Changelog:

Instructions for assignments in this course will generally assume a Linux-like x86-64 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 21.10 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.

It is not configured to automatically resize the display to the window size. But you can use the display settings in the VM (click in the top-left corner, go to settings, then Displays) to choose a size of your choice.

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:

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)

  1. Download VirtualBox from https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads. Choose the appropriate version for your host operating system.
  2. Download the Ubuntu 21.10 LTS disk image from https://ubuntu.com/download/desktop. (It will be an .iso file.)
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. Right-click the newly created VM in the list of virtual machines and select “Settings” from the context menu that pops up.
  6. 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.)
  7. From the short menu that appears when selecting that button, press “Optical Disk”.
  8. 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.
  9. Start the virtual machine and follow the Ubuntu installer’s own screen prompts.

  10. 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:

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