OBIEE 11.1.1.6.2 BP1 SampleApp v207 on Virtual Box 4.2.12

You might have read of how long and complex it is to install OBIEE directly onto Redhat.

OBIEE SampleApp v207 Desktop

This year I heard that there was a new Virtual Box image of OBIEE. The idea being: you install and start Virtual Box, then use the OBIEE virtual machine. Great idea. You should be able to get on with actually using OBIEE, not struggling with its installation, startup, and administration.

However, that would assume that all the components work. Like any technology stack.

Unfortunately for me, they did not.

Installing Virtual Box 4.2.12 r84980:   

VMWare Player Versus Virtual Box: One Works, The Other Doesn’t

Trying to get a Virtual Machine to work on 64 bit Redhat 5.5?  You may want to read these reviews of Virtual Box, and VMWare Player first.

Virtual Box:

Over many hours over a number of weeks, I struggled to install Virtual Box on 64 bit Redhat 5.5. Please read about these struggles first. It was version:

rpm -qa | grep -i “virtual”
VirtualBox-4.1-4.1.8_75467_rhel5-1

I’ve also installed the extension pack.
4.1.8 r75467

Interestingly, Virtual Box does not have a simple –version or -v flag!  Unlike the majority of commands and RPMs on Linux.

You can see the struggle I had just to install Virtual Box in another post. Four very fundamental things were documented wrong, or not documented at all! Surprise! Finally I got it installed.

Then I tried to create a Windows XP virtual machine. But Virtual Box just didn’t want to work.

Installing Virtual Box 4.1-4 on 64 bit Redhat 5.5

Recently I installed Virtual Box 4.1-4 on Redhat 5.5 64 bit. It was a painful experience with some serious Gotchas.  The install docs were confusing. They are probably fine for people already quite familiar with the product. But not for newbies.

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xen:

One critical issue with Redhat Oracle and Virtual Box is that: VIRTUAL BOX WILL NOT RUN IN AN XEN ENVIRONMENT.

“xen” is not found in the install doc.     Nor in the table of contents.