Setting Up a VM on a Mac (ARM chips)

Danger

Perform these steps only if you have a Macbook with a ARM (m{1-4}) chip. Otherwise use VirtualBox instead.

Download the reference VM image

Download the reference VM image from this link. We use this image for the course. TAs might not be able to help if you use other VM images prepared by yourself. The image contains Ubuntu 24.04.1 LTS 64 bit. The default user of the VM image is student. The password for the user is also student.

Installing the VM on Mac

If you have a Mac with a modern chip, VirtualBox will not work as the underlying architecture is different (ARM vs x86_64). To overcome this problem you will have to use another hypervisor which is qemu. Note that qemu is used as an emulator (it emulates another architecture) therefore it will be slower than using VirtualBox for x86.

First, you must install brew and qemu. Open a terminal and run the following command:

$ /bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"

Once brew is installed, run the following command in the same terminal:

$ brew install qemu

Note

Do not copy the dollar sign. It is a convention to indicate that the command should be run in a terminal.

Go to the folder which contains the “ubuntu.zip” and run the following commands:

$ unzip ubuntu.zip
$ qemu-img convert -f vdi -O qcow2 ubuntu-server.vdi ubuntu-server.qcow2

Warning

You can delete the .vdi file but be careful do not to delete the .qcow2 image!

Finally, run the following command:

$ qemu-system-x86_64 ubuntu-server.qcow2 -m 2G -netdev user,id=mynet0,hostfwd=tcp::6543-:22 -device e1000,netdev=mynet0

You have to wait a few seconds/minutes before the machine boots completely. Once fully booted, you must enter your credentials (the password is “student”). Once you have logged on to the system, you need to run the following commands:

$ sudo loadkeys be      # Change the keyboard layout to Belgian
$ ip addr show          # Do not execute the next commands, if you see a valid IP address assigned to your interface
$ sudo dhclient -v ens3
$ sudo apt update       # To check if network is working, this command will be explained later

If you do not see any errors, everything is working on your side and you can move on to the next step.

Connect to the VM by ssh

Then open a terminal and enter the following commands:

$ ssh student@127.0.0.1 -p 6543

The VM will ask your password. Use the “student” credentials. Note that if you are using Windows, you can use PowerShell or CommandPrompt or putty.

Update package information

Finally, enter the following command on your terminal app after connecting to the VM by ssh:

$ sudo apt update

In a nutshell, this command updates the package lists for upgrades for packages that need upgrading, as well as new packages that have just come to the repositories.

  • sudo means “superuser do” and is used to run commands with administrative privileges.

  • apt is the packet manager for some Linux distributions, including Ubuntu. You can see it as the equivalent of the “Google Play Store” or “App Store” for Linux.

  • update is the parameter for the apt command.

Note that, apt update does not actually install new versions of software.

After running this command, you can install apps/utilities via the apt install command:

$ sudo apt install gcc make bison flex libncurses-dev openssh-server git curl wget bc

Danger

NEVER upgrade the kernel of the VM. The kernel version is 5.8.0-53-generic. If you upgrade the kernel, you may face issues with the project.

General usage of the VM

Since you do not need one for this course, no graphical interface is installed on the VM. You will have to use the command line interface (CLI) to interact with the VM. The next tutorial (next week) will explain how to use the CLI in more details. This week, you will only learn the basic commands.

Here are some tips to help you:

  • When you will launch a program in the foreground, you won’t be able to use the terminal until the program is finished. This can be quite annoying. For example when writing code, you will need to stop your editor each time you want to compile and/or execute your code. Fortunately, you are not limited to a single terminal. You can open as many terminals as you want and open as many ssh connections as you want.

  • To kill a program running in the foreground, you can sometimes use Ctrl+C.

  • To shut down the VM, you can use the following command:

    $ sudo shutdown now

  • If you simply want to exit the ssh connection without shutting down the VM, you can press Ctrl+D or type the following command:

    $ exit