HOWTO.md

How-to

This guide will show you how to create a VirtualBox virtual machine from scratch, install Xubuntu on it and bootstrap it with all the latest and greatest software.

Setup

• Download and install VirtualBox and the Extensions

  • https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads

• Download the Xubuntu 18.04 .iso

  • http://xubuntu.org/getxubuntu/
  • Choose 32-bit as some folks may have old machines

• Follow VirtualBox instructions for installing VirtualBox on "Creating your first virtual machine" Section 1.7

  • http://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch01.html

  • When asked about which virtual image type to use, choose VMDK

    • http://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch05.html#vdidetails

  • Set storage to whatever you'd like. I recommend 30.00 GB to 2.00 T DYNAMICALLY ALLOCATED !important

  • Set the RAM (We suggest 2048 MB or 2GB)

• Start the virtual machine and navigate your file system to the path of the iso

• Follow the Xubuntu prompts to install the operating system on the file system

  • set the username and password
  • For techraking: nicar with the password nicar

• Set Up Guest Additions

  • Guest Additions will give you full resolution and filesystem sharing, which are quite nice in VMs
  • Log into the Xubuntu VM, and select Menu > Menu Bar > Menu Bar Settings, then toggle "Devices" and confirm with the green button to the right.
  • You should then see a "Devices" dropdown menu for VirtualBox, where you will select "Insert Guest Additions CD Image."
  • Go to the Terminal Emulator and cd /media/nicar/VBox_GAs_6.0.4, or whatever path you wind up with after tab-completing from /nicar/
  • run sudo ./VBoxLinuxAdditions.run, which will likely prompt you for your password.
  • Now, when you resize the VirtualBox window, it will auto-resize, and you won't see scrollbars along either axis.

Bootstrap the box

• Fetch the bootstrap script by downloading it with wget. Open up terminal and type:
  • $ wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/cirlabs/vm/master/bootstrap.sh
• make the script executable
  • $ chmod +x bootstrap.sh
• run the script WITHOUT a subprocess
  • $ . ./bootstrap.sh
    • See: http://stackoverflow.com/a/16011496/868724
  • NOTE: This'll take some time. The first commands to run are apt-get update and apt-get upgrade. These two commands will make sure the the operating systems has the latest and greatest security patches and features. These are key before installing the rest of the software.

Export

1. Open VirtualBox
2. Navigate to File > Export Appliance
3. Select the Xubuntu virtual machine
4. Choose OVF 1.0 (2.0 is for cloud computing compatibility. While the latest standard, it's still buggy in other virtualization software like VMware. See: https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/11160)
5. Press Export