How To Use TestDrive With VirtualBox [Ubuntu]

TestDrive is an Ubuntu application that is especially designed for non-technical users to easily download and run the latest Ubuntu development daily snapshot in a virtual machine. We've covered TestDrive (as well as installation istructions) HERE.

TestDrive runs the daily Ubuntu .ISO in QEMU by default so if you also have VirtualBox installed, it is a bit messy as you will get the following error each time you try to run VirtualBox:

VirtualBox can't operate in VMX root mode

(error which we talked about HERE).

The above error can be fixed but you must run a command each time you run TestDrive and then VirtualBox.

For this reason you may want to use TestDrive with Virtualbox (both OSE and non-free). This can be done very easy. After installing TestDrive, simply paste this in a terminal:

cp /etc/testdriverc ~/.testdriverc
gedit ~/.testdriverc

And in the newly opened file, uncomment the line which says <#VIRT = "virtualbox"> (that's line 29 on my computer). Basically after editing it, it should look like this:

VIRT = "virtualbox"

Then save it.

There are a lot of other possible configurations for TestDrive which you can do using this testdriverc file, like setting the VM hard disk or memory size, the cache path, disk file and so on.

And as a final note, don't forget the command to fix VirtualBox once you've used QEMU:

sudo modprobe -r kvm_intel