Various virtualization solutions for Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope)

• A) VMware Player
  • B) Download guest operating systems
    
    
• C) VirtualBox
  
  
• D) KVM virtualization
  

A) VMware Player

See picture A5.

A6) Test it
$ vmplayer


See picture A6.
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But for now, quit the vmplayer because we need to donwload some guest operating systems first. Move to step B).

B) Download guest operating systems

directory.

Picture B5-1: Start it.


If it asks where you got the image, answer "I copied it".

Picture B5-2: Login with the given password and username.

C) VirtualBox

Say YES if it asks "Should vboxdrv kernel module be compiled now?"
Press TAB-key or ARROW-keys to move the cursor in the text window.

See picture

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I will here show how to install a new operating system from an iso-file:
Create a new Virtual Machine and attach iso-file to the CD/DVD ROM device. See the menu selection Machine -> Settings,  CD/DVD ROM.

Study these pictures

Note: Guest operating systems in VirtualBox cannot run if the KVM virtualization module is loaded.
You will likely see this error message.


The solutions is to remove the KVM moule.

List all KVM modules
$ lsmod | grep kvm

$ su -c "yum install kernel-headers kernel-devel gcc"

See picture:
 

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C10-2) Download Guest Additions.
Ask VirtualBox to download the Guest Additions by selecting Devices -> Install Guest Additions from the menu.
See picture:


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C10-3) Wait until the download is ready.
VirtualBox will download and make the files available under the /media directory. It actually creates a kind of storage/cdrom device which is then mounted under /media.
Notice: The download may take some time.

After a few minutes time my Fedora guest reported that it got a new device which is mounted under /media.
See picture 


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C10-4) Install the Guest Additions.

In the guest OS, start a terminal window and cd into the installation directory (in  /media/VB* or /media/cdrom )
VirtualBox 3.0 seems to mount the guest additions to /media/cdrom.

$ cd /media/cdrom 
(in the older VirtualBox 2.x it might be)
$ cd /media/VB*

Now check the files
$ ls -l 
Should report this 

Notice:
Sometimes VirtualBox fails to mount the Guest Additions directory. Let's say you fired the "Devices" -> "Install Guest Additions" selection several times but nothing seemed to happen. Try this:

1) Create a mount directory if not already present (do as root or sudo).
mkdir -p /media/cdrom

2) Use "ls -l" and look for /dev/disk/by-label/VBOXADDITIONS* devices
ls -l  /dev/disk/by-label/VBOXADD*

3) Then mount it (as root or sudo).  Eg. in this case i do 
mount  /dev/disk/by-label/VBOXADDITIONS_3.3.0_49315  /media/cdrom

4) Cd into the /media/cdrom
cd /media/cdrom 

And install the additions as shown below.
(umount the /media/cdrom directory after usage)

C10-5) Reboot your guest OS.

C10-6) OpenGL in VirtualBox

See picture (OpenGL test in Ubuntu 9.04 guest OS)

D) KVM virtualization

Run this command and If something shows up, you have a Intel's VT(vmx) or AMD's SVM capable CPU. 
$ egrep '(vmx|svm)' --color=always /proc/cpuinfo

If nothing is printed, it means that your CPU doesn't support hardware virtualisation. 
Check also that virtualisation is enabled in the BIOS.
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D3) Add  your user name to the libvirtd group. You can replace $(id -un) with your user name.  
Run command  
$ sudo usermod -aG libvirtd $(id -un)

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D4) Reboot your computer.
I got som errors in the VirtManager before I re-booted so I suppose reboot is necessary.
Reboot will propably load the kvm (and kvm-intel or kvm-amd) modules.

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D5) Start the VirtManager from the menu

And re-check the result with lsmod

Note: You can also use modprobe and modprobe -r to load/unload the modules.

Now start the KVM Virtual Manager from Applications -> System Tools menu.
See picture 


You can also start it from the command line with
$ virt-manager
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It will now format/prepare the virtual harddrive.

D6-8) Install the guest into the virtual harddrive.
It should automatically boot from the iso-image but if it does not, click the [Run] button to start the guest.

As said, this example will run from the Fedora's iso-image.

Click the installation icon on the guest's desktop and install Fedora 10 (or any other distro) you chose to play with.
See picture


Complete the installation of guest.

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You can easily start your guest from command line. Eg. try the following command. 
Replace the image path/name with yours. 
-m 750 means memory, -boot c means boot from primary hard disc.

$ kvm -m 750 -boot c -soundhw sb16 -net nic -net user $HOME/KVM/KVM-Fedora10.img

You can try various sound devices (-soundhw). This command will list them all
$ kvm -soundhw list

Study also KVM's manual...
$ man kvm
and 
$ kvm -h 

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Literature:

http://virt-manager.et.redhat.com

An introduction to KVM and Lguest (IBM)...

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