Thursday, May 17, 2007

VirtualBox, Intel Mac X, Ubuntu (Ubuntu Server Edition)

Having Mac X at work is really nice thing. However sometimes one would like to use something else like Linux or Windows or whatever. I'm one of those guys that needs usually more than one operating systems, just to test something, or just because there is some feature that is present in e.g. Linux which is not available in Mac X. I decided to try VirtualBox beta for Intel Mac X, and to install Ubuntu. My choice of Ubuntu was driven only because where I work, Ubuntu is Ubuntu available at local ftp i.e. do not need to download it form the Internet.

Even thought VirtualBox for Intel Mac X is in beta stage, the installation was smooth, installation of Ubuntu also. Ubuntu on VirtualBox had out-of-the box internet and network working. In other words, there was no problems in installing, running, and using virtual Ubuntu.

The only problem there was/is with shearing folders. This is not VitualBox fold (I thinks so), but Ubuntu's mounting schema. What I mean is, that after mounting share folder, only root can write to it. Unfortunately it is not possible to set up umask=000 (everyone can read/write).

Below some screens of Mac and Ubuntu.


Share folders:mount -t vboxsf [-o OPTIONS] sharename mountpoint

As a matter of fact, I would prefer to have Windows XP on Virtual Box, but to install it, first I have to talk with our IT manager, because he has Windows installation cd-rom.

What about Ubuntu Server Edition? I wander if it was possible to install Ubuntu Server Edition on VirtualBox on Mac X, and use it just like server i.e. to set up an internet website on a virtual server. To check it, and to check Ubuntu Server Edition I decided to install this os on VirtualBox and try to set up a working, virtual LAMP server.
Unfortunately the answer to the above question is: Installation of Ubuntu Server Edition failed. In fact installation went fine, but first booting just after the installation resulted in:


I decided to check something else also. I was wandering if I can copy virtual Ubuntu created in Mac X to Windows XP and run in successfully there.

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