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Introduction

This document explains how to jump-start the analysis environment on a laptop using a virtual machine (VM) image. The recipe would work as well for any other hardware (desktop, server). In this document we're exploring a technology based on Oracle VM VirtualBox. The main benefit of the software is that it's stable and it's free. Besides, it's easy to set up. The software is available for all popular platforms, including Linux (all distributions), Windows 7/8, MacOS, or Solaris. However a similar approach would work as well for other hypervisors, such as Parallels, VMware, etc. They all would recognize a format of the packaged VM images which we're exporting here.

If you run into problems while following the instructions below, please check the problems section below.

Preparing your computer to host virtual images

The first step before downloading anything is to make sure your CPU has a hardware support for the virtualization technology. This is known as VT-x on Intel CPUs or AMD-V on the AMD CPUs. All modern CPUs built over the last 5 years should have it. But you would better check if the one you have. Each operating system has the corresponding tool which would tell you this information. Here is how this can be done on some of the systems:

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Once you're done with installing the VirtualBox itself then you will also need to install Oracle VM VirtualBox Extension Pack. This software will upgrade your installation with a number of useful extensions. After rebooting your system you should be ready to proceed to the next step of downloading and using our virtual images.  However, before you may want to read the documentation on the VirtualBox itself. There are many aspects of setting and managing VirtualBox which we wouldn't even touch in this document. We're assuming it has to be up to you to get yourself familiar with the technology. The present document covers only basic steps needed to set up and run our images. The virtualization software has many other potentially interesting settings which you may (eventually) find useful for you.

Downloading and setting up a virtual image

The virtual images can be downloaded from the following location:

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Note that the initial state of the machine will be "Powered Off".

What's inside the virtual images

Accounts, passwords

There is an important thing you need to know about the security of your machine. The machine comes with two predefined accounts:

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If you have proper privileges for modifying the repository then you may even commit your modifications back to SVN.

Problems

• On a macbook, I could not find a "File" menu item to import the .ova image file.
  
  • By double clicking the .ova file image, virtual box will come up and digested it.
• When I started the virtual machine, I got an error about not having a USB 2.0 device?
  • You did not install the Oracle Virtual Box Extension Pack.
• When first powering on the machine, I cannot see anything.
  
  • There is sometimes a problem where the login screen is not using your computers video settings. After scrolling within the virtual machine so that you can see the login window, and then logging in, it should re-display within your computers video settings (after logging in).

Final notes

• The default configuration of the virtual machine won't allow external login into the machine (one can'e do 'ssh' into the system). However, it's possible to give you machine a unique IP address to allow the logins. Instructions can be found in the VirtualBox documentation. And make sure you change the default passwords of both root and pcds accounts in your virtual image.
• Please, read the documentation on VirtualBox

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