The BIG-IP Virtual Edition (VE) does not officially supports Virtualbox but there is a workaround posted by Tim Rupp in the F5 support. It was quite extensive but following it made headways for me getting the image working in Virtualbox (version 5.1.12)
If you don't follow his recommendations and just import the OVA in Virtualbox, you will get a similar error below for the BIG-IP LTM VE image (BIG-IP LTM IDE OVA VE version 12.1.1)
If you don't follow his recommendations and just import the OVA in Virtualbox, you will get a similar error below for the BIG-IP LTM VE image (BIG-IP LTM IDE OVA VE version 12.1.1)
Failed to import appliance BIGIP-12.1.1.2.0.204.LTM-ide.ova.
Medium 'BIGIP-12.1.1.2.0.204-disk1.vmdk' is already attached to port 1, device 0 of controller 'IDE' of this virtual machine.
Result Code: VBOX_E_OBJECT_IN_USE (0x80BB000C)
Component: ApplianceWrap
Interface: IAppliance {8398f026-4add-4474-5bc3-2f9f2140b23e}
If you now already made changes on the OVF file and imported it back into the compressed OVA. Chances are if you did not update the hash record in the Manifest File (i.e. BIGIP-x.x.x.x.x..mf), you will get this error.
Failed to import appliance BIGIP-12.1.1.2.0.204.LTM-ide.ova.
The manifest signature does not match.
Result Code: VBOX_E_IPRT_ERROR (0x80BB0005)
Component: ApplianceWrap
Interface: IAppliance {8398f026-4add-4474-5bc3-2f9f2140b23e}
Just use any hashing tool to generate the SHA1 hash for the modified OVF file just like below and update the manifest file in the compressed OVA.
# Filename: BIGIP-12.1.1.2.0.204-ide.mf (with old hash)
SHA1(BIGIP-12.1.1.2.0.204-ide.ovf)= 7b749d46163c1c4307874016b33df08e16021472
SHA1(BIGIP-12.1.1.2.0.204-disk1.vmdk)= e3ce9eddd1e9f97ee3477ec6a199e3e957443146
SHA1(BIGIP-12.1.1.2.0.204-disk2.vmdk)= d71f7befac909ed6b702c77a177c9c967b4ab163
# Filename: BIGIP-12.1.1.2.0.204-ide.mf (with new hash)
SHA1(BIGIP-12.1.1.2.0.204-ide.ovf)= d338f3a202eb71162fc7363c49a80d7cf4876366
SHA1(BIGIP-12.1.1.2.0.204-disk1.vmdk)= e3ce9eddd1e9f97ee3477ec6a199e3e957443146
SHA1(BIGIP-12.1.1.2.0.204-disk2.vmdk)= d71f7befac909ed6b702c77a177c9c967b4ab163
One more thing, this compressed OVA has a certificate file which can create issues when importing
Failed to import appliance BIGIP-12.1.1.2.0.204.LTM-ide.ova.
Digest mismatch (VERR_NOT_EQUAL): Attribute 'SHA1' on 'BIGIP-12.1.1.2.0.204-ide.ovf' does not match ('7b749d46163c1c4307874016b33df08e16021472' vs. 'd338f3a202eb71162fc7363c49a80d7cf4876366').
Result Code: VBOX_E_FILE_ERROR (0x80BB0004)
Component: ApplianceWrap
Interface: IAppliance {8398f026-4add-4474-5bc3-2f9f2140b23e}
Rather than banging my head in renegerating the certificate, we just remove/delete the cert file from the compressed OVA. As such, the compressed OVA should contain only these files.
And this correctly imports the BIG-IP VE into VIrtualbox as seen in my setup. Below is the VM image imported in VirtualBox version 5.1.12 r112440
The boot screen
The login screen with default root account
Hope this helps. Enjoy!