how to Run Virtualbox gui as root?

My windows motherboard failed so I used instructions on how to use a physical hard drive with Virtualbox Vm. I moved the hard drive to my linux box. I already made backups of the win7 hard drive.

So the problem seems to be Virtualbox doesn't have r/w permissions on the hard drive. Another forum said they ran Vbox as root and it worked for them. But I can't figure out how to run Vbox as root. I usually log in as a regular user, not root user. I know how to use sudo, but don't know how to start the vbox gui from command line(searched for that and couldn't find an answer either)

I should be able to change fstab the uid and guid on the hard drive to allow vboxusers group, but my patience has run out, been working on this for a week.

Using Linux mint 17.1 cinnamon

gksu for gui apps.

You don't need to run virtualbox as root as far as I know. You need to create a virtual machine where the virtual hard drive is attached as the physical drive.

The problem is that your windows 7 will complain about this massive hardware change. You might be able to correct the hal.

A web page about attaching the physical drive. http://www.serverwatch.com/server-tu...ualbox-vm.html

from what I've read gksu shouldn't be used, hasn't been updated since 2009

this is what I was following and it doesn't work because Virtualbox says it doesn't have permissions to the physical hard drive(or at least that is how I interpret it)

Mount the disk as rw, change the owner/group to a user such as root:root then attach the drive to VirtualBox and boot it up?

You SHOULD NOT run VirtualBox as root, or ever have need to for any reason.

Why exactly is this disk being mounted as read only? Is it possible it has errors in the file system and Linux is mounting it read only to prevent further damage to the disk?

I think focusing on why the disk is being mounted read only rather than why you can't use it in VirtualBox will lead you to a solution.

I'm having trouble figuring out how to edit fstab by command line. googling how to's...

If you run VBox as root, your existing VMs won't appear, as root will have a different VBox profile than your normal account.

Not only that but please see this for a more important reason that every *nix user should know.

You should check out the man page by typing:


Most of the time it's not necessary to google Linux related issues if you just read the man pages. Being completely reliant on google for answers regarding your operating system leave you crippled when you have no internet connection...

If you're not able to access a physical drive with VBox, you could convert a disk-image/clone of your Windows install to a .vdi file that VBox can use:

Did you get the tips in this link? http://www.serverwatch.com/server-tu...ualbox-vm.html