Oracle VM VirtualBox is an exceptionally formidable and extremely handy open-source Type 2 hypervisor that gives users the capability of easily operating a plethora of guest operating systems, all under a single Linux host environment. It should be mentioned, however, that although Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 10 and its upstream equivalent CentOS Stream 10 do not have VirtualBox as part of their default standard repository offerings, it is perfectly feasible for you to install Oracle’s specially appointed repository dedicated to your system without much trouble. By installing such a setup, you would be able to install the latest release of VirtualBox, enable the requisite relevant kernel module necessary for it to function correctly, and be up and running with the whole setup in no more than a short matter of minutes.

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Prerequisites

• RHEL 10 / CentOS Stream 10 installed and up to date.
• A non-root user with sudo privileges.
• Hardware virtualization (VT-x or AMD-V) enabled in BIOS/UEFI.
• At least 2 GB RAM (4 GB+ recommended) and sufficient disk for your VMs (20 GB+).

Step 1: Check that Virtualization is enabled

Run either of the following commands to check whether virtualization is enabled on your system:

grep -E --color 'vmx|svm' /proc/cpuinfo
## OR ##
lscpu | grep Virtualization

Any occurrences of of vmx (Intel) or svm (AMD) shows that virtualization is enabled. The lscpu command should also return something like this to signify that virtualization is enabled:

Virtualization:    VT-x

Step 2: Install build tools and kernel headers

Update your system and install build tools and kernel headers:

sudo dnf update
sudo dnf groupinstall "Development Tools" -y  
sudo dnf install kernel-devel kernel-headers -y

Step 3: Install EPEL repository

Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux (EPEL) is a repository maintained by Fedora for use with CentOS Stream and RHEL. Run the following commands to enable the CRB repository:

## RHEL 10
sudo subscription-manager repos --enable codeready-builder-for-rhel-10-$(arch)-rpms
## CentOS Stream 10
sudo dnf config-manager --set-enabled crb

Then install the EPEL RPM:

## RHEL 10
sudo dnf install \
https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-10.noarch.rpm
## CentOS Stream 10
sudo dnf install epel-release epel-next-release

Step 4: Add the Oracle VirtualBox repository

Run the command below to add the VirtualBox repository:

sudo wget https://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/rpm/rhel/virtualbox.repo \
  -O /etc/yum.repos.d/virtualbox.repo

Then refresh metadata:

sudo dnf makecache

Step 5: Install VirtualBox on CentOS Stream | RHEL 10

After adding the VirtualBox repo, install the latest release of Oracle VirtualBox:

sudo dnf install VirtualBox-7.1 -y

Verify the module:

sudo systemctl status vboxdrv

Step 6: Post-Installation Configurations

Add your user to the vboxusers group for USB, shared-folder, and other hardware access:

sudo usermod -aG vboxusers $USER
newgrp vboxusers

You might also want to install the VirtualBox extension pack for USB 2.0/3.0, RDP, and encryption:

wget https://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/7.1.10/Oracle_VirtualBox_Extension_Pack-7.1.10.vbox-extpack
sudo VBoxManage extpack install Oracle_VirtualBox_Extension_Pack-7.1.10.vbox-extpack

Launch VirtualBox GUI:

VirtualBox

Step 7: Using VirtualBox on RHEL 10 | CentOS Stream 10

With VirtualBox installed, you can now create a new VM via the GUI. Here’s how you can do that:

Click New → name your VM (e.g. “Ubuntu”) → Browse to the ISO file and select it:

Click Next, then allocate RAM, and vCPUs for your Virtual MAchines:

Then add a virtual hard disk to the new machine:

Ensure that everything is set as you want, then click Finish:

On the VM Overview page, click on Start:

If you encounter the following error message, it is because another hypervisor, like KVM, is in use:

There was an error while executing `VBoxManage`, a CLI used by Vagrant for controlling VirtualBox. The command and stderr is shown below.

Command: ["startvm", <ID of the VM>, "--type", "headless"]

Stderr: VBoxManage: error: VT-x is being used by another hypervisor (VERR_VMX_IN_VMX_ROOT_MODE).
VBoxManage: error: VirtualBox can't operate in VMX root mode. Please disable the KVM kernel extension, recompile your kernel and reboot
(VERR_VMX_IN_VMX_ROOT_MODE)
VBoxManage: error: Details: code NS_ERROR_FAILURE (0x80004005), component ConsoleWrap, interface IConsole

You must add the additional hypervisors to the deny list in order for VirtualBox to run correctly., Tof if it, find out the name of the hypervisor using the command below:

$ lsmod | grep kvm
kvm_intel             446464  0
kvm                  1404928  1 kvm_intel

Then use the blacklist command to add the hypervisor to your denylist:

echo 'blacklist kvm-intel' >> /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf

Then retry starting your VM again. The VM should start and you should see the GRUB Menu for Ubuntu Server:

Proceed with your installation, since we had already installed the VirtualBox extension pack, the VM window will automatically switch to fullscreen:

That’s all for this guide folks, enjoy running VMs with VirtualBox on your new RHEL \ CentOS Stream machine.

More articles from our team:

• How To Install VirtualBox 7.1 on Rocky / AlmaLinux 8
• Using Vagrant with VirtualBox and KVM on Debian 12
• Install VirtualBox 7 and Extensions Pack on Debian 12