Phpvirtualbox
Phpvirtualbox for SME Server
Maintainer
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.
Requirements
You need to install the VirtualBox_Repository,the Stephdl Repository And the Epel Repository
Installation
You have to be sure that your server has the kernel up-to-date before to install virtualbox, else the installation will fail.
yum update signal-event post-upgrade; signal-event reboot
This contrib is currently held in several repositories, so the following commands will install on your smeserver.
yum --enablerepo=stephdl,virtualbox,epel install smeserver-virtualbox smeserver-phpvirtualbox phpvirtualbox VirtualBox-4.3 dkms
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 SME Server but you can add more users by the DB Configuration.
Optional : Change your guests kernel boot options
Optionally, for best results with SME 8.x Guests, modify /etc/grub.conf, adding "divider=10 clocksource=acpi_pm" to the kernel boot options in order to reduce the idle CPU load with Virtual Box.
Accordingly to this article from VmWare and this one from Oracle on Linux Guests, you may find important informations on how and why modify your kernel options.
you can test this command line to see if you are concerned by this chapter mainly if the you have the same result as below :
[root@sme8 ~]# grep CONFIG_HZ /boot/config-`uname -r` # CONFIG_HZ_100 is not set # CONFIG_HZ_250 is not set CONFIG_HZ_1000=y CONFIG_HZ=1000
For example, if your kernel boot line is:
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.18-348.6.1.el5 ro root=/dev/main/root
change it to:
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.18-348.6.1.el5 ro root=/dev/main/root divider=10 clocksource=acpi_pm
Timing related options are important within Virtual Guests and to the amount of 'pressure' it puts on the host and level/increasing CPU usage of the host and guest. By default SME Server uses the NTP deamon for 'timing' related matters, but by default is focussed on the above mentioned 1000HZ, hence the kernel option 'divider=10', thus reducing the timing cycles/context switching requests on the host. See the above VMWare document mentioned (Way at the bottom).
SME Server has an undocumented feature related to the NTP deamon configuration. To activate the best NTP settings for a Virtual guest issue on the SME Server guest:
config setprop ntpd SupportLargeDrift enabled
and
service ntpd restart
to activate the new configuration. This will adjust /etc/ntp.conf to 'better' settings for a virtual guest.
by setting the above value to 'disabled', the NTP service and configuration will revert back to SME Server defaults.
Kernel Upgrade
After a kernel update and the "signal-event post-upgrade; signal-event reboot", even with the dkms module, the vboxdrv is not loaded because the module is not compiled with the new kernel, so you need to launch this command line 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.
DB Configuration
Default configuration database which allows only the admin user of SME Server to manage phpvirtualbox
[root@sme8dev ~]# config show phpvirtualbox phpvirtualbox=service Group= Name=phpvirtualbox User=admin status=enabled
Allow Specific Users
The users must be declared and a password must be set in the server-manager.
config setprop phpvirtualbox User "admin user2 user3" expand-template /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf
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" expand-template /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf
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-foo component or use this link .
remove the nowiki tags from your page
<noinclude>[[Category: Contrib]]</noinclude>