Installing VM

Basic installation steps

Install from the mini.iso

My language is English, the timezone is Brussels/Europe, the keyboard is En/Us euro on 5

• task Basic Ubuntu Server
• task OpenSSH

Add GUI

I prefer a minimal GUI which I start up from the console. Problem is that the Ubuntu Desktops are either bloated (any desktop) or incomplete (Lubuntu Core has missing icons, problems with fonts, …). What works for me is this:

sudo apt install --no-install-recommends xorg lxde
sudo systemctl set-default multi-user.target
#Enter the GUI with
startx

VMWare related settings

To support Cut&Paste and shared folders with the Windows host:

sudo apt install build-essential checkinstall open-vm-tools-desktop

Always-enable shares don’t seem to work anymore. To make the shares visible, I found this:

sudo /usr/bin/vmhgfs-fuse .host:/ /mnt/hgfs -o subtype=vmhgfs-fuse,allow_other

Alternatively, it might be possible to add this to /etc/fstab’??:

"vmhgfs-fuse /mnt/hgfs fuse defaults,allow_other 0 0"

(kernel panic!)

In VMWare Player:

• set time synchronization with host. Maybe better alternative is install ntpd?
• enable a shared folder with windows. Permanent shares may need to be disabled, then reenabled or use fstab setting.
• sound is a problem on my system (Realtec drivers). By default, VMWare assumes Soundblaster. This seems to solve it:
  • remove the sound card in Player Settings and shutdown
  • edit VMX file, so that the sound settings are as shown.

    sound.present = "TRUE"
    sound.virtualdev = "hdaudio"
    sound.fileName = "-1"
    sound.autodetect = "TRUE"
    

  • start the VM, install a sound mixer

    sudo apt install pavucontrol
    

  • Ensure that output-devices is line-out(plugged in) and sound is not muted, HD audio controller configured 5.1+stereo.

Grub changes

I like to see what happens during boot, so I made some changes:

#in file /etc/default/grub -- change following lines
GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT=1
GRUB_GFXMODE=1024x768
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=""

Some other tools

For https repos

sudo apt install apt-transport-https

For cleaning and navigating:

sudo apt install mc
#nano ~/.config/mc/ini  
sudo apt install bleachbit
#  as root: clear apt, journald, system cache, locales, logs, temps, trash
sudo apt install geany 

F10 in LxTerminal interferes with mc, so turn it off. I use skin=darkfar in ~/.config/mc/ini to improve colors in console.

The system default PATH is set in /etc/environment. I remove the games stuff from it.

Installing the ssh keys

I copied some keys and configurations from another vm using mc (sftp facility). Same for git configuration and some aliases.

Some strange problems and some solutions

:+1: If terminal fonts in the GUI become suddenly badly spaced, a solution seems to be to install ubuntu fonts.

sudo apt install ttf-ubuntu-font-family

:+1: If console font is suddenly of bad quality and does not support graphical characters anymore, this solves it:

#to test some fonts, do like:
for i in /usr/share/consolefonts/Uni*;\  
  do setfont "$i"; ls -l /proc/; echo -e "\nINFO: currently set font: $i"; sleep 2; clear; done
#or 
  setfont /usr/share/consolefonts/Uni3-Terminus20x10.psf.gz

#to set default font after reboot do like
sudo dpkg-reconfigure console-setup
#I choose UTF8 latin1 Uni3-Terminus20x10

:-1: Making a sftp connections from PcManFM does not work. There seems to be an un-met dependency to gvfs.
I did not bother to find out what to do, instead I used sftp from midnight commander which is my preferred file manager anyway.

Cleaning up and creating a snapshot.

From console (no GUI)

• sudo bleachbit
• sudo vmware-toolbox-cmd disk wipe /
• sudo poweroff In vmware player, use 7z to compress the ./ folder