Sunday, August 08, 2010
Anu
Before I begin I should point out that one could mimic thisprocess on almost any operating system. The tools I utilized aresupported across a number of platforms.
The primary tools used to accomplish the virtualization I will describe are VMware Player and VMmanager.VMware Player is a virtualization tool that is used to run the actualguest (virtualized) operating system. However, VMware Player does notinclude all the tools needed to install a new virtual environment.
Getting Ready for Install
Before beginning it is wise to create a directory somewhere on yourmachine to store your configuration files and your virtual image. Thisimage may take up several gigs so be sure to choose a directorylocation on a drive big enough. Try staring with virtual images of 2-4GB.Before you begin the install you'll want to download the .iso of theguest operating system. For Ubuntu it is best to use the 'alternative'installation. Download the latest version (currently Ubuntu 7.04) andstore it in the directory you have created for your virtual machine.
Setting up the Virtual Drive
In order for VMware Player to work you have to have a drive imagethat it can use to simulate a machine. Setting up an image can be doneusing a number of tools but I find that VMmanager is the simplest andmost reliable.
Using VMmanager you partition off a piece of your hard drive to use forthe virtual image, format it, and use a GUI to construct the variousconfiguration files needed by VMware Player.
The first thing you'llneed to do is download and install VMmanager. You may receive warningsduring the installation that the software hasn't been certified byWindows but you can safely ignore these.
Starting up VMmanager presents the users with twostraightforward options: 'Create a new virtual machine' and 'Modify anexisting virtual machine'.
Select the first option to get started. Thiswill open up a new window with tabs to specify the configuration andformat of your new image.
For our Ubuntu virtual machine start with the 'Project' tab.
Select'Linux' for the Operating System, 'VMware Workstation 5.x' for theCompatibility and select 'Ubuntu Linux' from the drop down menu.
Next select the 'RAM' tab.
VMmanager defaults to a paltry 128MB of RAM.
You probably want to increase this depending on the amountof actual RAM on your system. 384 or 512 is probably enough. If youhave multiple CPU's in your machine you can also select which one touse for the virtual machine.In the 'Hard Disk' tab you can probably select the defaults.You may want to increase the drive size above the default of 2048however. Perhaps double that number (around 4 GB) will be sufficient toget started. Be sure not to choose too little storage though or you'llhave trouble installing packages on your Ubuntu virtual machine.
On the 'Drives' tab you want to make sure to change the dropdown menu for the 'CD-ROM' that defaults to 'auto detect'.
Choose 'useISO image' and then browse to the installer iso that you downloaded (inour case ubuntu-7.04-alternate-i386.iso. This will allow the virtualsystem to mount the ISO as if it were a disk in the drive and allow youto complete the install.
For the 'Ethernet' tab you have two options that will work foryour ethernet connection. You want to be sure to enable your connectionso you can download updates and utilize networking.
The 'NAT' modecreates a sort of network address translation behind your existingconnection. This means that your physical ethernet card receivesinformation for both the host and the virtual machine.
The virtualmachine is assigned a reserved IP address (such as 192.168.174.128) andyour host machine masks this IP address and manages traffic to and fromthe virtual machine (just as a regular NAT device). This means that thevirtual machine will be invisible to the outside world but will beavailable to the host operating system.
The other option for the 'Ethernet' tab is to choose a'Bridged' connection. Doing this will mean that the virtual machinewill be assigned an available IP address (from DHCP for instance) andyour virtual machine will be exposed to the outside world on it's ownIP address. Your physical ethernet card will act as a host to multipleIP addresses, segmenting traffic as needed. This can be extremelyuseful if you want to set up a virtual machine that will serve otherhosts.
The 'MAC Address' portion of the 'Ethernet' tab is interesting to note.
You can select the default 'Don't change' or you can create spoofed MACaddresses for the bridged connections. This will mean that trafficanalysis won't easily be able to tell that the virtual machine is infact hosted on the same hardware as a real machine.
For the 'Adapters' tab it is probably safe to choose thedefaults and not enable any adapters.
You can go back and alter yourconfiguration at a later time, but for the install process you want tocut down on as many X factors as possible.
Next click the 'Finish' tab and you'll see the 'OK' button.Clicking this button will write the configuration files, partition offdrive space and create your image.
Go ahead and do that and watch themessages that will display for any errors. This process may take acouple of minutes and will hog up a lot of your computers CPU andmemory so try to limit other applications running when you're doingthis.
Once VMmanager is finished creating the image file you canclose the program. We're now ready to begin the installation process.
Installing Ubuntu
Once you have an image installing should be fairly straightforward. Start up VMware Player.
You'll see to prominent options: 'Open' and 'Download'.
You candownload pre-built images but we're going to open the one we justcreated.
Click 'Open' and browse to the folder where you created yourimage with VMmanager.
There should be only one .vmx file in thatdirectory so select that one (it is likely named 'Ubuntu Linux.vmx').
Note that when your mouse is inside VMware Player you have topress the control (Ctrl) and alt keys together to break your cursor outof VMware Player.
As soon as you open that image the installation process should start.This will proceed exactly as a normal installation.
You can safelychoose the defaults and sit back and watch the install process chugaway.
You can safely format the entire available hard drive sinceVMware Player can only see the space set aside in the image rather thanyour actual hard disk.
The installation process can be a bit tricky and error prone. Ididn't have any luck with the regular install ISO which is why Irecommend the alternate.
The alternate installer is text based, so it'snot as pretty but it works just fine.
If you have trouble try recreating the image space with otheroptions or change your options in the install process.
In most cases,however, you shouldn't run into any issues.
Once Ubuntu is finished installing it will 'reboot' the virtualmachine and you should be able to log in normally, install updates, anduse the OS as normal.
At any time you can close VMware Player by 'shutting down' Ubuntu.
Youcan also simply close VMware Player and it will save the state of yourvirtual machine and exit. This is quite handy because you don't have to'reboot' the next time you start the virtual machine.
Simply startVMware Player and open the image file and the virtual machine will openback up just the way it was (much the same way a laptop hibernates).
If at this point you want to enable further hardware support foryour Ubuntu installation simply open VMmanager and alter theconfiguration files you created. You may want to switch the CD-ROM tothe actual CD drive rather than the ISO image since it's no longernecessary. You may also want to enable USB support so you can useexternal devices or even sound. Be sure to back up your originalconfiguration file though so you can 'fix' any mistakes you might make.
Final Thoughts
Using a virtual machine based on an image has several interestingapplications beyond just experimentation. Since the virtual machine isactually run from a 'hard drive' that is nothing more than a file it ispossible to perform several interesting operations on that file.One option is to place the image, log files, and other configurationfiles on a USB drive or other removable media. This allows you to carryyour virtual machine with you and use it anywhere VMware Player isinstalled.
Another interesting possibility would be to place the virtual machine on an encrypted volume. This could easily be done using TrueCrypt or many other encryption utilities. This would allow you to effectively encrypt the entire virtual operating system.
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