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VirtualBox needs several kernel drivers installed and needs to start several services: if the drivers and services are not already installed you’ll need adminis

by mkesper 13y ago

VirtualBox needs several kernel drivers installed and needs to start several services: if the drivers and services are not already installed you’ll need administrator rights to run Portable-VirtualBox. So that's absolutely useless. If you've got admin rights, you can install whatever you want. If you don't, well...

marcustek 13y ago
Was just wondering the same thing. Do you know of any other portable solution that would allow me to have a graphical shell (Linux distribution or Windows) and just basically have emulator + vm on a flash drive ready to be launched anywhere, without admin rights?
- dspillett 13y ago
  It would be theoretically possible to do it all in user-land (needing no direct kernel access), but for an arbitrary OS to work pretty much absolutely everything including the CPU would have to be emulated so it would be very very slow compared to bare metal. Think DOSBox and similar. With changes to the guest OS it gets better: more can be done relatively native. Have a look at "user mode linux" for a good example of that There were attempts to make this work under Windows but I think those projects died pretty quickly as people just used kernel mode vitualisers instead for efficiency so there wasn't massive interest (cooperative Linux is somewhere between: it works in a similar manner to UML but requires admin access).
- toni 13y ago
  There is another Portable VirtualBox distribution[1] that normally does not install any service or driver. Only if you want to use a "Bridge Network" you need to install the drivers. I usually work with "NAT" option and in that case you don't need to install anything. [1] http://portableappz.blogspot.com/2012/08/virtualbox-4120-80170-420-80231-rc2-x86.html http://portableappz.blogspot.com/2012/08/virtualbox-4120-801...
  - shadowfox 13y ago
    This one also seems to require admin rights?
- rlx0x 13y ago
  qemu can run portable, no root/admin necessary.
- nodata 13y ago
  CoLinux might do it: http://www.colinux.org/ http://www.colinux.org/
atmosx 13y ago
Maybe it's a first step towards a self-contained binary. Let's hope for the best but at this point in time, you're right.
brubaker 13y ago
That is short sighted and outright ignorant.

by mkesper 13y ago

marcustek 13y ago

Was just wondering the same thing. Do you know of any other portable solution that would allow me to have a graphical shell (Linux distribution or Windows) and just basically have emulator + vm on a flash drive ready to be launched anywhere, without admin rights?

dspillett 13y ago
It would be theoretically possible to do it all in user-land (needing no direct kernel access), but for an arbitrary OS to work pretty much absolutely everything including the CPU would have to be emulated so it would be very very slow compared to bare metal. Think DOSBox and similar. With changes to the guest OS it gets better: more can be done relatively native. Have a look at "user mode linux" for a good example of that There were attempts to make this work under Windows but I think those projects died pretty quickly as people just used kernel mode vitualisers instead for efficiency so there wasn't massive interest (cooperative Linux is somewhere between: it works in a similar manner to UML but requires admin access).
toni 13y ago
There is another Portable VirtualBox distribution[1] that normally does not install any service or driver. Only if you want to use a "Bridge Network" you need to install the drivers. I usually work with "NAT" option and in that case you don't need to install anything. [1] http://portableappz.blogspot.com/2012/08/virtualbox-4120-80170-420-80231-rc2-x86.html http://portableappz.blogspot.com/2012/08/virtualbox-4120-801...
- shadowfox 13y ago
  This one also seems to require admin rights?
rlx0x 13y ago
qemu can run portable, no root/admin necessary.
nodata 13y ago
CoLinux might do it: http://www.colinux.org/ http://www.colinux.org/

atmosx 13y ago

Maybe it's a first step towards a self-contained binary. Let's hope for the best but at this point in time, you're right.

brubaker 13y ago

That is short sighted and outright ignorant.