First, download the appropriate package for your distribution. The following examples assume that you are installing to an Ubuntu Edgy system. Use dpkg to install the Debian package:

sudo dpkg -i VirtualBox_2.0.6_Ubuntu_edgy.deb

You will be asked to accept the VirtualBox Personal Use and Evaluation License. Unless you answer "yes" here, the installation will be aborted.

The group vboxusers will be created during installation. Note that a user who is going to run VirtualBox must be member of that group. A user can be made member of the group vboxusers through the GUI user/group management or at the command line with

sudo usermod -a -G vboxusers username

Also note that adding an active user to that group will require that user to log out and back in again. This should be done manually after successful installation of the package.

The installer will also search for a VirtualBox kernel module suitable for your kernel. The package includes pre-compiled modules for the most common kernel configurations. If no suitable kernel module is found, the installation script tries to build a module itself. If the build process is not successful you will be shown a warning and the package will be left unconfigured. Please have a look at /var/log/vbox-install.log to find out why the compilation failed. You may have to install the appropriate Linux kernel headers (see Sectioná2.3.2, “The VirtualBox kernel module”). After correcting any problems, do

sudo /etc/init.d/vboxdrv setup

This will start a second attempt to build the module.

If a suitable kernel module was found in the package or the module was successfully built, the installation script will attempt to load that module. If this fails, please see Sectioná11.5.1, “Linux kernel module refuses to load” for further information.

Once VirtualBox has been successfully installed and configured, you can start it by selecting "VirtualBox" in your start menu or from the command line (see Sectioná2.3.5, “Starting VirtualBox on Linux”).

The alternative installer performs the following steps:

The installer must be executed as root with either install or uninstall as the first parameter. If you do not want the installer to ask you whether you wish to accept the license agreement (for example, for performing unattended installations), you can add the parameter license_accepted_unconditionally. Finally, if you want to use a directory other than the default installation directory, add the desired path as an extra parameter.

sudo ./VirtualBox.run install /opt/VirtualBox

Or if you do not have the "sudo" command available, run the following as root instead:

./VirtualBox.run install /opt/VirtualBox

After that you need to put every user which should be able to use VirtualBox in the group vboxusers, either through the GUI user management tools or by running the following command as root:

sudo usermod -a -G vboxusers username

If any users on your system should be able to access host USB devices from within VirtualBox guests, you should also add them to the appropriate user group that your distribution uses for USB access, e.g. usb or usbusers.

If, for any reason, you cannot use the shell script installer described previously, you can also perform a manual installation. Invoke the installer like this:

./VirtualBox.run --keep --noexec

This will unpack all the files needed for installation in the directory install under the current directory. The VirtualBox application files are contained in VirtualBox.tar.bz2 which you can unpack to any directory on your system. For example:

sudo mkdir /opt/VirtualBox
sudo tar jxf ./install/VirtualBox.tar.bz2 -C /opt/VirtualBox

or as root:

mkdir /opt/VirtualBox
tar jxf ./install/VirtualBox.tar.bz2 -C /opt/VirtualBox

The sources for VirtualBox's kernel module are provided in the src directory. To build the module, change to the directory and issue

make

If everything builds correctly, issue the following command to install the module to the appropriate module directory:

sudo make install

In case you do not have sudo, switch the user account to root and perform

make install

The VirtualBox kernel module needs a device node to operate. The above make command will tell you how to create the device node, depending on your Linux system. The procedure is slightly different for a classical Linux setup with a /dev directory, a system with the now deprecated devfs and a modern Linux system with udev.

On certain Linux distributions, you might experience difficulties building the module. You will have to analyze the error messages from the build system to diagnose the cause of the problems. In general, make sure that the correct Linux kernel sources are used for the build process.

Note that the user who is going to run VirtualBox needs read and write permission on the VirtualBox kernel module device node /dev/vboxdrv. You can either define a vboxusers group by entering

groupadd vboxusers
chgrp vboxusers /dev/vboxdrv
chmod 660 /dev/vboxdrv

or, alternatively, simply give all users access (insecure, not recommended!)

chmod 666 /dev/vboxdrv

You should also add any users who will be allowed to use host USB devices in VirtualBox guests to the appropriate USB users group for your distribution. This group is often called usb or usbusers.

Next, you will have to install the system initialization script for the kernel module:

cp /opt/VirtualBox/vboxdrv.sh /etc/init.d/vboxdrv

(assuming you installed VirtualBox to the /opt/VirtualBox directory) and activate the initialization script using the right method for your distribution. You should create VirtualBox's configuration file:

mkdir /etc/vbox
echo INSTALL_DIR=/opt/VirtualBox > /etc/vbox/vbox.cfg

and, for convenience, create the following symbolic links:

ln -sf /opt/VirtualBox/VBox.sh /usr/bin/VirtualBox
ln -sf /opt/VirtualBox/VBox.sh /usr/bin/VBoxSVC
ln -sf /opt/VirtualBox/VBox.sh /usr/bin/VBoxManage

Before updating or uninstalling VirtualBox, you must terminate any virtual machines which are currently running and exit the VirtualBox or VBoxSVC applications. To update VirtualBox, simply run the installer of the updated version. To uninstall VirtualBox, invoke the installer like this:

sudo ./VirtualBox.run uninstall

or as root

./VirtualBox.run uninstall

To manually uninstall VirtualBox, simply undo the steps in the manual installation in reverse order.

The Debian packages will request some user feedback when installed for the first time. The debconf system is used to perform this task. To prevent any user interaction during installation, default values can be defined. A file vboxconf can contain the following debconf settings:

virtualbox virtualbox/module-compilation-allowed boolean true
virtualbox virtualbox/delete-old-modules boolean true

The first line allows compilation of the vboxdrv kernel module if no module was found for the current kernel. The second line allows the package to delete any old vboxdrv kernel modules compiled by previous installations.

These default settings can be applied with

debconf-set-selections vboxconf

prior to the installation of the VirtualBox Debian package.

The .rpm format does not provide a configuration system comparable to the debconf system. To configure the installation process of our .rpm packages, a file /etc/default/virtualbox is interpreted. The automatic generation of the udev rule can be prevented by the following setting:

INSTALL_NO_UDEV=1

The creation of the group vboxusers can be prevented by

INSTALL_NO_GROUP=1

If the line

INSTALL_NO_VBOXDRV=1

is specified, the package installer will not try to build the vboxdrv kernel module if no module according to the current kernel was found.