poprad

Introduction

This page describes the installation of poprad, which is Suzie’s VirtualBox VM on her work laptop.

This is a VM with one  CPU and 4GB RAM with 20GB HD. The screen resolution of the physical machine is 1920×1080.

Procedure

1. Create a directory for temporary downloads (e.g. C:\Users\sramsay\VirtMach-related).
2. Install VirtualBox on the Windows laptop as follows:
   1. Download VirtualBox for Windows from here.
   2. Run the installer (VirtualBox-7.0.18-162988-Win.exe).
   3. When asked “Do you want to allow this app to make changes to your device?”, click “Yes”.
   4. When asked “Click next to continue …”, click “Next’.
   5. When asked “Select the way you want features to be installed”, accept the default by clicking “Next” and note tha it will install VirtualBox in C:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox.
   6. When asked “Warning: Network Interfaces … Proceed with installation now?”, click “Yes”.
   7. When asked “Missing Dependencies …. Proceed with installation now?”, click “Yes”.
   8. When asked “Click install to begin”, click “Install”.
   9. When asked “Click the Finish button …”, disable “Start Oracle VM …” and click “Finish”.
3. Complete the “Creating the perfect VirtualBox-based VM” procedure here using the just-downloaded Debian 12 netinst ISO image.
4. Install the basic OS as follows:
   1. Complete Installing Debian 12 on a PM or KVM VM.
   2. Complete Configuring the desktop environment.
   3. DON’T DO UNTIL REASON UNDERSTOOD: Configure but disable a ssh reverse tunnel.
5. Configure SSH access from the Windows laptop:
   1. Install putty
   2. …
   3. Facilitate non-local-to-VM ssh access as follows:
      1. Determine the VM’s IP address (e.g. using ip -4 addr in the VM).
      2. In VirtualBox configure port forwarding from 0.0.0.0:22 to <IP-of-VM>:22.
      3. Is that port forwarding site-specific? When we’re back at home is the IP of the VM going to change? I’m not sure.
6. Configure VNC access from the Windows laptop:
   1. note that lightdm.conf says to start a VNC session, with password in /etc/vnc/passwd, so x11vnc should not be needed
   2. install client
   3. use putty on nb24085 to connect to delguineon delguine:
      vncserver -localhost no -geometry 1920×1080 :15
      (NB: 1920×1080 is the resolution of the host machine, in this case nb24085)on nb24085:
      run up vncviewer in C:\tigerVNC
      vncserver is 192.168.1.106:5915
      (NB: 15 in 5915 corresponds to the :15 above and is the display number)There is a password set and it is stored on my mobile phone.
   4. Note that the VNC server process on the VM should not be port-forwarded-to for security reasons.
7. To share a folder between the Windows laptop and the VM:
   1. Note that the Debian wiki describes a different procedure for acquiring the guest additions, but hopefully, that is not needed.
   2. Run:

      apt-get install virtualbox-guest-additions-iso  linux-headers-$(uname -r) dkms
      losetup /dev/loop0 /usr/share/virtualbox/VBoxGuestAdditions.iso
      mount /dev/loop0 /mnt
      cd /mnt
      ./VBoxLinuxAdditions.run --nox11    #  fails with 

      Note that the VBoxLinuxAdditions.run call will fail with:

      VirtualBox Guest Additions: modprobe vboxsf failed

      and /var/log/vboxadd-setup.log suggests all went well.

   3. Reboot the VM
   4. The shared folders on the client side were managed by pcms and they should be again, but we’ll tread slowly. The entries are in the pcms-config/gen-facility-local and were:

      poprad-shared-folder /home/sramsay/shared-folder vboxsf uid=1000,gid=1000,umask=022 0 0
      drive-d /home/sramsay/drive-d vboxsf uid=1000,gid=1000,umask=022,noauto 0 0

      so the new entries should be set up in VirtualBox to agree with this, then they can be carefully re-enabled in pcms. Note that pcms writes some mount-related commands to /etc/sudoers, but these may no longer be needed; check!

8. Get X working:
   1. Install Xming
   2. how to call putty with a command (e.g. putty –how-to-get-it-to-run xfce4-terminal) so that that terminal is managed by Windows’s window manager?
9. Finalise as follows:
   1. Shut down VM.
   2. Can an export be created or
   3. Wait till back at home!
   4. Add a suitable entry to orzo:DNS for the work laptop and orzo:dhcpd.conf.
   5. Verify remote access to poprad (e.g. from farfalle)
   6. Complete Finalising a Linux installation.

See also

• Computing