ViCAR Linux VM. For Microsoft Windows 7. Using Oracle VirtualBox and OpenSuSE Leap 42.2

Transcription

1 ViCAR Linux VM For Microsoft Windows 7 Using Oracle VirtualBox and OpenSuSE Leap 42.2 Dr. K. M. Flurchick July 20, 2017

2 Contents 1 Introduction 1 2 Requirements Installation Procedure Complete Install Using a Previous Install of VirtualBox Usage Start/Stop Desktop Icons Files

3 1 Introduction A Linux Virtual Machine (VM) is available from ViCAR for users to learn Linux and to provide easier access to various Linux based remote systems such as the HPC system athena.ncat.edu or the midrange server prometheus.ncat.edu. The Virtual Machine VM is based on VirtualBox version from Oracle. The Linux VM can be installed on any system after VirtualBox is installed. The Linux VM is OpenSuSE LEAP 42.2 with the KDE 5 Plasma desktop application. The initial appearance of the desktop is set with a selection of desktop icons but can easily be modified and the user can request additional applications to be installed. 2 Requirements The Linux VM system is built and configured on a Microsoft Windows 7 desktop computer. The initial build uses a computer system with a 1TB hard drive, 8GB physical memory, 8-core Intel CPU and 128MB video memory. The virtual environment was configured using approximately half the Memore, CPU and video memory resources. This configuration can be chaged for the user s own computer. 2.1 Installation The Linux VM configuration requires: 1. Desktop or laptop computer Minimum of 100GB free disk space Minimum 4GB physical memory 2. Microsoft Windows OS (this was built and tested using Windows version 7) 3. VitrualBox from Oracle, Inc. and the extension pack. This was built using Virtualbox and tested on Microsoft Windows 7 and 10) 3 Procedure The overall procedure to install consists of three parts: 1. Install and configure the VirtualBox software. 2. Copy the ViCAR Linux VM to the C:\Users\<NCATuserid> folder in the user s folder. Also create a shared folder, named LinuxVM in the user folder. This will be shared between the Linux VM and the Microsoft Windows system. 3. Add the startvm icon and edit both the to the desktop and to start the ViCAR LinuxVM just double-click the icon. The LinuxVM is configured to automatically log into the Linux system. There are two procedures described below based on if VirtualBox is installed or not: (1) a Complete Install beginning with installing the VirtualBox software and adding the LinuxVM or (2) Adding the LinuxVM to a previous VirtualBox installation. The previous VirtualBox installation will have created a Virtual VMs folder. 1

4 3.1 Complete Install The procedure to configure the Oracle VirtualBox software: 1. Obtain the VirtualBox software for Windows Hosts and the Oracle VM VirtualBox Extension Pack from the website. For convience, the VirtualBox software is on this disk. (a) Install the VirtualBox software. This should occur without any issues. (b) Launch the VirtualBox software and add the VirtualBox extension pack for the version of VirtualBox. (c) From File Preferences install the Extension Pack (d) From Machine Settings General Advanced enter the following: Enable the Bidirectional option for the Shared Clipboard and Drag and Drop (e) From Machine Settings Shared Folder Machine Folder enter the following: Enter the full path for the LinuxVM folder created earlier on the Microsoft Windows system. (e.g C:\Users \<NCATuserid> \Virtual VMs) (f) Set the Network Adapter 1 to colorred Bridged Adapter to provide access to the Microsoft controlled network. 2. Copy the contents of the folder Virtual VMs to C:\Users\<NCATuserid>\Virtual VMs The folder Virtual VMs contains (a) the three items: startvm.bat - a Microsoft Windows batch script to launch the virtual machine OS. startvm - the desktop icon which references the startvm.bat script. ViCARlinuxVM - the Virtual Machine folder 3. Edit both the startvm.bat and the desktop icon. Right click on the startvm.bat file and select Edit Notepad and change kmflurch to <NCATuserid>. Then save and exit. Right click on the startvm icon and select Properties and change kmflurch to <NCATuserid>. Then exit. 4. Copy the icon to the desktop. 3.2 Using a Previous Install of VirtualBox The procedure to configure the Oracle VirtualBox software: 1. Launch the application and check the following: (a) Ensure the extensions pack is installed. Follow item 1.c from the Complete Install list above. (b) From Machine Settings General Advanced enter the following: Enable the Bidirectional option for the Shared Clipboard and Drag and Drop (c) From Machine Settings Shared Folder Machine Folder enter the following: Enter the full path for the LinuxVM folder created earlier on the Microsoft Windows system. (e.g C:\Users \<NCATuserid> \Virtual VMs) 2. Copy the contents of the folder Virtual VMs to C:\Users\<NCATuserid> The folder Virtual VMs contains (a) the three items: startvm.bat - a Microsoft Windows batch script to launch the virtual machine OS. startvm - the desktop icon which references the startvm.bat script. ViCARlinuxVM - the Virtual Machine folder 2

5 3. Edit both the startvm.bat and the desktop icon. Right click on the startvm.bat file and select Edit Notepad and change kmflurch to <NCATuserid>. Then save and exit. Right click on the startvm icon and select Properties and change kmflurch to <NCATuserid>. Then exit. 4. Copy the icon to the desktop. 4 Usage To use the ViCARlinuxVM, after the installation/configuration is complete; double click the startvm icon previously added to the desktop. This will launch VirtualBox and load the default VM. The Linux system is configured for auto-logon. The VirtualBox window can be resized but is designed for a display of 1280x800 resolution. 4.1 Start/Stop START THE VM: To start the Linux VM create a shortcut of the startvm icon (which is in the the folder Virtual VMs) and place it on the Microsoft Windows desktop. Double-click the icon. Note: the Linux VM does not require a logon (auto-logon). The default user is vicaruser. EXIT THE VM: To exit the VM right-click in the background of the Linux window, select the Leave... option and the select Shutdown. This will turn off the Linux VM and exit the VirtualBox application. Note that if the folders are in different locations or have different names, the startvm.bat file must be edited. The Linux VM window does not use the full screen at this resolution to provide easy access to the Microsoft Windows system. This is how the VM appears: 4.2 Desktop Icons The desktop is setup with a default set of icons for some applications: Dolphin a file browser Kate a full screen text editor (similar to Microsoft Notepad) Firefox a web browser Mathematica 11 a full featured Computer Algebra system LibreOffice an open source application similar to Microsoft Office Okular a PDF file viewer Konsole a Linux terminal window (The window on the left is a Konsole window) Linux has a number of shortcuts built into the operating system 1. Single click on an icon to execute. 2. Double-click left mouse button or left click (and hold) to highlight test and copy to the Linux clipboard. Click the middle mouse button to paste. 3

6 Figure 1: Logon screen for ViCAR Linux VM Window The system is configured to share the system clipboard, drag n drop operations and a folder accessible from both the Linux and Microsoft Windows system. This provides easy communication between the two operating systems. The shared clipboard work via CTRL C (or menu select copy) and CTRL V (or menu select paste). The drag n drop operations are performed via mouse click and drag operations. The desktop taskbar is set to auto-hide. To display the taskbar drag the mouse toward the bottom of the Linux window and it will pop-up. This is done to get additional window area but can be turned off. Figure 2: Taskbar Right click the icon to launch the application menu (similar to the Microsoft Application menu).... The KDE application allows for multiple virtual desktops to organize the work flow. These different desktops can be accessed by clicking on the particular desktop. This VM is configured with three virtual desktops. Each application started will have an entry on the task bar, such as the web browser Firefox and the terminal window Konsole. Note the... denotes any additional applications currently executing. The left side of the taskbar has system icons including the clock, the clipboard and so on as shown. 4

7 4.3 Files The user s home directory is /home/vicaruser and the user has permission to create, delete or modify files in their home directory. To view the listing of files, use the GUI Dolphin or open a terminal window (Konsole) and enter the linux command ls (list files) or ls -a (list all files including hidden files) To access the Shared Folder change directory to /media/sf LinuxVM (sf stands for shared folder). This can be done using the command cd /media/sf LinuxVM or using the file browser (Dolphin) select Root media sf LinuxVM 5

8 Notes 6