Install Ubuntu 9 on Virtual PC 2007
I have been using Virtual PC to test reported problems, as a windows developer we only ever had to use Virtual PC for Windows OS, (Vista, XP and so on), but now I wanted to use it to install Ubuntu. If you don’t know what Ubuntu is, Wikipedia has a nice little article about it, basically it is a Linux operating system that has all the pretty desktop feature that most of us Windows users have grown to love.
This is what I used to install Ubuntu on my virtual server.
Create a virtual machine with enough resource, I chose 1024Mb of memory and 30Gb disk space. I think the minimum requirement is 256Mb of memory or something like that but if you can spare 1Gb of memory, use it .
Start the virtual machine and go to CD->Capture ISO image…, (you might need to reset the virtual machine afterwards if, like me, you are not quick enough).
When Ubuntu start it should pickup your ‘CD/ISO image’, you then choose your language
At this point if you try to do the install it will not work, this is because the install program does not ‘guess’ what your video mode is, (after all it is a virtual machine, so you cannot blame Ubuntu for guessing wrong).
So you need to tell it what to use.
To do that when you see the Install Ubuntu menu, (make sure that it is highlighted) . Press F6 and then press esc again to close the menu, (I know, I know there are other ways of doing it, but this way is good enough).
You will see a new line at the bottom that will say ‘Boot Options‘ at move your cursor, (with the arrows), to the end of the line. It should say something like “… quiet —“, delete that and replace it with “ noreplace-paravirt vga=791” and press enter to start the install.
The rest of the install should be fairly straight forward.
A couple of notes:
Select ‘No’ when asked to setup the keyboad, it will then ask you what country you are in and what country your keyboard comes from, otherwise Ubuntu will ask you to test your keyboad.
Be careful when choosing a username and password, remember that this is all case sensitive and the username must start lower case.
I chose not to encrypt the directory.
That’s it, enjoy Ubuntu 9.0.4.
<edit>Please have a look at the 2nd part, there are still some more tweaks needed to get your Ubuntu to work as expected.
Dear All,
I have been trying whole night to install Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope on Vitual PC 2007. It’s my first time trying to install Ubuntu.
I have been running problems and can’t insall Ubuntu.
At first couple of try: It went black screen after Squashfs…
Then I deleted created *.vhd and *.vmc and created with 512 mb ram and 30 gb hardisk. this time, installation went well upto keyboard installation, after that it stuck on “Startup Disk Partitioning point”. only 50% progress bar shown and stuck there. As I left overnight to run but no success till morning.
Then again I tried to install, it went blank screen.
At the same time I got pop small window saying “Install or Update Virtual Machine Additions” what is it? Do I need to install VC additions for Ubuntu?
Your help would be greately appreciated.
Sheru
Excellent! Exactly what I needed!! Thank you for helping me figure out why it kept crashing! :o)
Dear everone,
This is a total rookie question. I have Ubuntu 9.04 working fairly well in Virtual PC 2007 except that I cannot get it to recognize USB devices such as my Kingston data traveler memory key. What do I need to do?
Thank you for your time.
Matthew
Nothing happends when I choose “Install Ubuntu”. No, the installation program doesn’t freeze, just nothing happends.
Got through the install finally with your help thanks, but it won’t boot! Any ideas?
You get the grub loader then lots of text scrolls past.
Last few lines are:
[ 1.788004] [] ? unknown_bootoption+0x0/0x1f8
[ 1.788004] [] __init_begin+0x99/0xa1
[ 1.788004] –[ end trace 4eaa2a86a8e2da22 ]
There’s a lot more than that but I thought the last few lines seemed the most interesting 😉
Thanks,
Shell
you have to edit the same thing in the GRUB menu to get it to book. I just booted to the live cd, open GRUB menu, and in the boot list it, again, will say quiet splash. change that to “noreplace-paravirt vga=791” again. then it should boot up fine.
Simon- I am guessing that rather than erasing “quiet –” you simply appended the VGA directive. Be sure to replace the string, and you may be in luck.
THANKS for the great tip! Got me out of a bind.
In addition to these steps, it seems I also had to edit the standard boot line in the same way this post recommends. I hit ESC to get the boot menu, (e)dit the default line, and added noreplace-paravirt vga=791 as before. Without this, I got a stack dump on boot, and the vm froze in that state.
Now… THIS is a total rookie question. I’m going thru the setup and it comes to the partitioning the drive part. Now, this is a virtual machine, so this “partitioning” thing is only happening with the virtual machine, NOT with my actual hard drive, is it?
As a victim of a couple of recently self-inflicted partitioning accidents, just thinking better safe than sorry.
thanx!
Hi,
Yes, you will only be partitioning the virtual drive, not your actual drive.
But because it is a virtual machine, there is no real need to partition the drive, (unless you are testing something specific to partitioning).
FFMG
Hi,
Thanks for the great posts. It is working well!
I however have a question: how to update resolution to 1024*768 ?
The splash screen is in 1024*768, but when I log into it changes to 800*600.
I have modified /etc/X11/xorg.conf to add the following in “Screen3 section:
Subsection “Display”
Depth 16
Virtual 1024 768
EndSubsection
That worked, after a gdm reboot (sudo /etc/init.d/gdm restart), but Virtual PC is still in 800*600, so Ubuntu screen is bigger than the Virtual PC window (even in full screen). I have tried to stop and restart: same problem.
Thanks
Hi,
Also, anyone knows how to have the mouse scroll to work ?
@phramusca
I finally found out the solution for the screen resolution, by looking around on internet. I was modifying the proper file, but not properly.
Here is the solution:
Type Ctrl+Alt+F1 to get a console and login
Edit X config file:
$ sudo nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf
And replace content with:
Section “Device”
Identifier “Configured Video Device”
Driver “vesa”
BusID “PCI:0:8:0”
VideoRam 8192
EndSection
Section “Monitor”
Identifier “Configured Monitor”
Option “DPMS”
HorizSync 30-70
VertRefresh 50-160
EndSection
Section “Screen”
Identifier “Default Screen”
Monitor “Configured Monitor”
Device “Configured Video Device”
DefaultDepth 16
SubSection “Display”
Depth 16
Virtual 1024 768
Modes “1024×768”
EndSubSection
EndSection
I had no problems whatsoever installing Ubuntu 9.1 under win7-64. However, Ubuntu cannot access my wireless card. This same wireless card runs flawlessly when Ubuntu is installed on a physical drive or partition (or as a live cd) on the same system. However, this card would not work with Ubuntu prior to version 9.04.
Lou
Hi folks,
I finally made mine work too. Thanks for the description of the Ubuntu installation. Some minor points I can share with everyone:
1. The download from Canada has some problems. I tried the US download and that was fine. I discovered the problem by booting the Ubuntu CD image in Virtual PC 2007 and running a test on the disk. Both 9.10 and 8.04 LTS had 1 file with an error. The US 9.10 was good.
I made a minimal attempt to contact Waterloo and/or Telus about the problem (just to soothe my concsience) but I didn’t succeed. Maybe someone there will read this post.
2. I still have to figure out how to increase my screen resolution. It sounds like the job involves editing a boot file and making finicky changes. I guess that describes pretty much everything you do in Linux (just kidding – I hope).
I eat Windows and DOS for breakfast. Linux is foreign food and it just takes me a lot longer to get something done.
3. This may be a dumb comment, but make sure you DON’T “Release the Ubuntu disk image” after installation has completed. I did, and that was the wrong thing – had to reinstall again.
Thanks,
Bill
i have known of a little trick re: anything LINUS.
you MUST have a DOS … (?!? yup DOS!) formatted partition as partition 1
on drive 1, before you begin installation. having created a 4 gb part,
formatted (FAT32) by loading a win98boot.ima for floppy, Ubuntu 9 installed using ONLY GUI and not even 1 keystroke at a ‘Command Prompt’.
! ;-}
ps … allow partitioner to allocate 100% … automagically …
pss …
i had posted re: Ubuntu on VPC 2007, as the most recent posting was
Jan 8, and perhaps this isn’t completely off the road.
i thought i should add a note.
i created a 4gb virtual drive as a FIXED SIZE vd.
it therefore only contained 1 4GB partition. (DOS Formatted FAT32)
ram is set at 512MB.
upon booting to mounted CD (ISO), i selected English.
i then chose ‘Install Ubuntu’.
as Ubuntu Install automaticly ejects the cd …. the image is of course
released when Install asks to ‘Restart The Computer’ .
ha ha ha … oh really?
Hey,
Thanks for the post. This got me going. Now, how can I get full screen?
Dan
All you need to do is press Right-Alt, (the one to the right of the space bar), and Enter at the same time.
Do the same to get out of full screen.
I’ve successfully intalled Ubuntu 9.1 in Virtual PC 2007. All works well except… No sound. Won’t recognise the built in sound card. I don’t seem to have any trouble creating any other Virtuals; Vista, 7, XP, no issues. New to Ubuntu. Any suggestions?
Patrick
Also you may want to edit the GRUB menu to support the replaced quiet splash code for ever — otherwise every time you restart you’ll need to replace quiet splash again. You can enter a special VirtualPC option to your splash menu
@Alex Sirota
Yes, this was covered in the second and third part
Maybe I should add a link to those in this post.
Is there to install VM additions on Ubuntu or else a way to share files b/w ubuntu & windows?
Please reply me the solution to my email id as mentioned in this post.
Thankyou
I don’t think you can use VM additions with ubuntu. You are better off using VirtualBox
I didn’t reply by email, because I am not your personal help desk.