CST8102 Lab 1

Linux installation

Due date
• Before the end of Week 2, Jan. 23.

Submission
• Upload a screenshot of your working Linux Virtual Machine to Brightspace.

Evaluation
• 2.5% of your final mark in the course.

Materials
• Student laptop computer with VMware Workstation 15.x installed
• Ubuntu 20.04 Desktop ISO image

Procedure

In this lab you will be installing a copy of Linux within a VMware Virtual Machine. This virtual machine
will give you a Linux environment that you can use for future lab work.
1. Creating a new virtual machine
a) Start VMware Workstation.
b) Select File > New Virtual Machine
c) Type of Configuration: Select Typical (Recommended) > Next
d) Guest Operating System Installation: choose “I will install the operating system later” >
Next
• Do not use the option titled "Installer Disc Image File (iso)". This will use VMware's
Easy Installer, which is NOT what that following steps will describe.
e) On this screen, ensure that you have “Linux” selected as the Guest Operating system and
“Ubuntu 64-bit” as the version. > Next
f) Leave the virtual machine name as is, or rename it, your choice. As for the location, click
browse, create a new folder at the root of your hard disk. This is very, very important as
most of you have OneDrive installed and OneDrive and VMWare do not get along. The de-
fault location is often under the control of OneDrive. The screen should look something like
this (Please note that my laptop has 2 hard disks c:\vms\Unutu 20.04 is also just fine). Hit >

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Next.

g) Accept the default disk capacity settings. > Next

h) Use all the default options for the next few steps and click Finish when you reach the
following screen.

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i) Now click on “Edit virtual machine settings”

j) Select the Options tab.

k) There is a selection call “VNC Connections”. Enable VNC Connections. You can choose to
enter a password or not.

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Click OK.

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2. Mount Ubuntu ISO image file

a) Get a copy of the Ubuntu 20.04 Desktop (64 bit) ISO image on your PC
• Go to Ubuntu and download Ubuntu desktop 20.04

• Note: If your laptop is not working with the 64-bit image, download the 32-bit image
instead
b) Mount the ISO image to the Ubuntu virtual machine:
• There will be a home page for the new VM you created. Click on the Edit Virtual
Machine Settings for this VM.
• Click CD/DVD (SATA)

• Under Connection, choose Use ISO Image File, and browse to find the ISO image

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3. Start the Ubuntu Virtual Machine

a) Click Power on this virtual machine

b) Linux installation will start automatically.
c) Click “Install Ubuntu” in the Welcome screen
d) Click “Continue” for “Preparing to install Ubuntu”
e) Click “Erase disk and install Ubuntu” for “Installation type”
• Click “Continue” in the popup window of “Write changes to disks?”

f) Type and select “Toronto (Ontario, Canada)” in “Where are you?” screen
g) Keep the default setting on “Keyboard layout” screen, and click “Continue”.
h) Input your information on the “Who are you?” screen.
• Set Your Name as your first name

• Set the “Username” as your Algonquin College user id.

• Enter a password and re-enter it. Write it down if you need to remember it!

• Ensure “Require password to login” is selected”

• You can shorten the name of the computer name if you prefer it to be shorter. The
default is fine as well.
• Click “Continue”

i) Wait for installation to finish, and click “Restart Now”

j) You may be prompted to remove the installation media and press Enter. Simply press the
Enter key
k) Login with the user and password you input in “3 h)”

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l) Click on Skip when prompted to connect your online accounts. Select Next until you have
the option to click “Done”. Click Done.
m) You may be prompted to update your operating system. Click on the Cancel/Now button.
You can install the updates the next time you reboot your virtual machine
n) Open a terminal window by one of the following methods:
• pressing the Super key (the windows key) and typing “terminal”

• press CTRL-ALT-T on the keyboard

o) Set root user password with the command in terminal:

• sudo passwd root

• This should be a different password than the one used earlier. Also write this password
down.
4. Install vim (the Linux editor to be used in future labs) with the following command:
• sudo apt-get install vim

5. Install the ssh server. This allows you to connect to your machine from the host desktop and
also give us a way to remote into your VM easily.
•sudo apt-get install ssh

6. To verify that VMware Tools are installed type the following command in the terminal window:
vmware-toolbox-cmd -v
If VMWare Tools are not installed you can install VMware Tools with the following command:
• sudo apt-get install open-vm-tools-desktop

7. Get a screenshot of the output of the uname command by using the following information.
a) In your terminal, clear the screen with the following commands:
• clear

b) Enter the following command

• uname -a

c) Press the Super key (the windows key) and type screenshot
d) Open Screenshot
e) Use the option ‘Grab the current window”, and Take a Screenshot
f) Save in Folder Desktop, and Save the file. The following is a sample screenshot

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g) Upload the file to the Lab 1 section in Brightspace using one of the following 3 suggestions.
Ensure to make your student ID/username clearly visible.
• drag and drop the .png file from the Ubuntu desktop to the Windows host desktop

• using FireFox from within Ubuntu

• take a screenshot from your host OS of the VM window, and upload that.

h) If you have any problems with the above, demo the VM to the lab instructor before you
leave.
8. Familiarize yourself with the following features of VMWare.
a) Enter full screen mode and exit it.
b) Which is the host OS?
c) Which is the guest OS?
d) Copy/paste the following command from this document into the terminal of your Ubuntu.
This tests to ensure that you have the VM Tools installed correctly.
ls ~
You should see the following output. If not check with the lab instructor.
Desktop Downloads Music Public Videos
Documents examples.desktop Pictures Templates

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9. Create a full clone of your virtual machine in case things get badly broken.
a) Shutdown the virtual machine:
• using terminal

• sudo shutdown –h now

• or using the graphical option

• Click the system menu button in the top right hand corner.

• wait for the guest OS to finish shutting down.

b) Select VM > Manage > Clone from the menu.

c) After going through the wizard, under the Clone Type dialog window, select Create a Full
Clone.

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