Installing a XubunTOS Virtual Machine on VMWare Server

This tutorial provides instructions for installing XubunTOS inside a VMware virtual machine. Instructions are provided for both Debian-based Linux as well as Windows users. If you run into problems, find that something doesn't work, or want to provide feedback of any kind, feel free to email me (Kevin Klues) at klueska(at)gmail.com and I'll try and update this tutorial as soon as possible.

Note: You will need to make sure you administrative rights on your machine before starting. Otherwise, you will have to get your system administrator to follow these instructions instead.

OK, lets get started.....

Debian Linux VMware Server Installation

First thing you want to do is get VMware Server installed and running on your system. Do do so, you will need a registration key. Obtaining a key is free, so just go to this website, put in your information, and viola, you now have a key. Write this key down somewhere, you will need it again later at the end of the installation process.

Once you have your key you will want to install VMware using aptitude. To do so, you will need to edit your source list to include the repository where the VMware server can be downloaded from.

Open a terminal window, change to the /etc/apt directory, open the sources.list file, and add the following lines to it

# Repository for VMWare
deb http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu feisty-commercial main

Exit the file and update aptitude (you may need to run this a couple of times before it completes successfully)

sudo apt-get update

Now that aptitude has been updated to include packages from the commercial repository, you can install VMware Server by issuing the following command:

 sudo apt-get install vmware-server vmware-tools-kernel-modules 

After some downloading time, the VMWare server installation will eventually start, and you will be asked some configuration questions.

First it will show you the VMware license agreement. Just select OK (by pressing tab) and press enter.

Next it will prompt you for acceptance of the terms in the VMware server license. Select <Yes> and press enter.

Finally it will prompt you for the serial number you obtained during the registration process with VMware. Just enter the serial number, select <OK> and press enter.

This completes the VMware server installation. You will want to restart your computer now to finalize all your VMware settings.

To open the VMware server either type the following command into a terminal window (I like to open it as a background process):

 vmware & 

Or open it from the menubar (picture below is for Gnome, probably somewhere similar in KDE or other window manager):

The next step is now to install the actual XubunTOS image into a virtual machine. Jump down to the section for the XubunTOS installation by following the link found here.

Windows VMware Server Installation

First thing you want to do is get VMware installed and running on your system. Do do so, you will need a registration key. Obtaining a key is free, so just go to this website, put in your information, and voilà, you now have a key. Write this key down somewhere, you will need it again later at the end of the installation process.

Now go to the web address found here to download VMware for windows. Agree to the end user license agreement and then select to install the binary installer seen below:

Once it is downloaded, go ahead and open it up to start the installation process.

Go ahead and follow all the instructions and choose all the default values to get VMware for windows installed. Once installed, open it up and follow the instructions found in the next section to install the actual XubunTOS image into a virtual machine on your PC.

XubunTOS Installation

First you need to get a copy of the XubunTOS 2.0 cd image from here or here. Once you have the image you can start up VMware and install it into a virtual machine. Note: Some of the icons look different than below if you installed VMware on a windows machine. The process for installation is still the same though, just find the icons with the same names as the ones indicated and you should be fine.

Go ahead and open up VMware following the instructions for your particular operating system from above. In the window that pops up, choose 'Local Host' and click on connect.

Once you have clicked on 'Connect', the following window will open up. Go ahead and click on 'Create a new virtual machine'

The following window should now pop up. Go ahead and click on 'Next'.

Choose 'Typical' installation and click on 'Next'

Now choose your operating system. XubunTOS is based on Ubuntu, so you should choose the following set of options and click on 'Next'

Now give your virtual machine a name. I chose XubunTOS 2, but you can really choose anything you want. Go ahead and leave the installation location with its default value. This is where your virtual machine will be installed on your hard disk. If you change this location, you will have to configure things differently later so that the VMware server can find your virtual machine installation.

Now you need to choose how much space you want reserved for your virtual machine installation. I have chosen 10 GB, but you may wish to choose more or less depending on how much TinyOS development work you actually do. Once you select this value, it can't be changed. This is all the space your virtual machine will ever be able to use, so choose this value wisely.

Additionally, you must choose if you want all this space allocated now or if you want the disk size to increase over time as you add files to you virtual machine. I have chosen to let it grow as I add more files, but you can choose either option and it should work just fine.

Once you've made your selections click 'Finish'.

Now its time to actually install XubunTOS onto your newly created virtual machine. Go ahead and select 'Edit virtual machine settings'

In order to install XubunTOS, you need to tell the virtual machine to boot from the 'iso' image you downloaded earlier. Go to the 'Hardware' tab, select connection from an ISO image, and insert the location of the XubunTOS iso image into the field below it. Make sure the rest of the options are as seen below and then click on 'OK'.

Now its time to power on the virtual machine and install XubunTOS. Just click on 'Power on this virtual machine'

Once you power on the virtual machine, it will automatically boot from the XubunTOS cd image. Click on the Install icon on the desktop.

Next, just follow the onscreen instructions to install XubunTOS into the virtual machine. Installation may take a while, but once it is finished, you will want to turn off the virtual machine and proceed to the next step below.

Once the virtual machine has been powered down, you will need to add configurations to allow it to access your serial and USB devices in order to communicate with the motes. First go to 'Edit Virtual Machine Settings' and click on it.

Then choose 'Add...'

Select 'USB Controller' and press 'Next'

Now go ahead and click 'Finish'

Now select 'Add..." again

And this time choose "Serial Port' and click 'Next'

You will want to use the physical serial port on your host, so go ahead a leave it as the default value and click 'Next'

Choose 'Auto Select' From the pop down menu and then click Finish

Verify that both the USB controller and the Serial Port now appear in the menu on the left and press 'OK'

Now go ahead and power on the virtual machine again to start using XubunTOS in VMware. If you ever close VMware, you can always open the XubunTOS virtual machine again by choosing to connect from a local host and selecting the XubunTOS virtual machine from the menu bar on the left.

Note: To access motes connected over the USB port you will need to manually select each device for connection after powering up your XubunTOS virtual machine. To do this go to VM->Removable Devices->USB Devices and select each USB connected mote you would like to access.

After this go ahead and log in and you should be good to go!!!!

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And thats it! You should now be up and running with your virtual machine installation of XubunTOS in VMware. Questions or comments can either be sent directly to me (klueska(at)gmail.com) or the tinyos-help mailing list.