EBC Exercise 07 Installing Ubuntu in VMware

Note: I haven't updated this for 2011.

It's pretty much agreed that if you are going to develop for embedded Linux, you should do it in Linux. The problem is many have some form of Windows OS installed. Here are step by step instructions on how to install a virtual machine running Ubuntu Linux on your Windows box.

Configuring VMware Player
First we'll set up the virtual hard drive, then we'll get the virtual machine software. The hard drive is set up using some third party software. Here are videos for installing and running VMmanager.
 * 1) Go to here and get VMmanager,
 * 2) install and run it.
 * 3) Select "Create a new virtual machine"
 * 4) Select Operating System: Linux
 * 5) Below Select: Ubuntu Linux
 * 6) Project name: Ubuntu 9.10
 * 7) Tab RAM:  1024M  (Make this as big as possible, but no more than 1/2 your laptop's RAM)
 * 8) Tab Hard Disk: Unselect "Allocate all disk space now" We'll make the hard drive bigger in a moment.  This is working around a small bug that requires all the disk space to be present when you create the machine, even if you don't allocate it all at the beginning.
 * 9) Keep Selected "Split into 2GB files"
 * 10) Tab Ethernet: Ethernet 0, NAT, Ethernet 1 Bridged
 * 11) Tab Adapters: Select USB, COM1 COM2 and Sound Adapter
 * 12) Tab Finish: Click "Ok" pick a file name.  It should quickly say it is finished.
 * 13) Quit VMmagager
 * 1) Restart VMmanager
 * 2) Select "Modify an existing virtual machine"
 * 3) Select the machine you just saved.
 * 4) Tab Hard Drive
 * 5) Select "Unlock"
 * 6) Enter 40960
 * 7) Tab Finish, if it says "the size of the hard disk is too large" and indicates the maximum hard disk you can have is 8 GB, go to 'vmmanager.ini' file and change the paramter 'maxHDsize' defined within it. You may change this parameter within the range from 100 MB up to 972800 MB.

Here is a video of running] VMmanager the second time.
 * 1) Click "Ok".  It should quickly say it is finished.

Installing VMware Player
Now we can get the VMware player and install it.
 * 1) Get the  VMware player. I got version 2.5.3 for Windows 32-bit and 64-bit (.exe).
 * 2) Install it

Getting Ubuntu and installing it
Note: At the time I'm editing these I can't get to either the lug site or the csse ftp site. --may

Manually Installing with ISO
Next get the Ubunutu image and install it in the machine. I'm using 10.4 LTS since it's required by some of the TI tools.

Hereis a 3 minute demo.
 * 1) You can get the Ubuntu iso image here; however it's faster for Rose students to get a copy locally from lug or csse. If you aren't sure which iso to get, look for ubuntu-9.10-desktop-i386.iso.
 * 2) Click on the vm you created above (*.vmx). The VMware Player should start.
 * 3) Click on the CD icon on the bottom right.
 * 4) Select Disconnect.
 * 5) Click on the CD icon again and select "Connect to disk image file (iso):"
 * 6) Select the Ubuntu iso file you downloaded.
 * 7) On the top left the window select the menu VMware Player:Troubleshoot:Reset. The VMware Player should find the iso image and start the Unbuntu install.
 * 8) Select: Load Ubuntu

Hint 1: You may have to hit ctrl-G to get the VM to listen to your keyboard.

Hint 2: It won't see your mouse at first, so use the keyboard.

Hint 3: Ctrl-Alt will release the mouse for outside the VM.


 * 1) Answer questions for your location.
 * 2) Select "Erase and use the entire disk"
 * 3) Answer the rest of the questions.
 * 4) Select install and wait a while. My install took about half an hour.
 * 5) Restart the system when asked to. You may be asked about ejecting the CD-ROM.  I clicked No.


 * 1) Once Ubuntu is running you can right-click on the CD-ROM image and unmount it.
 * 2) Go to the CD-ROM icon on the bottom right and disconnect from the iso image.
 * 3) The Update Manager may appear. Go ahead and have it update everything. It took 15 minutes on my system.

Downloading VMWare Appliance
If you have downloaded the Ubuntu disk and installed it, these directions do not apply to you.

VMPlanet provides premade virtual hard disks that can simply be imported into vmware player. This will simply save the install, but probably will use more internet bandwidth then downloading and installing the iso.

See VMPlanet Ubuntu 9.10

Installing VMWare Tools
Now that you have your Ubuntu image loaded and updated, it is important to install VMWare Tools. This will allow for much more natural mouse synchronization, speed improvements, and copy/paste support between host and guest OS's.


 * If you are running the VMWare Appliance, this may not be necessary.

The Ubuntu wiki has by far the best directions on how to do this Ubuntu VMWare Tools