Phpvirtualbox

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Phpvirtualbox for SME Server

	Skill level: Medium
	The instructions on this page require a basic knowledge of linux.

Maintainer

Stephane de Labrusse aka stephdl

Description

An open source, AJAX implementation of the VirtualBox user interface written in PHP. As a modern web interface, it allows you to access and control remote VirtualBox instances. phpVirtualBox is designed to allow users to administer VirtualBox in a headless environment - mirroring the VirtualBox GUI through its web interface.

	Note:
	Please you should help this project as Ian Moore develops phpVirtualBox in his spare time, free of charge. If you find this program useful, He asks that you please donate.

	Tip:
	You can find more informations directly on the phpvirtualbox wiki, please Take a look to the documentation.

Requirements

You need to install the VirtualBox_Repository, the Stephdl_repository And the Epel Repository

	Note:
	VirtualBox is a real professional solution to virtualise Operating Systems in Linux, please Read the virtualbox manual if you want to use entirely all features of this software

Installation phpvirtualbox-4.3 For SME8 and SME9

You have to be sure that your server has the kernel up-to-date before to install virtualbox, else the installation will fail. You must first configure the epel repository

yum install --enablerepo=epel dkms kernel
signal-event post-upgrade;  signal-event reboot

For PAE Kernel you have to install kernel-PAE-devel in order to be compiled with DKMS

yum install --enablerepo=epel dkms kernel-PAE-devel
signal-event post-upgrade;  signal-event reboot

This contrib is currently held in several repositories (VirtualBox_Repository, and the Stephdl_repository), so the following commands will install on your smeserver.

yum --enablerepo=stephdl,virtualbox  install smeserver-phpvirtualbox smeserver-virtualbox

You will then need to activate the database changes and to reboot with the new kernel module loaded.

signal-event post-upgrade;  signal-event reboot

Go to the phpvirtualbox panel at the url https://your-sme-ip/phpvirtualbox on your local-network. You can not reach this contrib trought internet. Your credentials are the user admin of the SME Server and its password but you can add more users by the DB Configuration.

Installation phpvirtualbox-5.0 For SME8 and SME9

	Warning:
	You have to remove first all old rpm before to install phpvirtualbox-5.0 and VirtualBox-5.0, this is done by the different version of virtualbox (the version 5.0 doesn't obsolete the 4.3 version) yum remove smeserver-phpvirtualbox\* smeserver-virtualbox\* VirtualBox\* phpvirtualbox\*

You have to be sure that your server has the kernel up-to-date before to install virtualbox, else the installation will fail. You must first configure the epel repository

yum install --enablerepo=epel dkms kernel
signal-event post-upgrade;  signal-event reboot

For PAE Kernel you have to install kernel-PAE-devel in order to be compiled with DKMS

yum install --enablerepo=epel dkms kernel-PAE-devel
signal-event post-upgrade;  signal-event reboot

This contrib is currently held in several repositories (VirtualBox_Repository, and the Stephdl_repository), so the following commands will install on your smeserver.

yum --enablerepo=stephdl,virtualbox  install smeserver-phpvirtualbox-5.0 smeserver-virtualbox-5.0

You will then need to activate the database changes and to reboot with the new kernel module loaded.

signal-event post-upgrade;  signal-event reboot

Go to the phpvirtualbox panel at the url https://your-sme-ip/phpvirtualbox on your local-network. You can not reach this contrib trought internet. Your credentials are the user admin of the SME Server and its password but you can add more users by the DB Configuration.

	Tip:
	You can see the Tutorial hosted on our Wiki in order to learn : how to create your first VM how to automatically start VM with the server

Restart the vboxweb-service

phpvirtualbox controls a virtualbox service (vboxweb-service), you may need to restart it if you can't connect to phpvirtualbox

/etc/init.d/vboxweb-service restart

you can control eventually that the port 18083 is opened to the service

nmap localhost -p 18083
PORT      STATE SERVICE
18083/tcp open  unknown

Kernel Upgrade

After a kernel upgrade and the "signal-event post-upgrade; signal-event reboot", the vboxdrv need to be compiled with the new kernel, a script is launched at the boot time to test if the compilation is needed.

You can see if all kernel modules are compiled and loaded, if you issue :

# /etc/init.d/vboxdrv status
VirtualBox kernel modules (vboxdrv, vboxnetflt, vboxnetadp, vboxpci) are loaded.

	Tip:
	If you want to launch manually the compilation of virtualbox module you can do these command lines in a root terminal.

/etc/init.d/vboxdrv setup; /etc/init.d/vboxweb-service start

Stopping VirtualBox kernel modules                         [  OK  ]
Uninstalling old VirtualBox DKMS kernel modules            [  OK  ]
Trying to register the VirtualBox kernel modules using DKMS[  OK  ]
Starting VirtualBox kernel modules                         [  OK  ]

Installation of Extension Pack

Support for USB 2.0 devices, VirtualBox RDP and PXE boot for Intel cards. See this chapter from the User Manual for an introduction to this Extension Pack. See this page to download the extension pack if the url below is no longer good.

For example :

wget http://dlc.sun.com.edgesuite.net/virtualbox/4.3.0/Oracle_VM_VirtualBox_Extension_Pack-4.3.0-89960.vbox-extpack
vboxmanage extpack install Oracle_VM_VirtualBox_Extension_Pack-4.3.0-89960.vbox-extpack

see vboxmanage-extpack for a complete list of commands

• To add a new extension pack, use VBoxManage extpack install <.vbox-extpack>. This command will fail if an older version of the same extension pack is already installed. The optional --replace parameter can be used to uninstall the old package before the new package is installed.

• To remove a previously installed extension pack, use VBoxManage extpack uninstall <name>. You can use VBoxManage list extpacks to show the names of the extension packs which are currently installed. The optional --force parameter can be used to override the refusal of an extension pack to be uninstalled.

• The VBoxManage extpack cleanup command can be used to remove temporary files and directories that may have been left behind if a previous install or uninstall command failed.

BridgeInterface

smeserver-bridge-interface is a small package allowing you to bridge your Internal Interface with one or more virtual tap interfaces. It's main goal is to be used with the new OpenVPN-Bridge contrib, but it has been split in another contrib as it can be used in other situations (if you want to run a virtual machine on your SME Server with virtualbox for example).

see BridgeInterface

Therefore your Guest O.S will have a real ip on your local network, you need to set its virtual NIC on bridged adapter (br0) in phpvirtualbox network settings

VirtualBox Guest Additions

For any serious and interactive use, the VirtualBox Guest Additions will make your life much easier by providing closer integration between host and guest and improving the interactive performance of guest systems. see this link for more informations

You have to enable the epel repository and to insert the guest additions cd images in phpvirtualbox.

yum install gcc kernel-devel dkms --enablerepo=epel

mkdir /media/cdrom
mount -t iso9660 /dev/cdrom /media/cdrom/
sh /media/cdrom/VBoxLinuxAdditions.run

ln -s ../init.d/vboxadd /etc/rc7.d/S30vboxadd
signal-event post-upgrade; signal-event reboot

DB Configuration

configuration database

# config show phpvirtualbox 
phpvirtualbox=configuration
   Group=
   Name=phpvirtualbox
   User=
   status=enabled
   webauth=enabled

# config show vboxweb-service 
vboxweb-service=service
   TCPPort=18083
   access=localhost
   status=enabled

Add a different URL

by example

http://yourserver.net/VB 

or

http://yourserver.net/PVB

	Note:
	this adds another url, it doesn't remove the default

config setprop phpvirtualbox URL VB

or

config setprop phpvirtualbox URL PVB

To enable your changes run these commands

signal-event console-save

• If you want to remove completely the new url

config delprop phpvirtualbox URL

then

signal-event console-save

Web authentication

you can allow web authentication to phpvirtualbox by doing the command line below. This feature is the default behaviour since the bug opened is solved http://sourceforge.net/p/phpvirtualbox/bugs/7/.

config setprop phpvirtualbox webauth enabled
signal-event console-save

and you have to modify manually the file config.php

nano /opt/phpvirtualbox/config.php

// Authentication library.
var $authLib = 'Builtin';
#var $authLib = 'WebAuth';
#var $authConfig = array('adminUser' => 'admin');

to

// Authentication library.
#var $authLib = 'Builtin';
var $authLib = 'WebAuth';
var $authConfig = array('adminUser' => 'admin');

Allow Specific Users

The users must be declared and a password must be set in the server-manager.

config setprop phpvirtualbox User user1,user2,user3
signal-event console-save

Allow Specific Groups

These groups must be declared in the server-manager and users need to be included

config setprop phpvirtualbox Group Group1,Group2,Group3
signal-event console-save

Access The Web Interface Remotely

	Warning:
	Instructions below could be a flaw in Phpvirtualbox, you should remotely access trough SSH or with openvpn

Create the following folder if it doesn't exist.

mkdir -p /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf/

Copy the file 92phpvirtualhost to the newly created folder.

cp /etc/e-smith/templates/etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf/92phpvirtualhost /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf/

Edit the file and add your public IP address.

nano /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf/92phpvirtualhost

Change the line:

$OUT .= "    allow from $localAccess\n";

to the one below (eg. 123.456.789.012 is your public IP address) then save the file.

$OUT .= "    allow from $localAccess 123.456.789.012\n";

expand-template /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf
svc -t /service/httpd-e-smith/
svc -t /service/httpd-admin/

Autostart Virtual Machines

Once you have one or more virtual machines installed and running, you may want them to start automatically on system boot. To do this, you will need to stop the virtual machines in question, create one configuration file, edit another, and set some properties using the VBoxManage utility.

Stop the virtual machines

Using the phpVirtualBox web interface, power down or save state the virtual machine(s) you want to set to start automatically. Alternatively, log in to those virtual machines and shut them down. Confirm in the phpVirtualBox web interface that the status is not "Running".

Create /etc/vbox/autostart.cfg

[root@e-smith ~]# nano -w /etc/vbox/autostart.cfg 

Add the following to this file:

# Default policy is to deny starting a VM, the other option is "allow".
default_policy = deny

# Create an entry for each user allowed to run autostart
root = {
allow = true
}

Edit /etc/default/virtualbox

[root@e-smith ~]# nano -w /etc/default/virtualbox

Add these two lines:

VBOXAUTOSTART_DB=/etc/vbox
VBOXAUTOSTART_CONFIG=/etc/vbox/autostart.cfg

Using VBoxManage to set properties

First, tell VirtualBox where your autostart configuration is:

[root@e-smith ~]# VBoxManage setproperty autostartdbpath /etc/vbox

Next, use VBoxManage to list your installed virtual machines:

[root@e-smith ~]# VBoxManage list vms
"Elastix 3.0.0-RC1" {6259ddda-888d-43e9-9364-25867668d889}
"PIAF 3" {69d75c64-4cfe-4023-a4a2-b2b39a442746}
"IncrediblePBX 12" {e7e4845b-8178-4e87-aceb-7f2a78c77977}
"Ubuntu 14.04.1 LTS" {6094a7e0-5b3c-4cc3-b8c8-f55a9716318b}
"Asterisk-GUI" {19d53974-512b-443b-8fd9-aff80c207bd9}
"Windows 7" {df3d3440-3113-4c91-9890-5323f99d755c}

Then, set your desired virtual machines to start automatically, with an optional delay, and optionally to suspend (rather than power down) when your SME server shuts down or reboots. You can specify the virtual machine by name or by UUID:

[root@e-smith ~]# VBoxManage modifyvm "IncrediblePBX 12" --autostart-enabled on --autostart-delay 15
[root@e-smith ~]# VBoxManage modifyvm df3d3440-3113-4c91-9890-5323f99d755c --autostart-enabled on --autostop-type savestate

Finally, start the vboxautostart-service service:

[root@e-smith ~]# service vboxautostart-service start

Confirm that the desired virtual machines are running in the phpVirtualBox web interface.

Uninstall

yum remove smeserver-virtualbox smeserver-phpvirtualbox phpvirtualbox VirtualBox-4.3 dkms

Bugs

Please raise bugs under the SME-Contribs section in bugzilla and select the smeserver-phpvirtualbox component or use this link .

SME guest server configuration

To optimize and/or fine-tune your SME guest server running on your phpvirtualbox host, please see our Virtual SME Server wiki page

For general information on how to configure phpvirtualbox guests please visit the phpvirtualbox documentation