VirtualBox Guest Additions with Shared Folders on Mac OS X
In order to access certain aspects of a virtual machine in VirtualBox, you will need to install Guest Additions (similar to VMWare Tools I guess)
There is a manual page for installing Guest Additions but not all of it is self-explanatory…
Install DKMS
This part is relatively straightforward.
sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get upgrade sudo apt-get install dkms
Where to find VBoxGuestAdditions.iso
Usefully Oracle don’t tell you in their guide, but it is available with the rest of the downloads at http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/
So for example for version 4.1.6 the VBoxGuestAdditions_4.1.6.iso is located at http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/4.1.6/VBoxGuestAdditions_4.1.6.iso
How to mount the image
Since I can’t remember the last time I had to mount something in *nix from the command-line, here’s a quick way.
sudo mkdir /dev/dvd sudo mount /dev/dvd1 /mnt/dvd/ cd /mnt/dvd
Then you should see VBoxLinuxAdditions, which you need to run as per the manual. If the above doesn’t work it might be because your DVD drive in VirtualBox is called something else, like dvd (instead of dvd1) which probably differs depending on which distro you’re using.
Then you need to run the installer.
sudo sh ./VBoxLinuxAdditions.run
Once that’s done you can restart.
sudo reboot now
Kernel header problems
I got some missing kernel header problems when trying to install Guest Additions, which if building the main Guest Additions module fails will be logged.
cat /var/log/vboxadd-install.log
If you see something like this…
Error! Your kernel headers for kernel 2.6.35-28-generic cannot be found at /lib/modules/2.6.35-28-generic/build or /lib/modules/2.6.35-28-generic/source.
You can use the --kernelsourcedir option to tell DKMS where it's located, or you could install the linux-headers-2.6.35-28-generic package.
So you can do just that!
sudo apt-get install linux-headers-2.6.35-28-generic sudo ./VBoxLinuxAdditions.run
Hopefully this should install now (although the XFree86 bit will fail, assuming you’re using the command-line) and you may need to restart the VM, although I’m not sure.
Mount the host folder
You can create the host folder in the VirtualBox Manager in the Shared Folders tab on the Settings for that VM. If you add it on the command-line it’ll appear under the machine folders anyways. If you want to type it though, here’s what you’d type into the Mac OS X terminal (note this is the only thing that you’d type into the host itself)
VBoxManage sharedfolder add "my-ubuntu-vm" \ --name "websites" --hostpath "/Users/andrew/pizza"
To mount the Shared Folder from within the guest, the instructions from Ubuntu (as my guest is Ubuntu, although I think this is a better way to mount it anyways) were very useful.
sharename="whatever.you.want.to.call.it"; sudo mkdir /mnt/$sharename \ sudo chmod 777 /mnt/$sharename \ sudo mount -t vboxsf -o uid=1000,gid=1000 $sharename /mnt/$sharename \ ln -s /mnt/$sharename $HOME/Desktop/$sharename
Just change the target to be wherever you want the Shared Folder to be mounted in the guest. Now in theory if you go to that path in the guest, it should be the same as the directory you shared from the host!
Zend Server lighttp not running (phpMyAdmin) but Apache is? How to start it manually
If for some reason you’ve powered on and while Apache seems to be running OK, lighttp isn’t (for example phpMyAdmin isn’t working on localhost:10081/phpmyadmin) then you will need to start it manually. This is probably caused by a dirty restart, such as a power failure. On Mac OS X run this command…
sudo /usr/local/zend/bin/lighttpdctl.sh start
For Windows, I’m afraid I will have to find that out!
Samba share path incorrect even though it’s mounted in the Finder
Sometimes if a Samba share (Windows share or a Samba share from Unix) does not disconnect cleanly in Mac OS X, you may end up with a broken symlink in /Volumes/
This means that even if you re-mount the same share, and it will be named the same in the Finder, the actual symlink path won’t be the same. For example if you’re using a Workspace in Eclipse that points to that share, you won’t be able to use it because /Volumes/ will look like this:
Andrew:Volumes andrew$ pwd /Volumes Andrew:Volumes andrew$ ls Macintosh HD share share-1
The old symlink will still be there, and it will create another one with a number appended. If this does happen, disconnect the Samba share from the Finder, then delete the remaining share from /Volumes/ and then re-mount it in the Finder.
The share should then mount with the correct path!
Configuring Zend Server CE on Mac OS X
Unlike Windows which doesn’t come with Apache by default, or distributions of Linux which (usually) have their own package management systems, Mac OS X comes with an outdated version of Apache which isn’t handled by package management. This means it’s a pain to either update or remove it. Any Mac PHP developer will probably have tried MAMP which gives you a relatively pain-free installation, but for anything complex it can be a bit tricky due to the way it’s self-contained. As a Zend Framework developer I use Zend Server and Zend Server CE at work now and figured now that I’ve got to do some work at home I should look to get it installed and configured…
Just to check that everything is working OK to start with, go to http://localhost/ and you should see the default Mac OS X homepage which will be located in your Sites directory.
Installation
Download Zend Server CE from Zend and install as usual.
Configuration
Disable the default Apache installation
apachectl stop
Replace the default apachectl with Zend Server’s apachectl
Easiest way to do this (without uninstalling anything) is to replace the default apachectl with Zend Server’s apachectl, that way it will just appear to be launching Apache as per usual when OS X starts up.
Firstly move apachectl to a safe place, such as your home directory:
cd /usr/sbin/
sudo mv apachectl /Users/yourusername/
Then create a symbolic link to Zend Server’s apachectl:
sudo ln -s /usr/local/zend/apache2/bin/apachectl ./
Start Zend Server’s Apache:
sudo apachectl start
You should then see:
/usr/sbin/apachectl start [OK]
This will indicate that you are running Zend Server’s Apache as opposed to Mac OS X’s Apache (as the latter doesn’t output to the terminal when you start/stop it) although if you go to http://localhost/ you will notice that you will get a 404.
Configure Apache to use port 80
I’m assuming to avoid any conflict with the default Apache installation that Zend Studio’s Apache comes preconfigured to use port 10088. To change this simply edit the configuration:
sudo vi /usr/local/zend/apache2/conf/httpd.conf
… or if you dont use Vi, use another text editor such as Nano:
sudo nano /usr/local/zend/apache2/conf/httpd.conf
Look for the line Listen 10088, then either comment it out and add a new line or edit the port to be port 80.
#Listen 10088 Listen 80
You may also need to change the DocumentRoot and first Directory parameters to your webroot (/Users/username/Sites for example)
Save httpd.conf (Ctrl + x in Nano to exit then y to save) and restart Apache:
sudo apachectl restart
If you go to http://localhost/ in your browser you should now see the default Mac OS X homepage, as httpd.conf should already be setup to point to your Sites directory by default.
If you get any complaints about the FQDN when you start Apache, such as:
httpd: Could not reliably determine the server's fully qualified domain name, using iMac.local for ServerName
Then you need to explicitely set the name of the domain to be used (in this case, localhost)
#ServerName www.example.com:10088 ServerName localhost:80
Configure Zend Framework
sudo ln -s /usr/local/zend/share/ZendFramework/bin/zf.sh ./zf
Configure Pear
sudo ln -s /usr/local/zend/bin/pear ./
sudo pear upgrade pear
Configure MySQL
You can create symbolic links for the typical MySQL commands if you wish (although you can change the include paths for the shell if you so desire)
sudo ln -s /usr/local/zend/mysql/bin/mysql ./
sudo ln -s /usr/local/zend/mysql/bin/mysqladmin ./
sudo vi /usr/local/zend/mysql/data/my.cnf
#socket = /usr/local/zend/mysql/tmp/mysql.sock
socket = /tmp/mysql.sock
Configure phpMyAdmin
If you change the web root for Apache, you will have to create a Directory entry and Alias for phpMyAdmin, since it exists somewhere else:
sudo vi /usr/local/zend/apache2/conf/httpd.conf
Alias /phpMyAdmin /usr/local/zend/share/phpmyadmin
<Directory "/usr/local/zend/share/phpmyadmin"> Options Indexes FollowSymLinks AllowOverride All Order allow,deny Allow from all </Directory>
Install PHPUnit
sudo pear channel-discover pear.phpunit.de
sudo pear channel-discover components.ez.no
sudo pear channel-discover pear.symfony-project.com
sudo pear update-channels
sudo pear install --alldeps phpunit/PHPUnit
sudo ln -s /usr/local/zend/bin/phpunit ./
sudo pear install --alldeps phpunit/PHPUnit
Mac OS X Apache not starting properly
Whilst trying to figure out why Zend Server CE wasn’t working properly on my Mac (again…) I realised that something was wrong with the version of Apache shipped with OS X. Luckily Chris Oliver found the problem in the Apache control script.
It’d be nice if web stacks were as simple as on Linux (or even Windows) but you can but dream…
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