Installation of Virtual Machine

February 13, 2012

VirtualBox installation

The rst step is to install VirtualBox. You can download the application at http://www.virtualbox.org/ and install it on your local machine. Virtual machines created on one computer should then be transferable between hosts. Installation is very simple and self explanatory. It is recommended that you install Oracle VirtualBox 4.1.8 or later.

Virtual machine creation

The creation of the virtual machine is also fairly straightforward and with a few tweaks you should be able to get it working in no time at all.

2.1

Basic creation

The creation of your virtual machine consists of the following steps: Click on New and click Next on the Welcome screen. Type a name for you Virtual machine (i.e. MyFedora) and ensure the OS Type has been selected correctly (namely Linux Fedora1 ). The software will try to derive the OS from the name you have selected. Click Next. Allocate memory to your virtual machine. 512 MB2 will be enough. Click Next. Uncheck Boot Hard Disk and click Continue on the warning. We will create a hard disk later.
1 You are most welcome to install any Linux distro of your choice, provided that you are willing to search for help yourself. Note, that 64-bit versions tends to use more memory and may give problems (YRMV). 2 The maximum recommended memory on a 2GB machine is 512MB. You can allocate more, if your hardware is more powerful.

 Click on Finish. Your virtual machine should now be created (but is without a harddrive).

2.2

Creating a bootable virtual hard drive

The virtual hard drive will store the les and settings of you virtual machine. Multiple hard drives can be created by repeating this process for each drive (these hard drives are stored as les on your host computers physical harddrive). Right click on you virtual machine and select Settings. Navigate to Storage and click on the Add hard disk under IDE Controller3 (right-most icon). Select Create new disk. If you have an existing virtual drive, you can select Use existing disk instead. Click Next on the welcome window. Select Dynamically expanding storage and click Next. Select a name for the hard disk, i.e. MyHardDisk.vdi. Take careful note where the virtual hard disk is being stored by clicking on the folder icon to the right of the text box. You can also attempt to create it directly on your ash drive. Select a size which is smaller than your ash drive, i.e. 7GB for your 8GB ash drive. Click on Finish.

2.3

Setting up the network

It is important to allocate a separate IP address to each virtual computer to allow communication between the host and the virtual machines as well as between virtual machines. You can test connectivity by pinging the various computers from one anohter. To obtain the IP address, ipcong (for Windows) and ifcong (for Linux) can be used. On a Linux computer, the rst NIC is labeled eth0. Select Network under the Settings dialog. Select Bridged Adaptor and click on Ok.
3 This is to force an IDE controller for the older distros. You can attempt a SATA harddrive as well, if youre OS supports it

 Note that VirtualBox struggles with virtualising the network through a wireless LAN. A wired connection seems to be working ne.

2.4

Installing Fedora

The ISO or CD with the the actual distribution will now be required to install the actual OS. (An ISO le works the easiest and is denitely the recommended method.) If you click on Start you will be greeted with a Fatal error a rather frightening message if it is displayed on your host computer, but rather humerous on a virtual machine. Select Devices CD/DVD devices and select the media which contains the distribution. Reboot the machine by selecting Machine Reset. You will be greeted by a friendly Fedora welcome screen. Follow the process highlighted in chapter 4 of the prescribed textbook. It is almost possible to select Next to complete the entire installation. It is recommended that you take note of the process and the settings that Fedora selects. Install the software packages that you want to play with later. You can easily install the other software at a later stage, provided you have a copy of the ISO le or the CD. The mouse integration of VirtualBox with Fedora can be troublesome at times. It is recommended that the feature is disabled by going the Machine Disable Mouse Integration and rather using the right Ctrl key to move the mouse manually between the virtual machine and the host.

2.5

Moving hard disk to USB

In order to move the virtual machine between your personal computer and the labs computer, the hard disk needs to be copied to your USB Copy the folder containing all the les onto your USB drive. This folder will contain the .vbox as well the .vdi le. Simply select Add under the Machine menu to add the virtual machine each time you move between venues. It may be healthier for your USB ash drive if you copy the virtual machine to the local hard disk each time (which can take a few minutes, unfortunately).