Hello, and welcome to today's video presentation on installing VirtualBox on Oracle Linux.
This video will focus on installing the latest VirtualBox 6.1, at the time of this recording,
on a physical system running Oracle Linux 8.2.
So let us get started.
VirtualBox is a powerful x86 and AMD64/Intel64 virtualization product for enterprise as well
as home use.
VirtualBox is an immensely feature-rich, high-performance product for enterprise customers.
It is also the only professional solution that is freely available as Open Source Software
under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL) version 2.
Now that we know a bit about VirtualBox let us jump into this demo.
The physical system we are using for this demo is running Oracle Linux 8.2.
To ensure the necessary repositories are available, perform the following steps.
Open the terminal and type sudo dnf repolist.
If prompted for the user's password, enter it.
From the output shown, the essential repositories for installing VirtualBox are available, including
the Oracle EPEL repository.
Next, open a browser and go to http://www.virtualbox.org.
Click the Downloads link on the left side menu.
In the main window, under VirtualBox 6.1.10 platform packages, click Linux distributions.
Note that the version changes if there was an upgrade to the product.
Next, under VirtualBox 6.1.10 for Linux, find Oracle Linux 8.
Right-click the link for Oracle Linux 8 and select Copy Link Location
In the terminal, download the VirtualBox rpm using curl.
Type curl -O and then paste the link copied from the VirtualBox website.
Now that the file has downloaded, prepare the system for the installation of VirtualBox.
As part of the installation, the VirtualBox installer will build the vbox driver modules.
These modules get loaded into the running kernel once built.
For a successful build of the modules, install the following essential Linux packages after
clearing the terminal.
Type sudo dnf install kernel-uek-devel-$(uname -r) gcc make perl bzip2 dkms.
In the command above:
sudo will run dnf with the required elevated privileges.
uname -r will ensure that the matching development packages for the currently active uek kernel
get installed.
If you have recently performed a dnf upgrade without rebooting, reboot the system before
executing this step, so the active kernel is the latest installed.
Lastly, the dkms package from the ol8_developer_EPEL repo provides dynamic kernel module support
and will allow for the automatic building of the installed modules if installing a new
kernel.
Note, however, Oracle does not support these extra packages in the EPEL repo.
Therefore, Oracle suggests these packages be used for development purposes only, and
not used in production.
Hit Enter and the install will begin.
Before installation, the dnf package manager will handle any package dependencies and prompt
for confirmation.
The output displayed during your install may vary slightly from the information shown on
the screen.
The information varies based on what you have installed in your existing environment.
Accept the installation summary by typing y and hit Enter.
With the essential packages installed, now install VirtualBox.
Type sudo dnf install and pass the name of the VirtualBox rpm file downloaded previously.
DNF will check for any dependencies as before and prompt for confirmation.
Type y and hit Enter to approve.
If you already have a version of VirtualBox installed, use sudo dnf upgrade instead of
sudo dnf install.
Once DNF completes, validate that installing VirtualBox was successful.
Type lsmod | grep vbox to see if the kernel modules are loaded.
Type vboxmanage --help and then vboxmanage --version to ensure the CLI is working.
Additionally, open the VirtualBox application.
Click Activities in the upper left corner of the screen.
In the search field in the upper center of the screen, start typing V i r t u.
The Oracle VM VirtualBox icon will appear.
Click the Oracle VM VirtualBox icon to launch the VirtualBox application.
Click the application Help menu item, and then About VirtualBox.
This action will display a splash screen with the VirtualBox version details.
That completes the installation of VirtualBox 6.1 on Oracle Linux 8.
Thank you for watching this video and enjoy using VirtualBox on Oracle Linux 8.
Please check our additional information on Oracle Linux 8 in the Oracle Linux 8 Documentation
or Oracle Linux Learning Library.