In this practice we studied a concept called Virtual Machine, here some information:
“In computer science, a virtual machine (VM) is a software implementation of a machine (computer) that executes programs like a real machine.
The desire to run multiple operating systems was the original motivation for virtual machines, as it allowed time-sharing a single computer between several single-tasking OSes.
The guest OSes do not have to be all the same, making it possible to run different OSes on the same computer (e.g., Microsoft Windows and Linux)“.[1]
So as is possible to see, you can run different applications or even different OS’s inside of the currently installed one in your computer by using this tool.
I’ll describe how to install FreeBSD 7 in Fedora 8, and how to enable networking in the guest system. So from now and on, we will call the FreeBSD system running in the virtual machine like “Guest” and Fedora 8 (the current OS in the computer) like “Host“.
1. Better if the system is updated, in the command line type:
# yum update (enter)
2. Install the tool kit and the GUI for the Virtual Machine.
# yum install libvirt virt-manager
3. Start the libvirt daemon.
# service libvirt start
4. Go to: Applications / System Tools / Virtual Machine Manager.
5. LocalHost should be connected, if not, select it, right-button of the mouse and click in “Connect”.
6. With the LocalHost selected click en “New” button (right-bottom part of the VM screen).
7. Go through the wizard as follow:
- Set the name (I chose “MyFreeBSD”).
- Fully Virtualized mode.
- Select the location of the media that you want to install in your virtual system (I installed from a CD-ROM).
- Assign storage space (I use the second hard drive).
- Connect to host network.
- Allocate memory and CPU (I left the default values).
- Check the Settings Summary and if everything is okay, click on “Finish” button.
9. After this point, is possible to install FreeBSD in the VM, we did it choosing the standard way.
Now is possible work with the guest system as you want, in our case, we played with the Guest routing table and set the Host IP like gateway in the FreeBSD system so in that way the Guest was able to reach other networks…
Another thing that we were able to do, was have a SSH session from Host to Guest, as is shown in the next screenshots:
Actually we could see X-Windows features working, typing the “startx” command brought this to the screen…
You can be creative and install different stuff in the VM, this is just a small help that might provides some good clues about this topic and it’s advantages.
I want to say thank you to my team partner and friend Varinder Singh for doing this with me and Prof. Chan for explain us some special things about Networking…
[1] Wikipedia.
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