- Installing and Upgrading VirtualBox
- Retrieving the openSUSE Disk Image
- Building the openSUSE Virtual Computer
- Further Study and More Resources
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Building the openSUSE Virtual Computer
The build process is very simple, thanks to VirtualBox's elegant interface, shown in Figure 1:
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Figure 1 Building your first Virtual Box computer
Let's start by clicking the New icon and get our installation wizard going. You'll notice that the wizard will predict correct build settings if you include the OS name in the VM Name field and if you use a common OS type. VirtualBox may not recognize Puppy Linux. As another help, consider adding the OS version number to the description field. This will help you start the correct version for testing.
Click the Continue button when you've named the box and selected the correct OS, as shown in Figure 2. (If you use an unidentified OS, select Other and be prepared to “roll your own.” Yes, VirtualBox is very accommodating.)
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Figure 2 Naming the Box
In the next panel, you allocate virtual RAM for the virtual computer. Many Linuces operate well with minimal RAM. I'm tempted to allocate 768MB, but this is the installation process, something that loves RAM. I'll allocate 1GB now and tune to final installation to operate on 768MB.
In the next panel, we'll create the virtual disk for the v-computer (virtual computer). The wizard suggests 8GB, but I've got plenty of disk space. I will configure 10GB and have plenty of room for optional software packages and for swap space. The wizard will create the disk in several formats that are compatible with many virtualization tools. I will accept the default, which is VirtualBox's format. Remember that choosing a common format can allow me to move VirtualBox instances among my hardware hosts.
In the next panel, I'm asked if I want to have a virtual disk allocated dynamically or with a fixed size. I like dynamic, but these can have performance problems on fragmented disks. With dynamic, the disk file that represents the virtualized instance will grow as needed. This can slow installation. I have plenty of space, and a fixed size can make speed up some installations. Fixed size it is!
After clicking Continue, the next panel allows me to set Virtual disk size and location. I will adjust the slider to 10GB. Location? I like VirtualBox and the way the software follows Mac OS X filesystem standards. I will store this v-computer in the directory that is tied to my specific user account. If I've enabled encrypted storage for this account, my v-computer will be as secured as my other information.
The last panel for the disk creation is the summary table. Looks good to you? Looks good to me. Time to click Create.
Once the hard disk is built, you can now review the computer's build specifications and click Create to create the v-computer. Is it really that easy to create a v-computer for any testing need? Yes it is. One last configuration is needed before you install openSUSE: You must load the virtual DVD image onto the virtual DVD player on your virtual computer.
Study Figure 3 carefully. You must click the Settings icon and adjust the storage settings.
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Click the DVD icon to find your downloaded installation DVD, after you select the Empty DVD icon in the IDE controller panel (located in the left-hand navigation pane). Select Choose a Virtual CD/DVD Disk File. Navigate to you disk image and select it.
Once this is done, click OK, and start the v-computer with the Start icon. If it went well, you should see Figure 4's results.
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