Virtualbox + image for programming classes

[mwbutler]

Hi all

I've been asked to look into creating a software package for Virtualbox + an image of XP (our new PCs have 2gb ram - not enough for a virtualbox + W7) for programming classes that are going to happen sometime next school year. This also needs to be ideally free but if you know of some relatively cheap solutions my boss may be persuaded to go down that route.

I had a go at getting a package made with Virtualbox + an XP image and it didn’t quite work as intended – the XP image doesn’t show up for any users in Virtualbox and they cannot access the C Drive to load up the images. However this is possibly a good thing as I don’t see how we would go about resetting the Virtual image without reinstalling the software package after each use (it does have a snapshot feature but if these got deleted then we’re back to reinstalling the software again).

What I think it possibly a good idea is – I can make a simple Virtualbox package which doesn’t contain any Virtual images and install that on any PC we want it on. Then in a student accessible drive I can put a previously exported Virtual image of XP in a folder then all anyone has to do is double click it and import it into Virtualbox. This takes 2 clicks and about 3 minutes to import it on my PC.

Or I can try again and get Virtualbox to have an image pre-loaded when any user runs the software.

What do you guys think? Have you looked into doing this yet and if so what have you done?

Thanks for any suggestions

Matt

[tumbleweed]

Chapter*8.*VBoxManage - vboxmanage is the CLI to do all sorts of clever stuff, registervm might be what you need to look at.

[Steve21]

Or I can try again and get Virtualbox to have an image pre-loaded when any user runs the software.

What do you guys think? Have you looked into doing this yet and if so what have you done?

Thanks for any suggestions

Matt

Been looking into this recently too.

The best way I've found to load it is using:

"C:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox\VBoxSDL.exe" --comment "TestCoding" --startvm "24da79dc-1abd-4727-b5d7-5e2f360ea82d"

VBOXSDL runs the machine without any config/admin tools, so no way to edit modify the image/setup etc.

Comment shows at the top of the screen so you can make it pretty and display stuff

And VM guid tells it which image to load on running, so no picking what they want! pewpew

Still stuck on trying to make shared areas for saving to, that aren't accessible from normal accounts

Steve

[bigfoot780]

I've made a XP VM in virtualbox and enbale the rdp server in virtualbox. The students can then rdp in it 127.0.0.1 .
Take off file permissions for .rdp files. Slight delay with usb sticks.

[Steve21]

I've made a XP VM in virtualbox and enbale the rdp server in virtualbox. The students can then rdp in it 127.0.0.1 .
Take off file permissions for .rdp files. Slight delay with usb sticks.

What stops them copying games etc into the VM and running it, if you're doing it off USB?

Steve

[jamesfed]

Would be a bit more of a project but System Centre Config Manager can give you the ablity to (through a web portal) allow students access VMs hosted on a server - can do snapshotting ect with no issues.

[bigfoot780]

USB stick would just be used to get work off the xp machine. But good point. I only made it in anticipaton of the new curriculum focused on programming. Though the vm would be on the C Drive which is protected by deep freeze.

[jtotheb]

Been looking into this recently too.

The best way I've found to load it is using:

"C:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox\VBoxSDL.exe" --comment "TestCoding" --startvm "24da79dc-1abd-4727-b5d7-5e2f360ea82d"

That's very similar to how we've done it except we have the VM snapshotted so that it's boxfresh on every use. We map a shared folder into the VM for file transfer, but only programming students have access to it.