Ubuntu 10.04, VirtualBox, and shared folders – a how to

By finndo On May 10, 2010 · 1 Comment

Due to the popularity of my Fedora 12 version of this how to, I have copied it here and made the necessary changes for  (K)Ubuntu 10.04 Guests (I actually did this while making said changes so I know it works…)  :)

step by step instructions for getting shared folders to work [...]

Due to the popularity of my Fedora 12 version of this how to, I have copied it here and made the necessary changes for  (K)Ubuntu 10.04 Guests (I actually did this while making said changes so I know it works…)  :)

step by step instructions for getting shared folders to work in a Kubuntu 10.04 VM on VirtualBox (post OS installation)

  1. open a console window (I am a huge fan of Yakuake)
  2. sudo apt-get update
  3. sudo apt-get dselect-upgrade
  4. sudo apt-get install gcc gcc+ linux-kernel-headers
  5. restart the VM to boot with the newest kernel
  6. sudo apt-get autoremove (this will remove the old kernel files and decrease your used space on the virtual drive)
  7. goto the Devices drop down menu for VirtualBox and select install Guest additions
  8. sudo mount /cdrom /media
  9. sudo /media/VBoxLinuxAdditions-x86.run
  10. You will need to reboot the VM to reinitialize the HAL daemon (or manually restart the daemon if you know how; however restarting will let (K)Ubuntu auto resize your display as well)
  11. (special note, if you have already run the VBox Additions from the cd and just need  to update it, or it was not working, then skip steps 7-10 and  just type this “sudo /etc/init.d/vboxadd setup“
  12. sudo mkdir /mnt/[name you want your shared folder to have in the VM]
  13. mount -t vboxsf [name you gave the share in VBox] /mnt/[name you used in step 12]
  14. then you can now access your shared host directory from your (K)Ubuntu 10.04 install in the /mnt/[name you used in step 12] folder!!!

Really not that hard, but nowhere in the documentation for VirtualBox does it tell you that you have to do all of that!

Bonus step!!

now I bet you want to know how to make it comeback after a reboot, don’t cha!

  1. sudo vi /etc/fstab
  2. “G” (uppercase letter)
  3. “o” (lowercase number)
  4. [name you used in VBox shared folders] [tab] [fullpath to the mount point in the VM, or #12 above] [tab] vboxsf [tab] noauto,rw [tab] 0 [tab] 0 (both of those are the number zero)
  5. [esc]  (the escape key, probably is labeled “esc” on your keyboard in the top left corner)
  6. “wq!” (lowercase letters and an exclamation (sometimes called a “BANG” by unix people, older people, and those who were taught by one of the afore mentioned.))
  7. now reboot
  8. sudo mount [name you used in VBox shared folders] (you will have to do this everytime you reboot (I just do a save state, so not an issue very often) as the fstab loads the mounts BEFORE the VBox additions are run, causing a “not found” error if it is not setup this way)

Special note: the folder name from VirtualBox shared folders is normally the name of the last directory in the path, for example if you are sharing /home/[my username]/Downloads/mystuff – then your VBox shared name will be “mystuff”

Also, check out my post on getting this to work in Fedora 12!!

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FreeBSD the next step – update 2

By finndo On April 5, 2010 · Leave a Comment

this may get a bit repetitive with me re-listing everything, so instead I am just going to link to the first post that has the list of things to do… note I have added a couple of things at the bottom so the [...]

this may get a bit repetitive with me re-listing everything, so instead I am just going to link to the first post that has the list of things to do… note I have added a couple of things at the bottom so the numbers now go past 20…

 

1. 75% in progress, troubleshooting and more testing needed.  I have gotten my user added the the “VirtualBox” user group, but I get this error when I try to execute VirtualBox from the command line ”VirtualBox: supR3HardenedExecDir: couldn’t read “”, errno=2 cchLink=-1“  I tried loading VirtualBox from KDE and it was loading for about 12 seconds then nothing happend, also it did not install a manual page.  I’ll have to do some forum surfing to figure this one out.  this exact error is referrenced in the FreeBSD handbook noting that it should only occur if you are using an older version on VirtualBox.

2. 0% not started.  no updates yet, holding off till I get some of these other tasks complete.

3. 100% complete.  everything is automounting at bootup and it is doing it where I want it to.

4. 100% complete.  I am working almost exclusively via ssh now and can connect to it remotely as tested via an Android cell phone ssh client (props to connectbot)

5. 10% in progress, researched only.  Chrome can be installed as a Debian, Ubuntu, openSUSE, or Fedora package, I just need to set my system up to handle RPMs and I might be able to get it to install, hopefully the newest version will work easier than last august when everyone was trying to hack the install to make it work, especially since every forum I went to never had a successful complete port available and there were no posts from 2010 and the maintainer of the hacked port is not doing updates anymore except those that match his specific system configuration.

6. duplicate issue.  going to delete this one, as #19 and #20 pretty much sum it up.

7. 30% in progress, trouble shooting and additional testing required.  as noteded else where VirtualBox is installed but not able to run, and I have not started on VMWare.

8. 100% complete.  Firefox 3.6.2 is installed and operational.

9. 90% in progress, trouble shooting and more testing needed.  self testing shows that a user is able to ssh in and access the drives, but is not able to ftp in and access the drives.  I used “sudo ln -s /mnt/<directory> /home/<user>/<directory>” I haven’t used links much and need to see if the -s (symbolic) is what is preventing the user from accessing the data via ftp.

10. 0% not started.  no updates yet, holding off till I get some of these other tasks complete.

11. 20% in progress, 1 out of 5 drives is currently running with GPT.  the new 1.5TB drive was setup with GPT when installed into the system.  the new 500GB drive (FreeBSD boot drive) is still MBR as the FreeBSD fdisk application did not have an option for setting the drive boot record to GPT, although I have found documentation on converting the FreeBSD boot drive to GPT.

12. 0% in progress, initial research turned up nothing useful.

13. -30% not started, situation worsening, additional packages labeled as “gnome-xxxx” or “xxxxx-gnome” have been added as dependencies during other package installations. 

14. 10% in progress, initial research has turned up useful information; however I am not currently in a possition to proceed.

15. 0% not started.  no updates yet, holding off till I get some of these other tasks complete.

16. 0% not started.  no updates yet, holding off till I get some of these other tasks complete, will require at least one of #’s 1, 2, 7, or 15 to be complete before work can begin.

17. 0% not started.  no updates yet, holding off till I get some of these other tasks complete, not a priority and very near the bottom of the list of things to do.

18. 40% in progress.  Still leaning towards rsync, but I have been researching into using dump and I think it will do what I want it to.

19. 60% in progress, I thought I had it installed, but when I went to the test if you have java installed page of www.java.com it failed to test my java installation (might need to add the plugin for firefox, will check); however the java download page only lists “Windows, Mac OS, and Linux” as OS choices, so I will have to do more research.

********update – I am making a java install page because this was such a pain in the rump to do.***********

20. 40% in progress, I thought I had it installed, but when I went to hulu it told me I need java 10.0.22, also amd.com told me I need the flash plugin installed; however again there is no FreeBSD listing on the download page as a supported OS, so I will have to do more research.

21. 100% complete.  (I know I added this one) get Yakuake working in KDE, well I did a “sudo pkg_add -r yakuake” and it started downloading, it has about 6 dependencies and those had about 150 dependencies, most of which I already had installed.  the problem I saw was it force downloaded KDE 3.5 and all of it’s dependencies, I hope that doesn’t screw anything up.  If I remember correctly from when KDE 4.0 first came out they specifically named the port KDE4 instead of just KDE so that there would not be conflicts on systems that had both versions installed.  after it finished I ran a “sudo pkgdb -F” it found a lot of stale dependencies and fixed them, one thing I noticed fly by was Firefox 3.0.## which tells me I need to check my Firefox and see if it is 3.0 or 3.6…

22. 10% researched only.  Get Picasa installed and working, this will be just like chrome and will require using RPM packages.

23. 100% complete.  as part of #5 and #22 (and because I always install this on FreeBSD, but it failed during initial OS installation for some reason) I am installing the linux compatibility/emulation pack.  I’ll do a brief post on this and link it here.

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Thoughts on Linux…

By finndo On February 22, 2010 · Leave a Comment

start off with some non-techie stuff first…

I head back to see my surgeon next Monday,  where he will tell me that in another week or two I should start putting some weight on my leg (toe touch, or partial weight bearing?) when at my PT.  I am also hoping he [...]

start off with some non-techie stuff first…

I head back to see my surgeon next Monday,  where he will tell me that in another week or two I should start putting some weight on my leg (toe touch, or partial weight bearing?) when at my PT.  I am also hoping he will tell me it is okay to get my incision wet, as it has been making it very difficult to take showers!

ok, on to the good stuff.

So, I am not at home and do not have my desktop machine available for use for the last week, I have been going through withdrawal…  but having to work on someone else’s machine, and my wife’s laptop (I think I mentioned before, I gave her mine, and sold her old one) has taught me one important lesson, why I prefer Linux.

My number one reason for preferring Linux over Windows is system maintenance.  What do I mean? well, I mean keeping everything up to date, this latest round of Adobe patching should make this make sense to everyone.  I don’t use Acrobat on my Linux machines for this reason.  However; back to the point, when I need to check for updates on my Linux machine I open Yakuake with a quick hit of F12 and type “sudo yum update” and it comes back and tells me every single thing installed on my system that has an update available, period, end of statement.  On windows, I have to launch 5-8 different apps, find their “check for updates” button/link and wait for the results (I have learned by doing this that OpenOffice.org does not notify you of a new version being released, only if there are updates for your version.  example, I have 3.1 installed, and 3.2 is now available.  clicking the check for updates menu option tells my “There are no available updates for this version” (maybe not word for word, but that is just about what it says).  I run windows update, Acrobat Update, Java update, Picasa update, Chrome update, Firefox update, and on and on… (yes I know there is an Adobe Updater, but I don’t know how to initiate it in Windows, and never cared enough to look it up, but now that I have mentioned it I sure I found instructions and have put a link to them here).

Simple and easy to manage, most distros even let you run their package manager and it has a button to click to check for updates for your system, making it easier and more time consuming all at once to do the same thing.  (Yakuake is always running and it takes me about 1.5 seconds to type that line into the terminal, it takes a lot longer to load the package manager from the application menu and then click the check for updates button, but you don’t have to type that way!)

The actual GUI interface for Windows an Linux and even MAC are so similar these days, that I don’t care which I am using as far as that is concerned.  I have come to the understanding that there will always be applications/games for an OS, other than the one I am using, that I want to use/play (take iPhone for example, they have the best Air Traffic Controller game I have played, and I’ve hunted those down and played quite a number of them, but I don’t own anything made by Apple, and probably won’t ever, unless the 2nd gen iPad totally rocks… but I will be getting an Android Tablet this year (possibly the Notion Ink Adam, or the HTC Google Chrome OS tablet), so I still probably won’t get an iPad).  My concern at this point, as I spend more and more time as a Unix Admin is maintenance.  The system I use at home needs to be practically maint free, as most Linux and Unix machines are, they will run for years without being touched by an admin, the best I know of are an AIX Server and a OpenVMS server, the AIX server has been running since 1991 and has never been patched, updated, reconfigured, or messed with in any way.  It is setup to contact a NIM server for logins, so no new users have ever been added to it, it has never crashed, never lost power, never been rebooted.  That to me is the greatest achievement of humankind (in technology anyways, and some of these companies need to take a look at the AIX OS and learn something from it!!!).  The other machine, the OpenVMS machine has been running since before 1994, but has not been patched, never been upgraded, never been rebooted, since 1994.  now I know next to nothing about OpenVMS, and have not personally logged into the machine itself, but a friend and co-worker of mine used to be the sole admin for the OpenVMS machines at that company and although that one is the only one like this, it is still running today without interference from humans.  I am sure some other machines are out there doing the same, but these are two that I know.  The longest Windows Server I have heard of running without rebooting or crashing was about 2.5 – 3 years, after which the hardware components in the server failed and the machine was replaced.  Some people have told me about Windows servers being up for 4 years and then being restarted by some new guy, but I have no validation of it and they could not give me a more exact time frame.

not sure if I made a compelling argument or not, but I need some medication and to go prop my leg up, so I am done here.  Also expecting UPS sooner or later for an over night supersave shipment… and it takes me 5 mins to get downstairs…  :)

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