Debian Wheezy in VirtualBox - Part 2

v 0.2

In Part 1 of this post, I talked generally about the requirements for setting up a Wheezy Gnome VM in Virtualbox.  I shall assume that you have the Machine specified, but not installed yet.  I shall also be rash and write these notes from memory.

Installation

• Start the VM.  If you are using a Windows host, it will politely ask you to tell it where the installation iso is, otherwise, you will need to let it fail, then use the "Device" menu at the top to select the CD netinstall iso image and restart.
• The standard Debian installer screen is your first port of call.  If you want a Gnome desktop, just continue.  I never bother with the graphical install since it is just a more complex version of the standard text interface.  But then, I like the Slackware installer as well ......
• To install a desktop OTHER than Gnome, go to "Advanced" and you will find links to a number of alternatives including KDE, Xfce and Lxde.
• Now you need to simply proceed through the standard Debian installation routine for what you want.  There is an EXCELLENT Debian installation guide at "Howtoforge" entitled "The Perfect Desktop Debian Squeeze" which I strongly recommend.

Installing Guest Additions

If you are using the Gnome 3 desktop,  the initial log-in will be slow while it works out that it cannot use the standard Gnome and will fall back to the "classic" look (which you could also select on log-in the first time).  The steps I followed to get the guest additions installed and Gnome 3 running (I also described the guest additions with Debian in another post - read it and you can tell me where I differ to it):

• Open a "root" terminal.  I'll describe the commands to type in between the "  " ....
• "  aptitude install synaptic "   Synaptic is a nice graphical package manager that has its uses.
• "  aptitude install module-assistant  "   Module assistant is the key to installing guest additions
• "  m-a prepare "     This gets module assistant to load the dependencies for the guest additions
• Start Synaptic, search (there is a magnifying glass button for search) for " virtualbox " and mark any installed virtualbox package for removal (they will be marked as guest additions), then " Apply "
• The tricky bit is coming up
• You need to mount the "guest additions iso" which is located in the installation directory for virtualbox.  You can either select "install guest additions" from the "device" menu on the VM or you can use the " device " menu and CD/DVD selection to search for the guest additions iso.  In either case, you should make sure it is mounted.  It will appear mounted under " /media/cdrom0 "
• Once you have it mounted, use the root terminal to "  cd /media/cdrom0 " and to execute the "VBoxLinuxAdditions.run"  as shown in the next part
• "  bash ./VBoxLinuxAdditions.run "   using the root terminal after changing to the iso.   You need to have the "  ./  " in front of the Vbox..etc because it explicitly tells Linux where the file is.  (ie a period and forward slash).
• At some stage, it will complain that there are already Guest Additions installed - ignore it because you just deleted them and it has detected the remnants.
• Once this is completed, reboot the VM and you will now have an accelerated Gnome 3 desktop.

That's it for the moment.

As always, corrections or additions welcome.


Later ................