NCSAET2017/VMhelp

Getting the virtual machine going requires two steps. First you will install the free Oracle VirtualBox software. Then you will download the ETK2017 machine image and set it up inside VirtualBox. Downloading and Installing VirtualBox

• Linux: You can download binary packages for many Linux distributions from [1]. But most Linux distributions will allow you to install VirtualBox via their package management system. For Ubuntu, for example, the required packages are virtualbox, virtualbox-dkms, and virtualbox-qt.
• Mac OS: Download the OS X VirtualBox package [2]. Open the package, run the installer and follow the instructions.
• Windows: Download the Windows package: [3]. Run the installer and follow the instructions.

The online user manual might be helpful for a detailed explanation of how to install and setup VirtualBox.

Getting and Installing the ETK2017 Machine

Now download the ETK2017 machine (2 GB to download, expands to 8GB, requires ~2GB of RAM to run): ETK2017 ETK2017.ova.

At the school, we will provide copies of the ETK2017 virtual machine image on USB flash storage devices. This will make it faster to install the official version.

Next, you will need to install the virtual machine (also called "appliance") inside VirtualBox. Full instructions can be found on the VirtualBox webpage. In a nutshell:

• Open the VirtualBox GUI manager
• Click on the "File/Import Appliance..." menu
• In the dialog box click on "Open Appliance" and open the download ova file
• Click on Next accepting all defaults. This will create a new virtual machine.
• (Optional) Click on the "Shared folder" panel in the in the right-hand half of the VirtualBox Manager to add a local folder to share with the virtual machine. It should be visible automatically when you (re)start the VM and will appear in the media folder on the Desktop. If not please click on the MountSharedFolder.sh file in the VM's Desktop.
• (Optional) assign more CPU cores and memory to the VM by clicking on the "System" setting.
• Start the appliance.
• (Optional) in the VM on its Desktop there is a file ExpandDisk.sh. Double click on it and it will increase the VM disk to 32GB from its current 8GB.

We recommend that you keep the original .ova file around. It will serve as your backup and can be used to restore the system should you require a full reset of the software setup.

Inside of the VM itself you will also find a directory /home/et-backup which contains a read-only copy of the school files that you can use to restore your files in case you would start from scratch.

Username and password

The user name and password are both et and this user can become root using sudo.

Exchanging data between host and virtual machine

• Clipboard content copied and pasted via Ctrl-C (or Command-C on OSX) and Ctrl-V is shared among host and virtual machine.
• Depending on the version of virtualbox used on the host you can use "Shared folders". To do so (if you did not already create one when setting up the virtual machine) use the "Devices/Shared Folders Settings..." menu to create one. You can make it available inside of the virtual machine it by either rebooting your virtual machine or by using the MountSharedFolders.sh script that you can find on the Desktop of your virtual machine. The shared folder will appear in the media folder on the Desktop.
• The virtual machine is reachable via ssh (and scp) by doing ssh -p 2222 et@127.0.0.1 and using the password et. OSX and Linux usually include an ssh client in their default installation, for Windows you can use PuTTY and WinSCP.
• On Windows you can try to access the VM as a network shared directory (this is highly experimental though).
• If all else fails you can send yourself emails and use a web-based email client or services like dropbox to transfer data.