Virtual Machine

Virtual Machine#

The laboratory practices will be performed on an operating system called Debian, which is one of the most famous and oldest GNU/Linux distribution. It is used in a large number of environments and applications, mostly in network infrastructure.

Note

It is possible to use any other GNU/Linux distribution like Ubuntu o Fedora. We recommend you to use the provided virtual machine. So you can follow the examples in the same environment that they will be explained.

To make easier its distribution and installation, we have prepared a virtual machine (VM) for VirtualBox. So that it is possible to run a complete machine with our pre-configured Debian for the labs, without the need to install it natively.

This VM is available on the lab computers, and we will use them for the practical sessions. You can also install it on your own PC, so you can have the same environment to practice at home or use it in the lab, if your assigned computer is not working for any reason. If you already have some of GNU/Linux distribution installed on your PC, you can probably use it directly.

Lab Computers#

As a general rule, the laboratory computers are the ones that will be used during the practical sessions.

To start the virtual machine, do the following steps:

  • Turn on the computer and wait until the operating system is booted.

  • Once started, a menu will appear with different virtual machines to boot.

  • Select, in this order:

    1. Vol O

    2. Red de Laboratorio. Note that the prompt shows: IP Pública.

    3. Ejecutar

  • Wait a few seconds and the virtual machine will start booting.

  • Once booted, it will ask for the user name and password.

    Note

    User: alumno

    Password: alumno

Installation on your PC#

With these instructions you will boot the lab virtual machine on your PC, without having to do a native installation. They are aimed primarily at Windows or MacOS users who do not have a GNU/Linux distribution installed in some form on their PC.

Requirements#

To be able to use the lab virtual machine you will need to:

  • Have at least 10GB of free disk space.

  • Have VirtualBox installed.

  • Have virtualization support enabled. It is possible that your PC may already have it, but if the virtual machine loading fails, you may need to activate it. It is usually activated in the BIOS of your PC and the way to do it depends on the PC manufacturer. We recommend you to look for your PC model and how to enable virtualization support to activate it (or make sure you already have it enabled).

Optionally, and if you want to use your PC during the lab sessions, your PC will need to have a wired network interface. If your PC only has a wireless interface, you can buy a network interface with USB connection.

Procedure#

  1. Download the OVA file that contains the virutal machine.

  2. Open VirtualBox.

  3. Go to File -> Import

  4. Select the previous downloaded OVA file in the File box and press Next.

  5. In the next screen, click on Import.

  6. After a few seconds,the new virtual machine named redes1 will appear in the left panel.

Important

Before launching the virtual machine for the first time, the network interface must be correctly configured:

  1. Select the virtual machine from the left panel and press Configuration.

  2. In the Network section, change the NAT value to Bridge, in the Adapter 1 tab. And in the advanced options, change the MAC address to a randomly generated one by pressing the refresh button.

  3. Finish by clicking OK.

This procedure only needs to be done before running the virtual machine for the first time.

The virtual machine is now ready to be used. To start it, just double click on it in the left panel and it will start running.

Language configuration#

The virtual machine is in Spanish (default configuration). But you can change it to English by executing this command in the terminal:

sudo localectl set-locale en_GB.UTF-8

Also, you can configure the keyboard layout in the virtual machine to adjust it to your real keyboard. The keyboard layout in the virtual machine is configured in Spanis, so keep it if you work with a Spanish keyboard. You can change the virtual machine to have English keyboard layout with the following commands:

sudo localectl set-keymap en
sudo localectl set-x11-keymap en

Note that other keyboard layouts are also possible. Just use the one you want instead of en.

Finally, reeboot the virtual machine.

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