CS4414: VM Image

Instructions for assignments in this course will generally assume a Linux-like environment. It is likely also possible to complete assignments in other environments, such as the using the Windows Subsystem for Linux or Mac OS X natively, but we are limited in the technical support we can provide for that.

To assist you with obtaining a Linux environment, we supply several options below:

Department accounts

We will provide you with accounts on the department machines. Unfortatunely, we can’t easily let you run qemu (needed for our teaching OS assignments), but for all other assignments, you should be able to use the department machines via remote desktop or SSH.

Our VM image

We have supplied a Ubuntu 20.04 VM image for this course, which you can download here. The main account is called “student” and has password “password”. See below for a list of what is installed on this VM. We expect to work with VirtualBox.

Alternative: create your own VM using vagrant (SSH access to VM only; possibly better for resource-constrained systems)

If you are concerned about VM performance, one alternative you might consider is using vagrant which, once installed you could use by setting aside a directory to work on the VM and running commands like the following:

setup command that needs to be run once; will create a configuration file called Vagrantfile in the current directory:
```
vagrant init ubuntu/focal64
```

to start/stop the VM or check whether it is running

vagrant up
vagrant status
vagrant suspend
vagrant resume
vagrant halt

to get a shell in the VM:
```
 vagrant ssh
```
to upload a file to the VM (without using the shared folder that’s usually configured):
```
 vagrant upload LOCAL-FILE REMOTE-FILE
```
to download a file from the VM (without using the shared folder that’s usually configured; unfortunately, I can only see a rather indirect way of doing this without shared folders):
```
 vagrant ssh-config >./temp-ssh-config
 scp -i temp-ssh-config default:REMOTE-FILE LOCAL-FILE
```

In the default configuration /vagrant in the VM will be shared with the folder you ran the vagrant commands in outside the VM. Note that because of how sharing folders between the guest and host OS works, some things (such as producing executables) sometimes will not function correctly in the shared folders. If this happens, try copying files out of the shared folders to other directories in the VM.

If you use the vagrant option, you may need to install software packages that are preinstalled on our VM. You could do this as necessary, or install the list of software packages below.

Alternative: create your own VM using VirtualBox (graphical interface)

Download VirtualBox from https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads. Choose the appropriate version for your host operating system.
Download the Ubuntu 20.04 LTS disk image from https://ubuntu.com/download/desktop. (It will be an .iso file.)
In VirtualBox, goto “New” in the “Machine” menu to create a new virtual machine. Select the type as “Linux” and the version as “Ubuntu (64-bit)”. Choose to create a new virtual hard disk.
When asked for the size of the virtual hard disk, I recommend around 20 GB but the default of 10 GB is probaly sufficient. The default settings for the type of disk are fine.
Right-click the newly created VM in the list of virtual machines and select “Settings” from the context menu that pops up.
In the settings window, select the tab labeled storage, and click the button with a square and plus overlayed on it second from the bottom-left of the list of storage devices. (If you hover over this button, the tool tip “Add a new storage attachment” will appear.)
From the short menu that appears when selecting that button, press “Optical Disk”.
In the “Medium” window that appears, click the “Add” button at the top and locate the .iso file you downloaded in step 2, then press choose to select it.
Start the virtual machine and follow the Ubuntu installer’s own screen prompts.

After the install finishes, you can run a command like

sudo apt-get install build-essential g++-multilib manpages-posix-dev python3-dev python-setuptools qemu-system-x86 qemu-utils bless ghex

to install most of the important tools we’ll use this semester.

Packages on our reference VM

We provide this for reference, not all of these packages are necessary for this course.

Installed as with sudo apt-get install PACKAGE-NAME:

ubuntu-desktop-minimal
fonts-ubuntu
build-essential
gcc-multilib
g++-multilib
python3-dev
ghex
bless
qemu-utils
qemu-system-x86
manpages-posix-dev
manpages-posix
wget
curl
firefox
ca-certificates
gedit
gnome-terminal
gnome-screenshot
xdg-utils
bash
vim-gtk3
emacs-gtk
nano
openssh-client
snapd
git
python3-dev
python3-venv
python3-nose
python3-parameterized
python2-dev
python2
python-setuptools
flex

Installed as with sudo snap install --classic PACKAGE-NAME:

code