is it possible to run virtualbox inside a docker container

Question

I tried running the container in privileged mode, but still the vboxdrv cannot be loaded.

I get

WARNING: The vboxdrv kernel module is not loaded. Eit         


        

Answer 1

2019:

• Virtualbox version: 6.0
• Docker version: 18.09.6
• Ubuntu 18.04

The key is to use a docker image that has systemd running. I chose jrei/systemd-ubuntu see here.

    docker run -d --privileged \
    --name systemd-ubuntu --network=host \
    --device /dev/vboxdrv:/dev/vboxdrv \
    -v /sys/fs/cgroup:/sys/fs/cgroup:ro \
    -v /tmp:/tmp -it jrei/systemd-ubuntu

Inside the container I ran:

    apt update
    apt -y install wget
    apt -y install gnupg2
    apt -y install systemd
    apt -y install software-properties-common
    wget -q https://www.virtualbox.org/download/oracle_vbox_2016.asc -O- | apt-key add -
    wget -q https://www.virtualbox.org/download/oracle_vbox.asc -O- | apt-key add -
    add-apt-repository "deb https://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian bionic contrib"
    apt update
    apt -y install virtualbox-6.0

Enjoy :-)