Virtual machine management for cs.mines.edu.
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Install a hypervisor (see options below)
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Download the virtual disk (You need to replace USER below with your Mines username).
On Microsoft Windows, you can obtain
scp
andxz
from Cygwin or another scp (pscp
) from Putty.From ON campus, copy via scp:
scp 'USER@isengard.mines.edu:~ndantam/mines-cs-vm.vmdk.xz' .
From OFF campus, copy via scp through jumpbox:
scp -o ProxyJump=USER@jumpbox.mines.edu 'USER@isengard:~ndantam/mines-cs-vm.vmdk.xz' .
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Decompress the disk image:
unxz -v mines-cs-vm.vmdk.xz
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Start your hypervisor and import the virtual disk.
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Login with the default account:
Username: blaster Password: password
Note: You may need to change the session type in the display manager to System Default.
Free, open-source, and cross-platform virtualization application.
Commercial virtualization application that is available in some Mines computer labs. VMWare Workstation player is also free-of-charge for noncommercial use.
A hypervisor built into the Linux kernel.
To run a disk image:
qemu-system-x86_64 --enable-kvm -m 1024 -hda mines-cs-vm.vmdk
The virtual machine is constructed by first building a Docker image and then extracting the filesystem from that image onto a separate virtual disk. Part of the build process chroots into the virtual disk filesystem, so the build will only work on Linux.
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Install/Setup docker
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Install virtualbox, qemu-utils, and parted (used for disk image setup):
apt-get install virtualbox qemu-utils parted
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Load the NBD Module:
sudo modprobe nbd max_part=8
WARNING: ensure that nothing else is using
/dev/nbd0
or the build will clobber it -
Create the docker image:
sudo make docker-image.stamp
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Create the virtual disk:
sudo make img/mines-cs-vm.vmdk
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lightdm does not work correctly. Use gdm3 instead:
dpkg-reconfigure gdm3