Ubuntu 18.04 LTS 64 bit Virtual Machine Setup Guide This document contains brief instructions to setup a virtual machine needed to experiment with some practical aspects of Unix security and software security for COMP2700. Installation and Setup Download VirtualBox You will need to have VirtualBox software installed in your computer. This Virtual Machine (VM) has been tested in VirtualBox 6.0.10. It is recommended that you use this version or a more recent version of VirtualBox. VirtualBox is available for free from: https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads Make sure you install both the VirtualBox platform package as well as the extension pack. If you do not own a personal computer or have difficulty installing the VirtualBox software, you can use computers in the CS labs which have the most recent VirtualBox installed. Download Ubuntu 18.04 LTS VM image For this course, I have prepared a VM image containing an Ubuntu 18.04 LTS 64 bit installation. This installation will be used throughout the course to demonstrates various aspects of Unix security and software security. The image can be downloaded the course site for COMP2700 on Wattle. The image is prepared as a VirtualBox ‘appliance’ file, named ‘2019-comp2700-lab.ova’. IMPORTANT NOTE: If you are using the lab computers, please download the VM image into the /scratch directory. DO NOT save it in your home folder as the image may be too big to fit your home folder and may cause issues for you in logging in to the lab computers. Import the Ubuntu 18.04 image to your VirtualBox For this guide, we use an example where VirtualBox is installed in a Mac OS X host. The setup for other operating systems should be very similar. Assume you have downloaded the VM image mentioned in the previous step, and assume that it is saved to your host computer. 1. Launch VirtualBox and select the menu ‘File -> Import Appliance’. 2. Select the virtualbox image (2019-comp2700-lab.ova) to import and click ‘Next’. 3. Proceed by clicking ‘Import’. 4. The VM is imported. Click the ‘Start’ button to run the VM. User accounts and passwords for the Ubuntu 18.04 installation The Ubuntu installation contains the following user accounts: • User name: admin2700 password: admin123 • User name: alice password: alice123 • User name: bob password: bob123 • User name: charlie password: charlie123 • User name: dennis password: dennis123 • User name: eve password: eve123 • User name: fong password: fong123 The user ‘admin2700’ (display name ‘Administrator’) has administrative rights so you can use this account to gain root access. How to configure shared folders By default, the virtual machine image included does not allow sharing between the guest and the host systems. You can, however, enable the folder sharing facility between the host and the guest using the following instructions. The following shows an example using Mac OS X as the host. How to configure shared folder between Mac OS X host and Linux guest systems in VirtualBox. 1. With the virtual machine running and user logged in, navigate to the menu ‘Devices -> Shared Folders -> Shared Folders Settings.. ’. 2. Click on the add button to add a shared folder. In the following example, we created a folder called ‘vboxshare’ in the user’s home folder. Make sure you check the ‘Auto Mount’ option in the dialog box. 3. Click OK and exit the dialog menu. 4. The shared folder in the guest Linux OS is mounted under the directory /media/sf_vboxshare. This should appear in the guest OS desktop. The name of shared folder in Linux reflects the name of the folder in Windows, i.e., it is always the name of the Windows folder, with a ‘sf_’ added to the front. In this example, the shared folder contains one file called lab1-files.zip. How to configure clipboard sharing, so you can copy and paste texts between the guest and the host systems: With the Linux system running, select the VirtualBox menu ‘Devices -> Shared Clipboard -> Bidirectional’. This is useful when you need to copy texts to and from the guest Linux system.
