VBox in non-global Zone under-documented at best

[David Abrahams]

The documentation doesn't mention what one needs to do to get the kernel module to load, for example. Until you successfully get the kernel module loaded in the global zone, you're going nowhere. The only way I found to do that was to run VBox from the global zone, which is kind of unsatisfying if you're trying to keep it out of the global zone for security enhancement. If you really intend to support working this way, I think the documentation needs to be tested and fixed up.

[Ramshankar Venkataraman]

The prerequisites documentation for using VirtualBox on Solaris non-global zones is present in section 2.x (Configuring a Zone for Running VirtualBox) of the User Manual.

[David Abrahams]

I know where it is in the manual, but it's incomplete. Try taking a fresh install of OpenSolaris and VBox and following exactly those instructions. They don't work.

AFAICT, the kernel module must be installed in the global zone, and you need to do something like run the GUI from the global zone to get the module to load before any of the headless commands will work in the non-global zone. I think there's a way to get the non-global zone to load the kernel module, but I don't know what it is.

[Ramshankar Venkataraman]

That looks like the "virtualbox/zoneaccess" service is not running. Check svcs -a | grep -i virtualbox

You should see the "zoneaccess" service online. The installer automatically runs the service, unless you install the IPS/pkg(5) package in which case you need to run /opt/VirtualBox/ipsinstall.sh (or reboot your system once after installing).

[David Abrahams]

disabled       Oct_06   svc:/application/virtualbox/webservice:default
disabled       Oct_06   svc:/application/virtualbox/zoneaccess:default

Okay. But why are those services disabled? I did follow the directions. The logs are pretty unrevealing.

[Ramshankar Venkataraman]

The zoneaccess service is enabled on installation, unless explicity it got disabled by some other service. If they 'failed' they would go into maintenance mode and there would be an SMF log indicating some failure, but since it's disabled I presume it got disabled by some other service.

Closing for now, please reopen if problem persist.

[David Abrahams]

So before closing as “works for me,” this did you, as I suggested, “try taking a fresh install of OpenSolaris? and VBox and following exactly those instructions” (i.e. the ones in section 2.x?)