installer. There’re many ways to install Virtual Box on a Linux system. But for the sake of this tutorial, I’ll go with the installer one.

Here’s a list of all the releases: https://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/

Because the PHP program for the web interface is only supporting up to 6.x, so we’ll go with 6.1.40, which is the last version before 7.

Use wget to download the files straight into the file system. And then, add the execute permission for the installer and run it.

# download file
wget https://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/6.1.40/VirtualBox-6.1.40-154048-Linux_amd64.run

# grant permission
chmod u+x VirtualBox-6.1.40-154048-Linux_amd64.run

# execute it
sudo ./VirtualBox-6.1.40-154048-Linux_amd64.run

Virtual Box extension pack is a binary package that extends the functionality of Virtual Box. It provides extensions like USB support and hardware pass-through. But for the most important ones, we need it for RDP, which stands for Remote Desktop Protocol. Because it is headless, we can’t exactly see anything unless we use another system to connect to it. That’s why we have to install it.

# download
wget https://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/6.1.40/Oracle_VM_VirtualBox_Extension_Pack-6.1.40.vbox-extpack

# installation
sudo vboxmanage