Sun Microsystems VIRTUALBOX VERSION 3.1.0_BETA2 User Manual
Page 28
1 First steps
Note: The “Settings” button is disabled while a VM is either in the “running”
or “saved” state. This is simply because the settings dialog allows you to
change fundamental characteristics of the virtual computer that is created for
your guest operating system, and this operating system may not take it well
when, for example, half of its memory is taken away from under its feet. As a
result, if the “Settings” button is disabled, shut down the current VM first.
VirtualBox provides a plethora of parameters that can be changed for a virtual ma-
chine. The various settings that can be changed in the “Settings” window are described
in detail in chapter
, page
. Even more parameters
are available with the command line interface; see chapter
page
For now, if you have just created an empty VM, you will probably be most interested
in the settings presented by the “CD/DVD-ROM” section if you want to make a CD-
ROM or a DVD-ROM available the first time you start it, in order to install your guest
operating system.
For this, you have two options:
• If you have actual CD or DVD media from which you want to install your guest
operating system (e.g. in the case of a Windows installation CD or DVD), put the
media into your host’s CD or DVD drive.
Then, in the settings dialog, go to the “CD/DVD-ROM” section and select “Host
drive” with the correct drive letter (or, in the case of a Linux host, device file).
This will allow your VM to access the media in your host drive, and you can
proceed to install from there.
• If you have downloaded installation media from the Internet in the form of an
ISO image file (most probably in the case of a Linux distribution), you would
normally burn this file to an empty CD or DVD and proceed as just described.
With VirtualBox however, you can skip this step and mount the ISO file directly.
VirtualBox will then present this file as a CD or DVD-ROM drive to the virtual
machine, much like it does with virtual hard disk images.
In this case, in the settings dialog, go to the “CD/DVD-ROM” section and select
“ISO image file”. This brings up the Virtual Disk Image Manager, where you
perform the following steps:
1. Press the “Add” button to add your ISO file to the list of registered images.
This will present an ordinary file dialog that allows you to find your ISO file
on your host machine.
2. Back to the manager window, select the ISO file that you just added and
press the “Select” button. This selects the ISO file for your VM.
The Virtual Disk Image Manager is described in detail in chapter
, page
28