VMs on macOS 14.2 Sonoma

Turns out VirtualBox is not supported on macOS 14.2 Sonoma. But VMWare Fusion works.

UPDATE 2024-04-23 Latest VirtualBox 7.0.14 now does run.

RHEL7 on VirtualBox graphics controller

I have a RHEL7 VM on VirtualBox 6.0 which crashed right after a full update to RHEL 7.7, including kernel. Just typed "startx" (I usually make VMs boot into console), and it crashed immediately with a "Guru Meditation" from VirtualBox.

Taking a stab, I changed the Graphics Controller for the VM from VMSVGA to VBoxVGA, and it launched the GUI just fine.

Getting tilde in a Linux VirtualBox guest on Linux via X11 on Mac OS

I only just discovered this. On a Linux server at work (call it "workserver"), I run a VirtualBox VM. When I work on my Mac at home, I launch the XQuartz X11 server, and use VirtualBox on workserver displaying to my Mac.

This is not something I do often, so I had never encountered what I am about to describe until now. In a terminal on the guest, typing the ` key on my Mac gives <.  And typing Shift-` (which is usually ~) gives >.

Oddly, this does not happen with a guest that is running directly on the Mac as the host.

The kluge, which I found at this UK-based blog for surgeons, is to remap the key using xmodmap. (I thought I was done with xmodmap about 10 years ago.)  NB they have a typo: it should be “tilde” rather than “tilda”.  Create the file ~/.xmodmaprc with the following line:

    keycode 94 = grave asciitilda

And then:

    $ xmodmap ~/.xmodmaprc

What I don’t quite understand is the value of the keycode, 94. On the guest, I do:

$ sudo showkey -s

and then type the key I want to see. It emits the code 0x56 on press, and 0xd6 on release. I thought that would be the keycode (after conversion to decimal), but it is not.

My guess is that it is an issue with X11. In XQuartz, I tried the 4 combinations of setting and unsetting these two:

• Follow system keyboard layout
• Enable key equivalents under X11

but they did not change the way the grave/tilde key worked, i.e. it still emitted </>.

I also tried setting the keyboard locale:

$ localectl status  System Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8      VC Keymap: us     X11 Layout: us      X11 Model: pc105+inet    X11 Options: terminate: ctrl_alt_bksp$ localectl set-keymap us-mac$ localectl status  System Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8      VC Keymap: us-mac     X11 Layout: us      X11 Model: pc105+inet    X11 Options: terminate: ctrl_alt_bksp

but that did nothing, either.

Shorewall setup for VirtualBox host-only interface

VirtualBox has a networking mode called "host-only" which allows guests to communicate with each other, and the host to communicate with the guests.

To do this, a host-only network (interface) must be defined on the host. It can be done via GUI:

or via the commandline (needs sudo because this creates a new network interface on the host):

$ sudo vboxmanage hostonlyif create

This creates a host-only virtual interface on the host, named vboxnetN (N starts at 0 and increments for each new one):

$ ip addr list
...
12: vboxnet0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc pfifo_fast state UP qlen 1000
    link/ether ...
    inet 192.168.56.1/24 brd 192.168.56.255 scope global vboxnet0
    inet6 fe80::800:27ff:fe00:0/64 scope link 
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever

There are three things to do in Shorewall: define a zone, place the host-only interface into that zone, and write a rule.

In /etc/shorewall/zones define the new zone:

# /etc/shorewall/zones
#ZONE    TYPE   OPTIONS    IN                OUT
#                          OPTIONS           OPTIONS
vh       ipv4

In /etc/shorewall/interfaces put the host-only interface vboxnet0 in that zone:

# /etc/shorewall/interfaces

#ZONE    INTERFACE      BROADCAST    OPTIONS

vh       vboxnet0       detect       dhcp

And finally, in /etc/shorewall/rules allow all traffic in the vh zone:

# /etc/shorewall/rules

ACCEPT    vh:192.168.56.0/24    fw    all

On the guest, create a new adapter, and either use DHCP or assign it a static IP in 192.168.56.0/24 (excluding 192.168.56.1, which is the host's IP address).  Attach the adapter to the Host-only Adapter:

Or use the command line:

$ vboxmanage modifyvm myguest --nic2 hostonly

Restart the shorewall service, and that should do it. Test it out by ssh'ing into the guest from the host.