nonx64

Notes for M1 Mac and other non x64 machines

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The M1 Mac and other non x64 systems will not be able to directly run the provided virtual machine images (at least at the time of writing). VMWare is working on support emulating x64 on ARM, but in the meanwhile you need to perform some adjustments yourself.

Tip for Networking

This is a bit different in UTM. The default network driver is Shared Network so the VM will get its own IP. This will change the Week 5 Jupyter address from localhost:8888 to something like http://192.168.64.4:8888/. You can find out the ip address with ip address.

Creating M1 Compatible Images

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This will only work with images coming in .ova format so the Kali VM will not work .vmwarevm. The images can only consist of one .vmdk image, otherwise the scripts need some changes. This uses around 3-4 times the image size of disk space while converting so make sure you have enough.

Using provided Docker Image

Fairly straightforward and should work on any linux based machine with Docker

Required Software

• Docker install link
• tar command (should be available by default)

Converting the VM images

Do this for both course VM images

1. Download both the Week 1-4,6 and Week 5 VMs in OVA format
2. Move the VM .ova image to this folder
3. Run sh create-qcow.sh image_name.ova
   1. Replace image_name with the actual name
4. You will get the image_name.ova.qcow2 as output

Alternative Approach

This might run a bit faster, but will be more annoying to set up if you do not have the pre-requisites

Required software

• UTM Virtualization/Emulation Software install link
  • Downloading from the page is free
  • Install this before starting anything else
• tar command
• qemu-img command (via homebrew etc.)

Converting the VM images

Do this for both course VM images

1. Download both the Week 1-4,6 and Week 5 VMs in OVA format
2. Extract .vmdk disk images from the .ova files
   1. tar -xvf image_name.ova
      1. Replace image_name with the downloaded VM name
3. Convert the images into qcow2 format
   1. qemu-img convert -c -O qcow2 original_name.vmdk new_name.qcow2
      1. Replace original_name with the extracted .vmdk name and new_name with something memorable
      2. The -c option enables compression making the resulting image MUCH smaller
      3. The -O qcow2 argument sets the output format
4. After saving the .qcow2 images you can feel free to delete the other files
   1. It might be useful to keep everything until you get the VM running in case any errors happen

Creating an emulated machine in UTM

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Do this whole process for both of the VM images

1. Open UTM
2. New Virtual Machine via Emulate
3. Choose Other operating system
4. Check skip ISO boot option and continue
5. Make sure the architecture is x86_64 and use the default settings
   1. You can increase the memory to up to 40% of host memory (save some for qemu JIT cache)
   2. Let the CPU cores option stay as default or empty
6. Specify a very small disk as this will be deleted later
7. Continue until you reach the final dialog displaying your configuration
   1. You can choose to share a folder with the VM. This is optional but helps with file transfer
8. Check Show VM Settings and finish the setup
9. In the VM settings perform the following adjustments
   1. Go to the QEMU tab and un-check UEFI Boot
   2. On the left side of the VM settings find your Drives and select the default one
   3. Delete the default disk
   4. Create a new disk by clicking New Drive and select Import... and find your qcow2 file
   5. Make sure the new disk type is Disk Image and interface IDE
10. Start the VM

Sharing files and clipboard to the VM

These require additional software that might not be present on the virtual machines

• SPICE guest agent spice-vdagent
• SPICE WebDAV spice-webdavd