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How to Create Your Own USB Linux Distro with LiLi

Joshua Price — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 12:00:59 +0000

Linux Live CDs have long been well known as a handy tool in PC repair. Personally I’ve used Linux CDs dozens of times to repair Windows problems, from virus scans to file retrieval to partition adjustments. As great as Live CDs are, they still have a few drawbacks, like an inability to save any new files or changes. Bootable USB sticks solve most of the problems with Live CDs. You can write to them, change the software or the whole system without burning a new CD, and carry them easily wherever you go.

There’s a new (Windows only, strangely enough) software tool out called LiLi USB Creator. LiLi makes it incredibly easy to create your own customized bootable Linux system on a USB stick, and even run it from within Windows using an portable copy of Virtualbox that’s included on the installation. Impressed? I am.

I ran LiLi on Windows XP Pro with Service Pack 3 and a 2GB Kingston USB drive. You can download the installer here. It’s a ZIP file and there’s no installer so you can just run it directly from wherever it was extracted. Once loaded you’ll get the main LiLi screen where all your choices are made.

Step 1: Choose a USB Key

If your USB drive isn’t already connected, connect it now and wait a few seconds before hitting the blue refresh button. When you click the drop-down list, you should see your flash drive in the list. Make sure you’re choosing the correct flash drive, as the program also lists your hard drives, and we certainly wouldn’t want to go wiping any of them. Which reminds me – in case this isn’t yet clear, this flash drive will be wiped clean so make sure there’s nothing important on there before we proceed.

Step 2: Choose a Source

LiLi needs to know what you plan to use as the base of your system. This is one of LiLi’s big strengths in my opinion. You can choose to use a Live CD ISO file you already have, a Live CD in your CD-ROM, or to have LiLi download an ISO for you. This last option is particularly impressive, as LiLi provides a list of some of the compatible distros and will automatically fetch and check the files it needs.

As for me, I went with Fedora because… well… pretty much just because I haven’t used it in a while. If you chose to let LiLi download a compatible ISO for you, then you’ve got a little time to wait while it downloads. Now might be a good time to make a snack, read a book, or better yet – browse articles on MakeTechEasier.

Step 3: Persistence

At this point, we can take advantage of the fact that we’re using a USB drive and not a Live CD. By setting some space for persistence, we can now save file and settings changes directly on to the USB drive. This is also the cause of some confusion when creating these live systems.

For clarity, we’ll use my 2GB Kingston flash drive as an example of how this all works. It’s actually about 1.9GB, and the files from the ISO will be using up about 700MB, so according to LiLi that leaves about 1.1 GB for persistent files to be saved. The math doesn’t quite add up, but I would guess that LiLi is using up a little more space than just the ISO contents for things like VirtualBox (discussed below). The slider bar in the screenshot above lets me choose how much of that space I really want to use. Unless you’ve got other plans for that space, you probably want to slide the bar all the way up.

If your USB drive is larger than 1GB and LiLi doesn’t let you move the slider past 0MB, just reformat the entire USB drive, reload LiLi and try again.

Step 4: Options

The first item in the Options section is whether or not you want to hide the system files on the USB drive. The only relevance this has is whether or not Windows will show the Linux system files on the flash drive. The benefit is that you won’t have to worry about a convoluted mess of files and directories on the drive if you just want to run VirtualBox (which we’ll cover in a moment). The down side is that it would be more difficult to access or edit those files from Windows, should you want to. Neither choice will have any significant effect on how your Linux system runs.

The second option is whether or not to format the USB drive in Fat32. Unless you have a specific reason not to, I’d recommend you allow the format to be certain that the drive is being wiped clean and installed correctly.

The last option is one of the really unique and interesting things about LiLi. As I hinted in the opening paragraph, LiLi is capable of adding a portable copy of VirtualBox to your USB drive. For anyone not familiar with VirtualBox, it’s a high quality free virtualization program. With VirtualBox on the drive, you’ll be able to run your new Linux USB system from within Windows, without rebooting. I’d recommend checking this option, so that your flash drive can be as versatile and useful as it can be.

Step 5: Create

Before clicking the lightning bolt to begin, there are a few things to check to make sure we’re not about to cause a disaster. First, make totally certain that the device you chose in Step 1 is the USB drive, and that you don’t mind wiping its contents. Next do a quick glance at the traffic light icons in the bottom right corner of each step. Each light should be green, indicating it’s got everything it needs in order to proceed. When ready, hit the lightning bolt icon, and go make yourself another snack.

Running your new USB Linux System

If you’ve followed this guide closely, then you now have two ways to start your new system. The first is from within Windows, using VirtualBox. Open My Computer to your flash drive, and you’ll see a Virtualbox folder. Open that and run Virtualize This Key. That will launch the portable VirtualBox to your Linux image and you can use your shiny new Linux system from a contained environment within Windows. Keep in mind, this method does give the benefit of being able to use both OSes simultaneously, but Linux will most likely be MUCH slower here than if it had been booted on its own.

The other method is to boot the USB key as intended, as its own OS. To do that, you insert the USB drive into whatever computer you’d like to boot, and restart the computer. Some computers may require you to open the BIOS settings to include USB in the boot devices. Others may give you an option when starting up like Hit F12 for Boot Menu, or something along those lines. Any fairly modern PC should be capable of booting from a USB drive.

Presuming all went well, you should now have a portable, self-contained, customizable USB Linux system installed on your USB drive that can be taken anywhere. This can be useful in repairs, file recovery, virus scanning, or just showing off. Files saved to the USB drive will persist across multiple reboots.

Other than a booting glitch when I tried LiLi with Crunchbang (which may or may not have been LiLi’s fault), everything seems to work smoothly. I was very impressed by LiLi’s simple yet powerful user interface, and the developers have clearly put a lot of thought and effort into making LiLi a quality piece of software. I’m a little surprised it only runs in Windows, but everything it does, it does well. Kudos to the development team.

How to Create Your Own USB Linux Distro with LiLi originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

How To Enable 3D Acceleration In VirtualBox

Sharninder — Thu, 21 May 2009 12:47:34 +0000

Virtualbox is an excellent application to have if you’re looking to try out new operating systems and/or are generally interested in virtualisation for the many benefits it offers.

Make Tech Easier has extensively covered VirtualBox a couple of times earlier and we are great fans of this cross platform, open source application.

One thing which VirtualBox was missing till some time back was support for 3D acceleration for guest operating systems. What this means is that the graphics driver used inside the guest virtual machines was only capable of simple 2D graphics and thus interfaces like Compiz on Linux and Aero on Vista were not useable.

There was basic 3D support for Windows guests in Virtualbox 2.1 but users using Virtualbox to run Linux guests were mostly confined to the 2D graphics driver. That has changed with the release of VirtualBox 2.2 recently and VirtualBox now supports 3D acceleration. The 3D acceleration support built in VirtualBox uses your native machine’s graphics hardware to provide this capability, so if your native graphics driver doesn’t have 3D capability, VirtualBox cannot make use of it.

The support for 3D acceleration is not enabled by default and with this tuturial we aim to help you guys set up a new virtual machine with 3D accelerated graphics support.

First create a new Machine the usual way, and install a guest operating system in it. We used Ubuntu for our testing.

Now, you need to edit the settings of your newly created virtual machine. To edit the settings for any virtual machine, the virtual machine has to be shut down. So, first shutdown whatever operating system you have running inside the virtual machine.

Now, while the virtual machine is highlighted, click on the Settings button to open up the settings window.

In the general settings pane, check the check box titled, “Enable 3D acceleration”.

That’s it. The virtual machine has been enabled for 3D accelerated graphics now. But, to actually start using 3D effects inside your guest operating system, you need to be using the special VirtualBox graphics driver, which is distributed with the “Guest Additions”.

To Install the VirtualBox “Guest Additions” drivers in your guest operating system, while the guest is running, click on the Devices menu and select the “Install Guest Additions” option.

Now, follow the instructions to install the drivers in the guest operating system.

Now, you can enable Aero or Compiz effects in the guest operating system and make full use of the graphical capabilities of your machine’s graphics card.

How To Enable 3D Acceleration In VirtualBox originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

How To Shrink Your Virtualbox VM And Free Up Space For Your Hard Disk

Damien — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 13:43:49 +0000

While using Virtualbox, one thing that I have found is that the size of the VM (a file with .VDI extension) expands over time. If you have selected the “Dynamically Expanding Storage” option when first creating the VM, you will find that the file size expands whenever you install new applications in the VM. That is perfectly normal. However, when you uninstall or delete applications in the VM, the file size does not shrink or return to its previous size. That is to say, if you are constantly installing and uninstalling applications in your VM, the VDI file could be taking up more space than it is actually using.

If you have a great deal of hard disk space to spare, you can simply ignore this. However, if you find yourself always running short of hard disk space, you might want to consider shrinking the VM and free up unused disk space.

This tutorial will go through the steps to shrink your Virtualbox VM.

It doesn’t matter if you are using Windows/Linux host. The instructions for a Windows and Linux guest are slightly different though. (I have not tried this on a Mac host yet. Theoretically it should work, but do it at your own risk.)

For Windows guest

If you are using Windows guest, do the following:

Uninstall all unnecessary applications
Perform a hard disk defragmentation. If you are using WinXP, you You can access the inbuilt disk fragmenter from Start -> All Programs -> Accessories -> System Tools -> Disk Defragmenter.

Download sdelete and extract it to your desktop.

Open a command prompt and cd to the sdelete directory. Type in the following command:

sdelete -c c:/

This will add zeroes to all the free space in your C: drive.

Once it is done, shutdown the VM.

For Linux guest

If you are using Linux guest (this tutorial assumes you are using Ubuntu and is running on ext2/ext3 filesytem. It does not work on ext4), here is what you need to do:

Remove any unused applications.
Clean up your Linux VM

Install zerofree

sudo apt-get zerofree

Restart and boot your Linux VM into Recovery mode. (This is generally the second option in the Grub boot up screen.)

In the root shell prompt, type

df

This will display all the available filesystem in your OS. Record down the filesystem where the main directory lies. (it should be in /dev/sdaX or /dev/hdaX format)

Mount the filesystem in read-only mode with the following command:

mount -n -o remount,ro -t ext3 /dev/sda1 /

replacing the /dev/sda1 with the filesytem info that you have recorded just now.

Next, type the following command to zero out all the free space.

zerofree /dev/sda1

Once again, replace the /dev/sda1 with your own filesystem info.

Once you are done, shutdown the Linux VM:

shutdown -h now

Shrinking the VM

Now that we are done with clearing up the VM and zero out all the free space, it’s time to shrink the file size using the VboxManage command.

If you are still using the older Virtualbox 2.0.x version, you can easily shrink the hard disk with the following command:

VboxManage modifyvdi /path/to/your/VM.vdi compact

If you have upgraded your Virtualbox to the 2.1.x version, you will find that the above command will no longer work. There is a bug in the software that disable the use of the modifyhd command. An alternative solution is to use the clonehd command to creat a smaller clone copy of the original VM.

In your terminal (or command prompt), type the following:

VboxManage clonehd name-of-original-vm.vdi name-of-clone-vm.vdi

This will create a clone of the original VM with the name that you have specified in the command above.

Result

After shrinking my VM, I manage to shave 45% off the size of the oirginal VM and free up a whopping 4.5GB of hard disk space to store my other stuff.

The original VDI: 10GB

The cloned VDI: 5.5GB

Importing the clone VM into Virtualbox

The whole process is not finished yet. You still need to import the clone VM into Virtualbox and remove/delete the original VM from your system.

In your Virtualbox console, click on the New button.

Follow the instructions to create a new VM. When it reaches the screen to ask you to choose the hard disk, select Existing.

In the Virtual media manager window, click Add to add the newly cloned VM.

Highlight the newly added VM and click Select.

Back to the Hard disk selection window, you should see your new VM in the dropdown selection. Click on Next to finish up the import.

Once everything is in place, run the newly added VM to make sure that it is working fine.

On the main Virtualbox screen, highlight the original VM and go to Machine -> Delete. This will remove the entry from the console.

Go to File -> Virtual Media Manager. Highlight the original VM and click the Remove button. When prompt if you want to keep the file, select Delete. This will delete the vdi file from your system.

That’s it.

How To Shrink Your Virtualbox VM And Free Up Space For Your Hard Disk originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

Virtualbox: Fix Mouse Integration Issue In Ubuntu Intrepid Guest

Damien — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 22:25:22 +0000

If you have installed Ubuntu Intrepid as a virtual machine in your Virtualbox, you will find that the mouse integration does not work, even after you have installed the guest addition.

If you are having this problem, here’s the fix:

First, make sure that the guest addition is already installed inn your Ubuntu Intrepid guest.

Open a terminal, type

gksu gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Add the following lines to the end of the file. Save and close

Section “InputDevice”
Identifier “Configured Mouse”
Driver “vboxmouse”
Option “CorePointer”
EndSection

Restart the computer. The mouse integration should work now.

Virtualbox: Fix Mouse Integration Issue In Ubuntu Intrepid Guest originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

Upgrading to Virtualbox 2.1 In Ubuntu Intrepid

Damien — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 12:43:10 +0000

Virtualbox released their latest version 2.1 last week. If you have not upgraded your existing copy of Virtualbox, I would advise you to do it now.

There are several new features in Virtualbox 2.1.

Support for 64-bit guests on 32-bit host operating systems – If you have a 64-bit processor, you can now install/run a 64-bit virtual machine on a 32-bit host. For those who wanted to test out software compatibility on a 64-bit OS, this is the best way for you to do so.
Experimental 3D acceleration via OpenGL – If you have a graphics card that can support OpenGL, your Virtualbox VM can now make use of your accelerated 3D hardware to run 3D graphics. Potentially, you would be able to play 3D game on your VM. This means that Linux users will be able to play 3D Windows game on a Windows guest without having to dual-boot Linux and Windows. Currently, this 3D acceleration feature is only supported in Windows XP or 32-bit Vista guest.
Full VMDK/VHD support including snapshots – Virtualbox 2.1 is able to support VMDK and VHD virtual hard disk format. This means that you can now use your VMware hard disk or Microsoft VirtualPC hard disk in Virtualbox without any need for conversion.
Easier implementation of Host Interface networking – In the past, implementing Host Interface networking requires you to install and configure TUN/TAP. With this new feature, you can easily configure your VM networking to pass through the host interface rather than NAT. By using the host interface, your VM will appear to the host as a network drive connected via a network cable. You can then set up a file server and share files easily between the guest and host.

Installing Virtualbox2.1

If you have never installed Virtualbox, this is what you need to do to install Virtualbox 2.1.

In your terminal,

gksu gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

Add the following line to the end of the file. Save and close.

deb http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian intrepid non-free

Back to your terminal,

wget -q http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian/sun_vbox.asc -O- | sudo apt-key add -
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install virtualbox-2.1

Upgrading to Virtualbox 2.1

If you have installed virtualbox 2.0, you will need to remove first before installing virtualbox 2.1.

sudo apt-get autoremove virtualbox-2.0
sudo apt-get install virtualbox-2.1

When it prompts you to convert your old Virtualbox files to the new format, click OK.

Adding 3D hardware support to your VM

On the main screen of your Virtualbox, highlight the Windows VM (make sure that it powered off) and click on the Setting button in the top menu.

On the General option in the left pane, under the Video Memory Size, checked the box Enable 3D Acceleration.

Implement Host Interface networking

In the Settings page, click on the Network option on the left pane. In the second dropdown bar with the label Attach to, select Host Interface.

That’s it.

Upgrading to Virtualbox 2.1 In Ubuntu Intrepid originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

How To Share Files In VirtualBox With Vista Guest And Ubuntu Host

Damien — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 08:32:20 +0000

For some of you who have setup Windows Vista as the guest VM in your Ubuntu Virtualbox, you might have some difficulties in getting the Vista guest to access the shared folder in your Ubuntu host. If you are having this problem, here is the way to mount the shared folder on your Vista guest.

First of all, make sure you have already installed both VirtualBox and Windows Vista guest. If you have not, here is the complete installation guide.

Secondly, make sure you have updated your VirtualBox to the latest version (2.0.4). There are some issues in the earlier version which will cause the mounting to fail.

In your Ubuntu machine, open up Virtualbox (Applications -> System Tools -> virtualBox).

Highlight the Vista VM entry (make sure that it is in Powered off state) and click on the Settings icon at the top.

On the left, click on the Network. On the right, make sure that the Enable Network Adaptor and Cable Connected are checked.

On the left, click on the Shared Folders. Then, click on the icon on the far right.

Select the folder that you want to use as a share point. Give it a name.

Click OK to close the Settings window.

Boot up your Vista VM.

Install the guest addition. (Skip this step if you have already done so)

Restart the Vista VM.

Open your Windows Explorer, click on the Map Network Drive

In the Folder input text, enter

\\vboxsvr\sharename

where sharename is the name of the share folder that you add just now. Make sure that the Reconnect at logon is checked. Click Finish

You should now see the shared folder mounted as a network drive.

That’s it.

How To Share Files In VirtualBox With Vista Guest And Ubuntu Host originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

Share Your Virtualbox VM Across Different OS

Damien — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 02:30:44 +0000

While creating a virtual machine in Virtualbox is an easy task, sharing the virtual machine across different OS is not. If you are dual-booting your computer and have created a virtual machine in one of the OS partition, due to the difference in file structure among the different OS, you will not be able to access and open the VM file in the other partition.

To illustrate: let’s say you have installed Win XP on your Macbook via boot camp. As you have heard so much about Ubuntu and wanted to try it out, you installed Virtualbox and created an Ubuntu virtual machine in your Mac partition. One day, while doing your work in the Win XP partition, you found that you need to access some applications in the Ubuntu virtual machine. There is no way for you to open the Ubuntu virtual machine in Windows since you can’t access your Mac partition. Now, rather than rebooting into the Mac partition, wouldn’t it be great if you can access and open the Ubuntu virtual machine in the Windows partition?

The above situation will happen even if you are running a Linux/Mac or Linux/Windows dual boot. The following tutorial will show you how you can have access to your Virtualbox virtual machine regardless of which OS you are in.

The rule of thumb:

Always create your Virtualbox virtual machine (the file with a vdi extension) in a NTFS partition.

That is to say, if you are dual-booting Windows and Linux/Mac, always save the vdi file in your Windows partition. For those with Mac and Linux, you will have to create a new NTFS partition either on your existing hard disk or on an external hard disk (preferably).

Here’s the complete tutorial to access the virtual machine from different OS

Click here if you are dual-booting Windows and Mac/Linux.

Click here if you are dual-booting Mac and Linux.

For computer that dual-boot Windows and Mac/Linux

Boot into Windows

Download and install Virtualbox for Windows (if you have not done so).

Create your virtual machine as you always do. Note the file path where you save the virtual machine vdi file.

Restart your computer and boot into the other OS.

If you are in Mac OS

Download and install MacFuse and NTFS-3G. It will prompt you to restart your computer. After the restart, you will see a new drive mounted on your desktop. That is the Windows partition.

Download and install Virtualbox for Mac (for Intel Macs only).

Now, we are going to create an entry on your Virtualbox and make it point to the vdi file in the Windows partition.

Open the Virtualbox application.

On the top of the window, click New to create a new virtual machine.

Click Next and follow the instruction to create a new VM until you reach the point where it asks you to specify your hard drive

Click on Existing. In the next window, click on the Add and point the file path to the vdi file in the Windows partition.

You should now see an entry in the window. Highlight the entry and click Select.

On the next window, click Next follow by Finish. It will bring you back to the main window.

Highlight the new VM entry on the main window and click Start. You should see the same virtual machine that you have created in your Windows partition running in your Mac now.

Dual-booting Linux and Windows

Restart your computer and boot into the Linux partition.

Install ntfs-3g (if you are using Ubuntu Hardy, you can skip this step. Ntfs-3g is already pre-installed in your system)

Download and install Virtualbox for your Linux distro (if you have not done so).

Now, we are going to repeat the same steps as we did in Mac (follow the screenshots instructions above) to create an entry on Virtualbox to point to the virtual machine in the Windows partition.

For computers that dual-boot Mac and Linux

If you are dual-booting Mac and Linux, first boot into the Linux partition.

Follow this guide to format your external hard disk to NTFS format. (You can also resize and create a new partition on your existing hard disk and format it to NTFS format. I will cover that in the future).

Download and install Virtualbox. Create a new virtual machine and follow the instructions until it asks you the location of your hard disk.

Click New to create a new virtual hard disk. Click Next until it asks you where to store your virtual hard disk

Click on the icon beside the Image File name field and select any folder in the external NTFS hard disk. This will save the vdi file in the external hard disk rather than its default location.

Proceed on with the standard installation of the guest OS.

Once you are done creating the virtual machine, reboot into Mac and follow the above step to configure the Virtualbox in your Mac to access the VM on the external hard disk.

That’s it!

Screenshots

Windows Vista running as a VM in Ubuntu

The same Vista VM running in Mac

Share Your Virtualbox VM Across Different OS originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

5 Reasons Why You Should Use VirtualBox Over VMware Server

Damien — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 04:21:16 +0000

Ever since I started using Ubuntu two years back, I have been an avid user of VMware server. It fascinated me to a great extent that I could actually run an OS inside an OS. Recently, I tried out VirtualBox, another virtualization software like VMware server, and I was greatly impressed by it. Even though I love VMware server, I can’t deny the fact that VirtualBox actually runs faster and smoother, with less crashes. Here is my top 5 reasons why VirtualBox is better than VMware server.

1) File size

How long do you need to download a 20MB file with a broadband connection? A snap of finger! Yes, that is how small VirtualBox is: slighly over 20MB where you can download it in a snap. VMware server? About 102MB, well…not too long either, mayber after you have finished your tea session.

2) Installation

Ubuntu users can simply install VirtualBox from the repository. Simply open the Synaptic Package Manager, check the VirtualBox and click Apply to install. For other Linux disro, there is also debian and rpm package available for download. For VMware server, only if you like to compile and build the source code from command line.

3) Speed Boost

The real advantage of VirtualBox over VMware server lies in its performance. VirtualBox apparently runs faster than VMware server. A timed experiment of an installation of Windows XP as the guest OS took 20 mins in VirtualBox and 35 mins on VMware server. A similar test on the booting time of the guest OS also shows favor to VirtualBox with a timing of 45secs compared to 1min 39 secs on VMware server.

4) Remote File Sharing

When I was using VMware server, I have to install and configure Samba on my Ubuntu host so as to access the files in my guest OS. In VirtualBox, the remote file sharing feature is built right in the package. Setting up remote file sharing is easy and you only need to do it once: point the file path to the directory that you want to share.

5) Integration with Host OS

In VirtualBox, there is this mode call ‘seamless mode‘ where you can integrate the guest OS with the host OS. With this mode on, you can access the applications from the guest OS right from the host’s desktop. There is no need for you to traverse between the guest and the host. VMware server does not have this feature, although you can find the ‘unity‘ mode that does the same thing in VMware Workstation.

My Feel…

I have not tested VirtualBox on a server setting, thus I can’t comment on its performance for corporate use. However, for personal use, I would strongly recommend VirtualBox over VMware server because of its faster speed and user-friendliness.

5 Reasons Why You Should Use VirtualBox Over VMware Server originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

How to Install Windows In Ubuntu Hardy with VirtualBox

Damien — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 07:33:01 +0000

VirtualBox is an open-source cross platforms virtualization application that allows anyone to create a virtual machine on their computer. It is similar to the popular VMware, but much smaller in size and handles the virtual machine more efficiently.

Before you attempt to install any Windows OS as a virtual machine, make sure that your computer has enough memory (at least 1GB of RAM) and hard disk and you own a genuine Windows installer CD with valid license key.

Installing VirtualBox

Go to the VirtualBox download site. Under the Platform dropdown box, select Ubuntu 8.04 (x86). AMD users please select Ubuntu 8.04 (AMD64). Check the agreement box and click Continue.

Check the box Sun xVM VirtualBox 1.6 and click “Download selected with Sun Download manager”. The program should now download the virtualbox_1.6.2-31466_Ubuntu_hardy_i386.deb file to your desktop. If you don’t have java runtime installed, you can simply right click on the file link and select “Save link as”.

(Click to enlarge)

Once the downloading is done, double click on the virtualbox_1.6.2-31466_Ubuntu_hardy_i386.deb to install the program.

After the installation, VirtualBox will create a group call vboxuser. You will have to add your user name to the group. To do this, go to System -> Administration -> Users and Groups.

Click the Unlock button, follow by Manage Groups.

Scroll down until you see the vboxusers. Click Properties.

Put a check beside your user name and click OK. Done

Go to Applications->System Tools -> Sun xVM Virtualbox. If you can’t find the entry, reboot your computer.

You should see the VirtualBox main window (image below) upon opening the application

Click New to install a new virtual machine.

On the welcome screen, click Next to proceed.

Give your VM a name and determine its type. If you are installing Windows XP, simply put “Windows XP” under the name field and select Windows XP under the OS Type dropdown box.

In the next screen, set your base memory size. If you are installing Windows XP, it is recommended to allocate at least 256MB of memory. If you have lot of memory in your computer, you can always allocate up to 1GB or more.

Next, you have to create the virtual disk space. Click New.

A new window will pop up. Click Next on the new window to proceed.

Select “Dynamically expanding image” follow by Next.

Give the image a name (can be the same as your VM name) and allocate the size. Recommended is at least 8GB. Click Finish to complete the process.

This will close the window and bring you back to the previous window. Select the virtual disk you have just created and click Next. The last part is the confirmation where it will show you the summary of your configuration. If everything is fine, click Finish.

You should now see an entry of the virtual machine in the main screen. Highlight it and select Settings (just above the entry). On the left pane, select the CD/DVD ROM. On the right pane, check the box ‘Mount CD/DVD Drive’ and select Host CD Drive. Click OK.

Now insert in the Windows XP/Vista installer CD. On the virtual box, highlight the virtual machine and click Start. The virtual machine should now boot up and you can follow the screen instruction to install Windows XP.

At any time, if you want to get out of the virtual machine screen, press right Ctrl button. Once you have finished installing the OS. Reboot into the virtual machine. Under the device menu, select Install guest addition. This will allow you to enjoy enhanced graphics and smooth mouse transition between the virtual machine and your host machine.

How to Install Windows In Ubuntu Hardy with VirtualBox originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)