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        <title>Creating a Headless VirtualBox VM Host on Ubuntu Server</title>
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            <h1>Creating a Headless VirtualBox VM Host on Ubuntu Server</h1>
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          <h2>Installation and Configuration</h2>

<ol>
	<li>Log into the Ubuntu Server host</li>
	<li>Run the following commands
	<div class="codeBlock"># update software repositories<br />
	sudo apt update<br />
	# install available software updates<br />
	sudo apt upgrade -y<br />
	# install virtualbox<br />
	sudo apt install virtualbox -y<br />
	# verify virtualbox installed by outputting the version<br />
	vboxmanage -version<br />
	# install virtualbox extension pack<br />
	sudo apt install virtualbox-ext-pack -y<br />
	# disable default vboxweb service<br />
	sudo systemctl disable vboxweb<br />
	# create vboxadmin user and set a password<br />
	sudo useradd vboxadmin<br />
	# set the vboxadmin password<br />
	sudo passwd vboxadmin<br />
	# add vboxadmin to the vboxuser group<br />
	sudo usermod -aG vboxusers vboxadmin<br />
	# create vboxadmin home directory<br />
	sudo mkdir /home/vboxadmin -p<br />
	# make vboxadmin the owner of the home directory<br />
	sudo chown -R vboxadmin /home/vboxadmin<br />
	# edit the default virtualbox configuration<br />
	sudo nano /etc/default/virtualbox</div>
	</li>
	<li>Add the following line to the bottom of the file, changing the username if necessary
	<p>VBOXWEB_USER=vboxadmin<br />
	VBOXWEB_HOST=127.0.0.1</p>
	</li>
	<li>Press CTRL+O, Enter, CTRL+X to write the changes</li>
	<li>Continue with the following commands, changing the username if necessary
	<div class="codeBlock"># create vboxweb.sh<br />
	sudo nano /home/vboxadmin/vboxweb.sh</div>
	</li>
	<li>Paste the following into vboxweb.sh
	<p>#!/bin/bash<br />
	/usr/bin/vboxwebsrv -H 127.0.0.1 &gt; /dev/null 2&gt;&amp;1</p>
	</li>
	<li>Press CTRL+O, Enter, CTRL+X to write the changes</li>
	<li>Continue with the following commands, changing the username if necessary
	<div class="codeBlock"># make vboxweb.sh executable<br />
	sudo chmod +x /home/vboxadmin/vboxweb.sh<br />
	# create phpvirtualbox.service<br />
	sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/phpvirtualbox.service</div>
	</li>
	<li>Paste the following service configuration, changing the username if necessary
	<p>[Unit]<br />
	Description=VirtualBox Web Service<br />
	After=network.target</p>

	<p>[Service]<br />
	Type=simple<br />
	RemainAfterExit=yes<br />
	User=vboxadmin<br />
	Group=vboxusers<br />
	WorkingDirectory=/home/vboxadmin<br />
	ExecStart=/home/vboxadmin/vboxweb.sh<br />
	Restart=on-failure</p>

	<p>[Install]<br />
	WantedBy=default.target</p>
	</li>
	<li>Continue with the following commands
	<div class="codeBlock"># enable phpvirtualbox.service<br />
	sudo systemctl enable phpvirtualbox.service<br />
	# start phpvirtualbox.service<br />
	sudo systemctl start phpvirtualbox.service<br />
	# install apache2 web server and php<br />
	sudo apt install apache2 php libapache2-mod-php php-curl php-intl php-json php-gd php-mbstring php-xml php-zip php-soap -y<br />
	# empty the apache2 web root<br />
	sudo rm /var/www/html/*<br />
	# install git<br />
	sudo apt install git -y<br />
	# clone phpVirtualBox git repository<br />
	sudo git clone https://github.com/phpvirtualbox/phpvirtualbox.git /var/www/html<br />
	# copy phpVirtualBox example config<br />
	sudo cp /var/www/html/config.php-example /var/www/html/config.php<br />
	# edit the config file<br />
	sudo nano /var/www/html/config.php</div>
	</li>
	<li>Update the $username and $password variables to vboxadmin and the password set for the vboxadmin user</li>
	<li>Press CTRL+O, Enter, CTRL+X to write the changes to config.php</li>
	<li>Open a web browser from another machine and navigate to https://DNSorIP of the VirtualBox host</li>
	<li>Log into phpVirtualBox with username admin and password admin</li>
</ol>

<h2>Creating a Test VM</h2>

<ol>
	<li>Run the following command on the VirtualBox host to download the TinyCore Linux .iso
	<div class="codeBlock">sudo wget -O /home/vboxadmin/TinyCore-12.0.iso http://tinycorelinux.net/12.x/x86/release/TinyCore-12.0.iso</div>
	</li>
	<li>In the phpVirtualBox web UI, click New</li>
	<li>Set the Name to TinyCore Linux, Type to Linux and Version to Other Linux (32-bit) &gt; Click Next</li>
	<li>Leave the memory at 256 MB &gt; Click Next</li>
	<li>Select Do not add a virtual hard disk &gt; Click Create</li>
	<li>Click Continue to confirm creating the VM with no virtual hard disk</li>
	<li>Right click the TinyCore Linux VM &gt; Settings...</li>
	<li>Select Storage from the left navigation menu</li>
	<li>Click on the empty optical drive</li>
	<li>Click the choose disk image dropdown &gt; Choose a virtual disk file...</li>
	<li>Navigate to /home/vboxadmin/TinyCore-12.0.iso and select it</li>
	<li>Click OK to all open dialog windows</li>
	<li>Right click the TinyCore Linux VM &gt; Start</li>
	<li>If everything is working as expected TinyCore Linux should be booting to the live environment</li>
	<li>Look at the Display details to find the remote port (starts at 9000 by default)</li>
	<li>To view the VM directly, remote desktop to the VirtualBox host IP:9000</li>
</ol>
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