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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.

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It will take a few minutes for VirtualBox to "digest" the file. The software will read, unpack the input file and place the actual image (along with additional support files) some where on your file system. The actual location can be changes through one of the configuration option of the VirtualBox application. When the process is done then you should see the VM the GUI. Here is an example:

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

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By default, after you start the machine, the network connection will not be enable on the VM. You shall locate the following sign on the title bar on the top right corner of the machine's GUI:

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If you see what you see above then the network is disabled. You will still be able to log on that machine through the GUI, but you won't be able to ssh out of the machine. Click on that sign and then click on the name of the network interface System eth0 in order to enable the network.

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