Virtual Machines 101 -

Virtual Machines 101ACM Workshop by Owen Redwood

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Its a program that simulates (virtualizes) hardware in a sandboxed environment - allowing you to install and use other operating systems inside of it.

tl;dr: You can run linux on your windows box

What is a Virtual Machine??????

HYPERVISOR! -Simulates BIOS, network cards, video cards (usually mobo-onboard), etc and drivers!!!

So it fakes its own bios and stuff??? -Yes -Simply mimics the industry hardware calls for info.

How is that possible?

You can run multiple virtual machines at once (limited by your hardware)

Commonly, a VM will have a file that is the hard drive (.vdi, .vmdk, .vhd, .hdd)

Like a Game boy emulator, can save the state of a machine, to revert to later!

Some Fun Details

Software development Malware analysisGeneral SecurityServers (web, app, etc...)and... EXPERIMENTATION! (FOR SCIENCE!)

Common uses

VMware Player (free, but no snapshots!)VMware Workstation ($$$) - many featuresVirtual Box (Oracle, free, has snapshots) KVM-QEMU (BOSCH, free) - harder to useZEN (we won't discuss b/c I haven't used)

Common Virtual Machines

http://www.vmware.com/products/player/Is very popular and free - but NO snapshots D:

Download and install. Its easy.

For you at home: http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/11287/how-to-run-ubuntu-in-windows-7-with-vmware-player/

VMware Player

Rest of presentation will guide through the install of VMware Player.

Lets install one!

To follow along, download:VMware Playerhttp://www.vmware.com/products/player/

and Ubuntu 10.04 (Because Unity sucks!):(Download one of the following:

make sure to choose 64bit if you have a 64 bit processor, and likewise 32bit if you have a 32 bit processor)

64bit: http://mirrors.kernel.org/ubuntu-releases/10.04/ubuntu-10.04.4-desktop-amd64.iso32bit: http://mirrors.kernel.org/ubuntu-releases/10.04/ubuntu-10.04.4-desktop-i386.iso

Create a NewVirtual Machine

How to create a virtual machine

Install from diskor an .iso file

VM Wizard

Easy form...

usernames can only be lowercase and numbers

VM Wizard Contiuned

Name itStore it somewhere

VM Wizard Continued

Single file vs 2gb files

purely up to you

no performanceimpact

Hard Drive

Will not use up all the space you choose initially. Will dynamically take it up.

i.e. if you create a VM with a 20GB hd, it will not instantly take up 20GB!

Hard Drive Continued

Finished

VMware player will then install Ubuntu (or whatever OS you provided (on slide #9) without any further input.

The actual installation of ubuntu (or whatever OS) will likely require input, but VMware is done at that point.

What now?

Might look at first like this

VMware tool allow you to:● drag and drop items to and from your

virtual machine.● access your clipboard from between

environments● dynamically resize the resolution of the

VM● and more productivity enhancing stuff!

VM tools

During the install, you may be prompted to download and install VMware tools for Linux. Simply click Download and the tools will automatically download and install, though you may have to approve the UAC prompt.

VMware tools

Once you get linux up and running, go to the top and click on VM -> Install VMware Tools

Should be largely automated with latest version

Actually installing the tools

I use virtual box because it has snapshots.

Getting VirtualBox installed, up and running is all simple, and very similar to this tutorial. To download virtualbox goto:https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads

VM's that I run: Ubuntu 10.04 and Backtrack5R3

What I use

What I use, continuedUbuntu 10.04 (Because Unity sucks!):

(make sure to choose 64bit if you have a 64 bit processor, and likewise 32bit if you have a 32 bit processor)

64bit: http://mirrors.kernel.org/ubuntu-releases/10.04/ubuntu-10.04.4-desktop-amd64.iso32bit: http://mirrors.kernel.org/ubuntu-releases/10.04/ubuntu-10.04.4-desktop-i386.isoBacktrack (security testing / pentesting): http://www.backtrack-linux.org/