Need some help in setting linux vm in virtualbox!!

heiseNberg

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I had installed kali linux in virtualbox just to see how it is. Now I want to install ubuntu and stat learning about it in virtualbox. How and what to do now!! Should I remove and delete all files related to kali vm in virtualbox and then fresh instal new vm (ubuntu) in virtualbox?
Or is there a better way of running two os in virtualbox i.e kali and ubuntu !! I guess the first option will be better. Just help me know is the way of doing this is correct or not!!
 


Hey, you just need to create a separate VM from VirtualBox's main window:

Screenshot from 2022-01-09 18-48-25.png


Just download an Ubuntu .iso suitable for installation.

Then, open VirtualBox to see the above window and press the button "New" that looks like a blue sun, and follow the wizard.
 
Hey, you just need to create a separate VM from VirtualBox's main window:

View attachment 11434

Just download an Ubuntu .iso suitable for installation.

Then, open VirtualBox to see the above window and press the button "New" that looks like a blue sun, and follow the wizard.
Won't there be any issue or problem of slowness with the system by running two os in one VM!? Or any problem with storage or ram in my host os!!
I had already allocated 2gb(out of 8) memory for kali...now how much memory ram should I select for ubuntu vm!!
 
No. (& welcome to linux.org :) )

You won't be able to run both at once, just one at a time, then power that off and start up the other.

So the resources deployed will only be the RAM you allocate to each one.

Virtualbox is not the VM itself, simply a tool to create and run a VM. Each of Kali and Ubuntu are the VMs.

Chris Turner
wizardfromoz
 
wizardfromoz said:
You won't be able to run both at once, just one at a time, then power that off and start up the other.

Not really, you indeed will be able to run as many VM at once as your host's hardware and its hypervisor allows you to.

Here you are with Windows 10 and 11 on VirtualBox over Fedora.

Screenshot from 2022-01-09 19-00-21.png


Indeed, most of penetration testing courses will lead you through creating a network between them and run experiments across as many as 7 in my past experience (using the bare minimum virtualised hardware for them to boot and be exploitable, I must say).

As @wizardfromoz addressed, each Virtual Machine will have dedicated virtualised hardware and separate virtual hard disks. The magic is all done by the hypervisor (Virtual Box) which will allocate those virtualised hardware sets to physical ones, either by allocating cores or doing old fashioned time sharing when you run out of physical cores... or as it suits it best, long story short.

Anyway, unless you're experimenting with more than one at a time, it's better to use them one by one.
 
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You won't be able to run both at once, just one at a time,

Pfft... Why do you think I have so much RAM and beefy CPUs?!? I sometimes have two or three open at the same time, especially when I set aside time to maintain them. I'll have a few of 'em up and running while I install updates.
 
I stand corrected (actually, I am seated).

Thanks, guys. :) (Note to self, don't try to answer questions on VMs)

Wiz
 
If memory serves, I had six open at one time and even though I still had plenty of resources left it just lagged and then eventually froze. So, I never have more than a few open at a time. Freezing a half dozen OSes at the same time was a horrible mess.
 
If memory serves, I had six open at one time and even though I still had plenty of resources left it just lagged and then eventually froze. So, I never have more than a few open at a time. Freezing a half dozen OSes at the same time was a horrible mess.
If they froze, it might have been due to clogging the access to disk, which is the most immediate bottleneck to running more than one OS at a time in a given host. It is by far the slowest resource, and the one where the access bus has less bandwith to run operations in parallel.

If you are going to experiment with many VM, the motherboard / drive controller and the drives access speed are crucial factors of success.
 
If you are going to experiment with many VM, the motherboard / drive controller and the drives access speed are crucial factors of success.

Yeah, that's a likely bottleneck. At the time (assuming my memory is correct) I'd have had an SSD - but not the NVMe M.2 SSD. I should try it again with NVMe storage. These days, I just stick to three as a max. That's enough to be useful, even when verifying stuff to write articles.
 
You won't be able to run both at once, just one at a time, then power that off and start up the other.

You mean you dont have 10 running at once? :D

1641768026921.png
 
Freezing a half dozen OSes at the same time was a horrible mess.

no pain, no gain! (although I'm not really sure what the gain here is)
 
no pain, no gain! (although I'm not really sure what the gain here is)

LOL Instead of fixing one system, I had seven that may have had issues - as they were in the midst of upgrading at the time of the freeze. I'll try it again on a system with NVMe in it and see if I can bump that number up. I ain't scared!
 
Back when I was messing with Kali, earlier last year - I had three VM’s running at a time on my 8gb i3 laptop.
Kali, Damn Vulnerable Linux and Windows XP.

It just took a couple of ice ages to start all three VM’s at once, but once they were all booted and running, it wasn’t too bad.

Took a little while for the system to settle when switching context from one VM to another, or from a VM to my host desktop (or vice-versa).

I did have a W10 VM too, but it was a bit of a resource hog and ran like an absolute pig. Which is why I added the XP VM! Ha ha!
 
I have a machine with 8 cores and 32 gigs of memory that runs 5 moderately busy VM's. My virtualized firewall runs at near 100 percent much of the time. Virtual network interfaces are terribly CPU intensive. Large DB queries quickly hammer the VM being run against. You get what you pay for unfortunately. For experimental purposes I can make a piece of desktop hardware do what I need it to do. With lots of resources you might be able to spin up a dozen VM's just don't do anything other than let them idle... :)
 
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NVME helps, 3 NICs help, 24 cores helps (a lot) and 64GB RAM helps)
 

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