phpVirtualBox is an open source web interface for Oracle VirtualBox,
written in php with AJAX implementation. It allows you to remotely
manage VirtualBox instance, really useful when you don’t have GUI in
operating system. phpVirtualBox allows you control and manage guest
instance as like the VirtualBox GUI do, you wont find any difference
between the web interface and VirtualBox GUI. More to that phpVirtualBox
supports remote console via Oracle RDP web client that comes with
Extension Pack.
Here is the small guide to setup phpVirtualBox on Ubuntu (Its
supports all Linux Variants, its minimum requirement is to have the web
server installed with PHP support).
We need to modify the phpVirtualBox configuration to make the
successful communication with VirtualBox installation, first we need to
rename sample config file (config.php-example to config.php).
Following are the minimum configuration for phpVirtualBox. User Name /
Password for the system that runs VirtualBox, in my case i am using
user “raj”, because he will be configured to run vboxwebsrv service(
will be set in next step).
var $username = ‘raj’;
var $password = ‘x’;
If you are running VirtualBox and php are on the same host, leave the following $location as it is.
var $location = ‘http://127.0.0.1:18083/’;
Configure vboxweb-service:
VirtualBox setup creates init script vboxweb-service when it is
installed, this is used to start and stop the vboxwebserv, before
starting the service, we need to have /etc/default/virtualbox file
because it contains settings for the service . We need to create it
manually if it does not exists.
sodo nano /etc/default/virtualbox
We must set minimum VBOXWEB_USER to run the vboxweb-service, now
VirtualBox will run as “raj”; this user and password must be entered in
phpVirtualBox config file.
VBOXWEB_USER=raj
If you are running phpVirtualBox in some other host, VBOXWEB_HOST is
need to be set in the same file, in this case phpVirtualBox will
communicate with vboxweb-service over the network.
VBOXWEB_USER=raj
VBOXWEB_HOST=192.168.1.103
Restart the vboxweb-service.
sudo /etc/init.d/vboxweb-service restart
Now open a web browser and point to http://your-ip-address/virtualbox, you will be asked to login. Default login is admin /admin. phpVirtualBox – Login Page
You can find the created vm’s. You can either create a new vm or work on existing vms by taking console. phpVirtualBox – Home Page
To take a remote console you must install VirtualBox Extension Pack and also you have to Enable Remote Console.
You can take console by clicking console tab in browser. phpVirtualBox – WebRDP Console
OR
Take mstsc of host server where VirtualBox is running. phpVirtualBox – RDP Console
That’s All. We welcome your comments, please do comment in comments section.
