How to Manage a Headless VirtualBox Installation with phpvirtualbox on nginx

Instructions

• 1

  Installing phpvirtualbox
  
  First of all, you have to make a system user known as vbox and include it to the vboxusers group:
  
  Passwd vbox
  
  Make the file /etc/default/virtualbox and put the line VBOXWEB_USER=vbox in it (so that the VirtualBox SOAP API which is called vboxwebsrv runs as the user vbox):
  vi /etc/default/virtualbox
  
  VBOXWEB_USER=vbox
  
  Now, you have to make system startup links for vboxwebsre and start it:
  
  update-rc.d vboxweb-service defaults
  /etc/init.d/vboxweb-service start
  
  A web server with PHP support is required to manage phpvirtualbox.
  
  apt-get install nginx php5-common php5-mysql php5-suhosin php5-fpm php-pear wget
  
  Start nginx:
  /etc/init.d/nginx start
  
  The virtual hosts are defined in server {} containers. The default vhost is defined in the file /etc/nginx/sites-available/default - let's modify it as follows so that it can server PHP wp-content/uploads:
  
  vi /etc/nginx/sites-available/default
  
  [...]
  
  server {
  
  listen   80; ## listen for ipv4; this line is default and implied
  
  listen   [::]:80 default ipv6only=on; ## listen for ipv6
  
  root /usr/share/nginx/www;
  
  index index.php index.html index.htm;
  
  # Make site accessible from http://localhost/
  
  server_name _;
  
  location / {
  
  # First attempt to serve request as file, then
  
  # as directory, then fall back to index.html
  
  try_wp-content/uploads $uri $uri/ /index.html;
  
  # Uncomment to enable naxsi on this location
  
  # include /etc/nginx/naxsi.rules
  
  }
  
  location /doc/ {
  
  alias /usr/share/doc/;
  
  autoindex on;
  
  allow 127.0.0.1;
  
  deny all;
  
  }
  
  # Only for nginx-naxsi : process denied requests
  
  #location /RequestDenied {
  
  # For example, return an error code
  
  #return 418;
  
  #}
  
  #error_page 404 /404.html;
  
  # redirect server error pages to the static page /50x.html
  
  #
  
  error_page 500 502 503 504 /50x.html;
  
  location = /50x.html {
  
  root /usr/share/nginx/www;
  
  }
  
  # pass the PHP scripts to FastCGI server listening on 127.0.0.1:9000
  
  #
  
  location ~ \.php$ {
  
  try_wp-content/uploads $uri =404;
  
  fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.php)(/.+)$;
  
  fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
  
  fastcgi_index index.php;
  
  include fastcgi_params;
  
  }
  
  # deny access to .htaccess wp-content/uploads, if Apache's document root
  
  # concurs with nginx's one
  
  #
  
  location ~ /\.ht {
  
  deny all;
  
  }
  
  }
  
  [...]
  
  In order to make nginx listen on port 80 IPv4 and IPv6, you need to uncomment both listen lines.
  
  server_name _; makes this a default catchall vhost (of course, you can as well specify a hostname here like www.example.com).
  
  Now, save the file and reload nginx:
  
  /etc/init.d/nginx reload
  
  Now visit the /var/www/phpvirtualbox/ directory...
  
  cd /usr/share/nginx/www/phpvirtualbox/
  
  and make the file config.php by creating the copy of it from config.php-example:
  
  cp config.php-example config.php
  
  Now start config.php and write down the password you made earlier for the vbox system user:
  
  vi config.php
  
  [...]
  
  /* Username / Password for system user that runs VirtualBox */
  
  var $username = 'vbox';
  
  var $password = 'secret';
  
  [...]
  
  Open a browser and you can now access phpvirtualbox like this:
  
  http://www.example.com/phpvirtualbox/
• 2

  Write admin in both the user-name and password column.
  
  

  
• 3

  The below image features the interface of phpvirtualbox. It is mostly like the native VirtualBox GUI:
  
  

  
• 4

  Now, you have to change the admin password on priority basis. Go to File> Change Password:
  
  

  
• 5

  Write down the old password and give a new one:
  
  

  
• 6

  For all those who know how to use the native VirtualBox GUI, so phpvirtualbox becomes very easy for them as well. For instance, if you want to make a new virtual machine, a same wizard just like in VirtualBox GUI is available for you.