VirtualBox Starting DVDK Virtual Machine

Info Box Applies to DVDK

This page describes the basic procedure to start the DVDK virtual machine in VirtualBox.

We assume that the VirtualBox package is already installed in the user's host machine

Starting the Virtual Machine

The virtual machine image can be provided either in a .vbox file or a .ova file. The first is a plain virtualbox VM file, while the second is a virtual application exported in Open Virtualization Format (OVF). Please find below the instructions for both cases.

Using a .vbox file

1. Decompress the DVDK compressed archive on your file system. You should see two files, with .vbox extension (the virtual machine definition) and .vdi extension (the actual virtual machine):
   
   
   
   
2. Start the Oracle VM VirtualBox Manager
   
   
   
   
3. Click on Machine and select Add
   
   
   
   
4. Navigate your file system and select the .vbox file previously decompressed

Using a .ova file

Due to file system limitation, the OVA file may be delivered as a splitted compressed 7zip archive. In this case, use 7zip compressor to rassemble the original compressed .7z file (for example, see here).

By default, released OVA files require host CPU's hardware virtualization extensions such as Intel VT-x and AMD-V. If these extension are disabled at BIOS level, VirtualBox can't run imported virtual machine. Two options are available to solve this issue: enable such extensions at host machines's BIOS level disable the use of such extensions in the virtual machine configuration; to do that, please open Settings->System->Acceleration box in the VirtualBox Manager. Please note that this reduces the performances of the virtual machine significantly.

1. Start the Oracle VM VirtualBox Manager
   
   
   
   
2. Click on File and select "Import Appliance", then click on "Open Virtual Application":
   
   
   
   
3. Navigate your file system and select the .ova file provided with the development kit:
   
   
   
   
4. Click "Next" and on the next window click on "Import"
   
   
   
   

Launching the VM

1. Now that the virtual machine is ready, launch it by clicking on the start icon:
   
   
   
   
2. VirtualBox will open three message windows like the following, you can click "Ok" to close them
   
   
   
   
3. When the boot process is completed, you can login into the Ubuntu system
   
   
   
   with the credentials provided with the development kit (you can find them into the README file contained in the dvdk folder of the kit distribution).

Guest Additions Update

Once logged in, the system could suggest to update the Virtualbox Guest Additions package. You can follow the on-screen instructions to easily install the updated package.

Next Steps

1. Check if your keyboard layout matches the Ubuntu keyboard settings. You can change the keyboard layout selecting System->Preferences->Keyboard from the top panel menu.
2. Configure the Virtual Machine network interface: VirtualBox Network Configuration