COMP 3000 Lab 1 2010

Part A (Mandatory)

This part is to be completed in class.

You may add or edit tips after each question; please do not edit the original question, however.

1. Create a virtual machine in VirtualBox for Ubuntu Linux and install Ubuntu using the ISO image in C:\support\somayaji.
   • Create your disk image on your Desktop or on a USB stick.
   • Images on your desktop will be deleted when you log out; USB stick images will be slower to access.
   • USB sticks may need to be formatted with NTFS to support a VirtualBox image.
   • Create a fixed-sized disk to increase performance. However, you'll then have to wait for the fixed-sized disk to be allocated.
   • If you wish, you can use the Ubuntu install ISO as a live CD image. In this case you don't need to install to any virtual hard disks.
2. Create an account on the class wiki. If you choose not to use your connect username please email me with your real name and your wiki username.
3. Install the guest additions to your Ubuntu guest. What new capabilities do you get?
   • To install, first mount the guest additions ISO using the "Devices" VirtualBox menu option.
   • To run the additions script, start up a Terminal window and run "sudo sh /media/<VBOXADD...>/VBoxLinuxAdditions-x86.run".

1. How much RAM does the VM use on the host? How much is available in the VM?
2. Look at the Disk Utility application in Ubuntu. What sort of storage hardware does it have? How does this compare to the hardware on the Windows host?

CD Drive and hard Disk. Hard disk is 8.6GB. We assign 8G as fixed size disk, why it shows 8.6G in Disk Utility?

1. Look at /proc/cpuinfo in the Ubuntu guest - is the CPU the same as that reported by Windows?

1. What about the PCI devices as reported by the command line program "lspci"?

Guest OS can use all the PCI devices as the host can use.

1. How does the performance of the VM compare to that of the host OS? Examine GUI, disk, and network performance.

Feel free to add your tips for the above exercises here.

Part B (Optional)

The following exercises are optional.

1. Run benchmarks in the guest and host OSs such as lmbench for Linux.
   • Tip: phoronix-test-suite, rambench, cpuburn, bashmark, forkbomb
2. Enable support for flash and non-free codecs in Ubuntu.
3. Create an Ubuntu virtual machine in VMWare Player. How does the performance of VMWare and VirtualBox compare?
4. Can you run VirtualBox in the Ubuntu guest? Note that VirtualBox is part of the Ubuntu distribution already.
5. Setup shared folders between the guest and host and verify that you can copy files both ways. What does the shared folder look like to Ubuntu?