ICS 46 Spring 2022, Installing VMware and the ICS 46 VM (ARM64)

What is the ICS 46 VM?

The ICS 46 VM is a complete installation of an operating system and the necessary software that we'll be using in this course (and little else). The operating system is Ubuntu Server 20.04.3 (x64 version), with a graphical user interface called XFCE, which provides a look-and-feel similar to what you might get on Windows or macOS. You'll nonetheless spend a lot of your time at the command line within your VM's GUI.

In addition to the operating system, the ICS 46 VM has a set of software already installed and configured for our use. You may not find that you need all of these software packages, but some of these are going to be vital, and others are available if you do.

One web browser: Firefox, though you can certainly install others if you prefer them, which will allow you to browse the web from within your VM
OpenSSH Server, which allows you to connect to the VM via ssh, the way you might connect to the command line of another computer outside of your own.
Two C++ compilers: Clang (which we'll be using in this course) and GCC (which was used to get the system set up, but will not be used in the course).
Two debuggers: LLDB and GDB (either of which we may use in this course).
Two tools used to assist in compiling and linking C++ programs: CMake and Make.
A program analysis tool called Valgrind, which we'll be using to diagnose and fix low-level issues like memory leaks.
A unit testing framework called Google Test, which we'll be using to write automated tests of (portions of) our programs.
A source control tool called Git.
Four text editors: Vim, Emacs, Nano, and Visual Studio Code.
Python 3 and Java, in case you'd like to experiment with them comparatively as you work through this C++ course.
Qt, a GUI library that I've used to implement the GUIs that accompany your projects.
Boost, a collection of C++ libraries that are a useful supplement to the C++ standard library, which I've used in the GUIs that accompany your projects.

Along with this preinstalled software, the ICS 46 VM also includes an environment for the course, which consists of a set of commands and scripts that you can execute to perform common tasks, and templates from which you can start new project work without having to worry about detailed setup of things like makefiles. Over the course of the quarter, we'll update the environment, and updating yours is a single command away. (More on that later.)

Downloaidng the ICS 46 VM (ARM64)

You can download the ARM64 version of the ICS 46 VM at the following link. Before you do that, please bear three things in mind:

This is a large download. To preserve UCI and ICS network bandwidth, we would appreciate it if you would spread the load by sharing it with each other once downloaded; have one of you download it and give copies to ten others, and we'll save a lot of bandwidth that way.
By request of our system administrators, this download is inaccessible outside of the UCI campus network. If you try to download it from off-campus, you will likely receive a message that you are forbidden to access it. Your best move is to download it when you're physically on campus; you can potentially download it via the campus VPN, though you may run afoul of network usage restrictions that way. Be warned.
If you do download via the campus VPN, be sure you're using the Software VPN, as opposed to the Web VPN (which, for at least some students, appears to cap the size of downloaded files to 2 GB, but the ICS 45C VM is larger than that). More details about the Software VPN are available here.

The ICS 46 VM is available here.

ICS 46 VM (ARM64) — only available while on the campus network (see above)

The file is a compressed file in a format that's sometimes called a tarball, within which is a virtual disk (i.e., the contents of the hard disk of the virtual machine we'll be creating). With everyone starting with the same virtual disk, we'll all be starting with the same version of the operating system, the same versions of all of our tools, and so on.

Be aware that the download may take a fair amount of time; it's several gigabytes. (So much the better that you get a copy from someone else who's already downloaded it!) Once you have a complete copy, you can move on to the next step.

Being sure you have a complete copy of the ICS 46 VM before you proceed

In past quarters, we've experienced a number of problems with students receiving only partial copies of the ICS 46 VM, given that it's such a large download. Before proceeding, be sure that the size of the file you downloaded is exactly 6,022,484,227 bytes. (Your operating system may show you a shorthand, like 5,881,333 KB or 5.60 GB, but you'll want to verify it all the way to the byte.) If not, you've got a corrupt copy of the file and will need to download it again.

Some students have asked me in the past for an MD5 checksum for this file, as well. This quarter's VM has the following MD5 checksum: 9bbbe808cf6bb7f522891d276253753e.

What to do if you've taken the course before

If you've taken this course before, you're still going to need to download this quarter's ICS 46 VM. The VM changes every quarter, in ways that sometimes change whether or not code will run the same way (or, in some cases, will even compile at all); furthermore, a previous quarter's VM will only support the previous quarter's assignments, notes, and so on.

You may also need to upgrade UTM, if you've installed an older version during a previous iteration of this course. You'll need to be running the same version as everyone else this quarter; see above.

Importing the ICS 46 VM into UTM

After you've download the ics46-2022spring-arm64.tar.gz file, you'll want to uncompress it. The easiest way to do that is to double-click the file in Finder. After it's been uncompressed, another file named disk-0.qcow2 will have been extracted from it. That's the virtual disk, which forms the basis of your ICS 46 VM.

Next, you'll need to create the ICS 46 VM. To do that, open the UTM application and either click the large Create a New Virtual Machine button or select the File menu and then New.

Either way, a dialog box will appear that starts the process of setting up your new virtual machine.

When given a choice between Virtualize and Emulate, click Virtualize.
Next, you'll be asked what operating system you'd like on your VM. Even though we'll be running a version of Linux, click Other. (We don't want a preconfigured version provided by UTM; we want the ICS 46 VM specifically.)
Next, check the Skip ISO boot box, because we don't want to boot our VM to set up a brand-new operating system; we want one that's already been set up previously. Then click Next.
When asked to configure Hardware:
- Set the amount of Memory to be at least 2048 MB. (What you're deciding here is how much of your host operating system's memory to allocate to the virtual machine while it's running. You'll want at least 2048 MB, but you likely don't want this to be more than half the total amount of memory on your host.)
- Leave the CPU Cores specified as Default.
- Click Next.
Next, you'll be asked to specify an amount of storage. (It's not important what you decide here, as we'll be overriding it later.) Click Next.
Next, you'll be asked to specify a shared directory. Choose any directory on your host operating system that you'd like to share; that directory will then be available within your guest operating system (i.e., any time the guest operating system writes to its "share" directory, that change will be written to the corresponding directory on the host operating system automatically, and vice versa).
You'll now be presented with a Summary page, but we're actually not done yet. Check the Open VM Settings box (so that it has a checkmark in it), then click Save.
Now, the VM's settings dialog should appear, in which we'll need to make a few more tweaks.
On the Information tab...
- Set the Name to ics46-2022spring-arm64.
- Under Notes, you can write anything you'd like, but there's no reason to put anything there.
- Under Icon, you can select any style you'd like; this merely controls how your VM will be displayed in UTM's user interface.
On the System tab...
- Set the Architecture to ARM64 (aarch64).
- Set the System to QEMU 6.2 ARM Virtual Machine (alias of virt-6.2) (virt)
- Set the Memory to at least 2048 MB, as you did before.
- Set the CPU to Default.
- There's no need to change any of the other settings; your best move is to leave everything else set to their defaults.
On the QEMU tab, you can leave everything set to their defaults.
On the Display tab, you can leave everything set to their defaults.
On the Input tab, you can leave everything set to their defaults.
On the Network tab, set the Network Mode to Shared NetworkShow Advanced Settings checkbox unchecked).
On the Sound tan, you can leave everything set to their defaults, though do be sure that sound is enabled.
On the Sharing tab...
- Make sure that Enable Clipboard Sharing is checked.
- Make sure that Enable Directory Sharing is checked.
Under Drives, click VirtIO Drive, which is a virtual hard drive that was created for our VM. Click the Delete Drive button to remove it, because we want to replace it with the ICS 46 VM's drive instead.
Then, click the New Drive link, to make a new virtual hard drive.
- Select the VirtIO interface, if it isn't selected already.
- Make sure that Removable and Raw Image are unchecked.
- Click Import, and then go find the disk-0.qcow2 file that you extracted from the ics46-2022spring-arm64.tar.gz file that you downloaded.
- Click Open.
After what may be a long pause — because a very large file is being copied — you should see VirtIO Drive listed underneath Drives again.
There's no need to configure anything else. At this point, click Save, and we're ready to boot up the VM.

At this point, you should see your new VM listed in UTM's main window. (It's worth noting that, at this point, it's got a copy of disk-0.qcow2 in it, and anything you do to this VM will affect only that VM.)

Starting the ICS 46 VM and logging into it for the first time

Once you've imported the ICS 46 VM into UTM, you're ready to start it up and log into it for the first time. Click your VM in the list in the left-hand side of the UTM window, then click the "play" button (the one with an arrow pointing to the right) to start it running. You'll see another window pop up, which is the console of your VM.

Logging into the ICS 46 VM

Once you've booted up your VM, you'll see a dialog box before too long asking you to specify a username and a password. The username is selected from a dropdown list; ics46 will probably already be selected, but make sure it's selected if it's not already. In the text field below that, type the password ics46 — which you'll want to change (see below) — and click the Log In button.

Having logged in, you should eventually see a desktop, much like you would see on Windows or macOS. In the bottom-left corner is a small icon that can be used to start common applications or edit operating system settings. One of the most important of these, for us, is the Terminal application, which will give you a shell prompt. Find the Terminal application (which might also be listed as Terminal Emulator) and start it. A window should pop up and contain a prompt that looks like this:

ics46@ics46-2022spring-arm64 : ~ $

If so, you're off and running! Go back to the Project #0 write-up and pick up where you left off.

(Note: You might find the default font and colors not to your liking, though it's easy enough to change them. From the Edit menu in your Terminal window, select Preferences.... A dialog will pop up allowing you to configure whatever you'd like; when you're done, click Close, and subsequent uses of the Terminal application will respect the changes you made.)