is it possible to run virtualbox inside a docker container

Yes, you can. You'll need to make sure you have the kernel module on your host system. I'm running Ubuntu, but I'm sure it'd be similar on other distros:

sudo apt-get install linux-headers-generic virtualbox-dkms

And make sure the kernel module is loaded:

sudo /etc/init.d/virtualbox statusVirtualBox kernel modules are loaded.

Now, run the docker container, and mount /dev/vboxdrv as a volume:

docker run -it -v /dev/vboxdrv:/dev/vboxdrv your/container-image

Edited at 2016-03-27 12:54 UTC

I have the exact same issue and I can successfully dockerize the latest version of VirtualBox with the Extension Pack and phpvirtualbox on CentOS 7.

You have to install tons of dependencies such as kernel-devel, make, gcc and dkms. After finishing the docker build, you MUST run the docker image with these flags --privileged=true -v /dev/:/dev/. you need the flag --privileged=true to run the image with the docker version of 1.10.3

For the details, please see my Dockerfile and run.sh

For the details, please have a look my repository especially Makefile, virtualbox.Dockerfile, vboxwebsrv.Dockerfile and phpvirtualbox.Dockerfile

2019:

• Virtualbox version: 6.0
• Docker version: 18.09.6
• Ubuntu 18.04

The key is to use a docker image that has systemd running. I chose jrei/systemd-ubuntu see here.

    docker run -d --privileged \    --name systemd-ubuntu --network=host \    --device /dev/vboxdrv:/dev/vboxdrv \    -v /sys/fs/cgroup:/sys/fs/cgroup:ro \    -v /tmp:/tmp -it jrei/systemd-ubuntu

Inside the container I ran:

    apt update    apt -y install wget    apt -y install gnupg2    apt -y install systemd    apt -y install software-properties-common    wget -q https://www.virtualbox.org/download/oracle_vbox_2016.asc -O- | apt-key add -    wget -q https://www.virtualbox.org/download/oracle_vbox.asc -O- | apt-key add -    add-apt-repository "deb https://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian bionic contrib"    apt update    apt -y install virtualbox-6.0

Enjoy :-)