VirtualBox, Windows, and CD-ROMs

[RoadHazard]

Okay, I'm stumped.

I've got Windows 7 32-bit running as the guest OS within VirtualBox. Everything's fine (for Windows...). I have successfully mounted an .iso image, as well as a shared folder for passing files between Windows and FreeNAS. That part's all dandy.

What I want to do now is let Windows read from (any maybe write to) a real, live shiny CD. I've mounted my FreeNAS system's internal CD-R/W drive at /media/cdrom and FreeNAS can read its contents no problem. But I can't figure out the magic incantations to make VirtualBox and/or Windows see it.

Most of the suggestions I've seen online mention a "passthrough" option which doesn't appear anywhere on my phpVirtualBox GUI, or they mention selecting "host drive" choices that also don't appear anywhere. I do have a "Live CD/DVD" checkbox option but that doesn't seem to do anything.

Any hints?

 

[pirateghost]

You keep trying to use virtualbox on freenas for stuff it was never intended.

 

[RichTJ99]

I am interested in learning about this. I have not tried passthrough but was thinking about using it for a usb drive (not thumb). I think it is possible within windows virtualbox (as host) but I have no idea if it works with Freenas.

 

[RoadHazard]

Okay... fair enough... but then why does FreeNAS come with a VirtualBox jail template?

Granted, VirtualBox isn't one of the one-click plugins. But it is one of the few ready-made jail templates that comes with FreeNAS. What's it there for if not to be used? Based on the number of VirtualBox-related questions (and answers) here and elsewhere, it seems to be a popular install.

I'm no expert on FreeNAS, VirtualBox, or *nix in general, but it doesn't feel like I'm performing any unnatural acts here. If it's not intended for running virtual machines on a FreeNAS host, then what *is* it for?

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

The VirtualBox jail is very useful. The part that's tripping you up is trying to mount a physical optical disk. Just make an ISO image and use that.

 

[pirateghost]

Virtualbox can be used on freenas to run some basic virtual machines.

All it takes is a few minutes of using virtualbox on your desktop PC to understand how limited it is on freenas.

Want to install a linux distribution? Virtualbox on freenas works just fine.

Want to install Windows? Virtualbox on freenas works well enough to get a basic usable VM.

Your issue is that you keep reading about virtualbox on websites and thinking that you have a full virtualbox install. You don't. Virtualbox is NOT a type 1 hypervisor. It is intended to be used on a desktop. It was hacked into freenas as a jail, in order to appease the people that wanted to run linux on their freenas boxes. For that it runs really well. For anything that you want to do outside of a basic VM, it fails miserably.

You just make too many assumptions about what it IS.

 

[RoadHazard]

Yup, agree completely. I'm impressed with how well VirtualBox works (especially for free software), and how stable it's been. Overall, a very happy experience. My confusion arose because nothing in its official documentation makes it clear that it's really better suited for desktop hosts and not headless systems, as you point out. In fact, it gave quite the opposite impression. It proudly boasts Windows, Solaris, MacOS, etc. as guest operating systems and Linux, Solaris, etc. as host operating systems. It doesn't spell out the fairly serious limitations of some of those combinations. For example, the section on 3D acceleration that tripped me up earlier gave no indication that it wouldn't work in my kind of environment. Maybe that's assumed and I just didn't get the hint. In hindsight, GPU support would be a pretty impressive feat, but the entire thing is pretty impressive, so 3D support seemed entirely reasonable. I just figured I'd misconfigured something.

Same goes for accessing a live CD-ROM drive. The VirtualBox documentation makes it sound trivially easy -- which it is, on a PC -- but no hint that it's flat impossible on other types of hosts. Again, maybe that was assumed. I'll dial back my expectations and be satisfied with what it does do. Thanks for the help.

 

[RoadHazard]

The VirtualBox jail is very useful. The part that's tripping you up is trying to mount a physical optical disk. Just make an ISO image and use that.

It is very useful, to a point. Now I have a better idea of where its limitations are.

I can easily mount .ISO images all day long, but that requires sticking a CD/DVD into a separate system to make the .ISO in the first place. Much simpler to just feed the shiny disc into the FreeNAS/VirtualBox system, but it doesn't sound like that's ever going to happen.

 

[pirateghost]

Virtualbox documentation doesn't talk about headless systems because it isn't officially supported by them. Phpvirtualbox is a hacked together system to 'work' on headless systems.

 

[Mirfster]

I can easily mount .ISO images all day long, but that requires sticking a CD/DVD into a separate system to make the .ISO in the first place. Much simpler to just feed the shiny disc into the FreeNAS/VirtualBox system, but it doesn't sound like that's ever going to happen.

Ah, but that shiny disc has limitations opposed to an ISO:

1. It can get scratched/damaged
2. It requires an additional piece of hardware to use
   
3. It can only be used in one place at time
4. It can never run as fast as an Emulated/Mounted ISO (think reading from hard drive or network speeds)
5. You only have one copy of it; unless your into buying multiple copies...
   • And if you were going to make copies, you minus well just make the ISO image instead :p

 

[RichTJ99]

On a similar / slight off topic, I did download the free ESXI version from VMware for testing to see how the passthrough actually works. It wont help with this particular issue but I am interested in seeing the differences between the PHPvirtualbox & ESXI.

 

[pirateghost]

I am interested in seeing the differences between the PHPvirtualbox & ESXI.

Completely different. Lol. Not even close. Esxi is a real hypervisor. Virtualbox is a desktop VM