[CentOS-virt] Build VirtualBox OSE for CentOS?

[Greg Bailey]

Johnny Hughes wrote:
> The FULL version is the one that is available from the site as an RPM 
> (VirtualBox-1.5.4_27034_rhel5-1.i586.rpm) and is the binary only app. 
> It is *_NOT_OPEN_SOURCE_* and *_NOT_REDISTRIBUTABLE_*. That version 
> has all the bells and whistles (usb, iSCSI support, RDP Support, 
> etc.). That version is only available for personal use and not 
> available for use in businesses without a paid license, there is no 
> SRPM for it.
>
> The Open Source Edition (OSE) is the tarball that is not an RPM:
>
> http://www.virtualbox.org/download/1.5.4/VirtualBox-1.5.4_OSE.tar.bz2
>
> It is integrated into ubuntu, gentoo, debian unstable and maybe some 
> others, is open source (GPLv2), and it is usable by everyone.  It does 
> not have an RPM or binary available from the site (the tarball is 
> Source aonly files that need compiled) and it does not have usb, 
> iSCSI, RDP, support.
>
This was the reason I wanted to use the OSE (GPLv2) version--I was 
working with some people who needed to support a Windows Server 2003 
virtual machine, and by using VirtualBox OSE they only had to worry 
about licensing Windows (?!) as opposed to BOTH Windows AND VMware Server.

I also think it's nice to have a ready-to-download GPL version because 
it provides a mechanism where people who don't have Xen-ready hardware 
can experiment with virtualization, and it's much smaller (but 
admittedly far less capable) than VMware Server...

> To make this OSE version into an RPM will take some work, but I 
> personally would not use it very much as I would probably need usb and 
> rdp support for any VM I create ... so that is why I brought it up.
>
I've made a stab at some of this work, as posted previously:

http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos-virt/2007-November/000106.html

One of the things I wanted to change from the commercial version was to 
make use of DKMS to build the kernel module(s) automagically.

> See this for any questions:
>
> http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Editions
>
> <snip>
>
> Thanks,
> Johnny Hughes
>


-Greg