Creating a new Oracle Linux Virtualbox Virtual Machine for personal use

I'll take you though creating an Oracle Linux 6.5 VM on a Windows PC. This was the latest Linux available at the time.
Creating a VM gives you all the benefits from my earlier post. Also, you can build your own image from latest linux builds and configure it the way you want to.

Install latest VirtualBox and its guest additions on your local PC from its website.
Download the OS Image Oracle Linux 6.5 from edelivery site https://edelivery.oracle.com/linux/ . It will be in an ISO File.

In Oracle VM VirtualBox Manager, File -> Preferences -> General -> Choose Correct Default Machine Folder. Example, E:\OVM , especially if you’re creating VMs on a different disk.

In Oracle VM VirtualBox Manager ,choose New

Create a NEW machine, enter a name you want to give

Allocate enough memory to VM as needed. Typically 2GB should be good enough for many tasks in Linux, but if you want to develop in NetBeans for example you should give around 4GB.

 Choose do not add a virtual hard drive yet. We’ll add those later. Hit Create. On the listed newly created VM, select it and choose Settings, to modify its settings.

In Settings go to Storage options first and near Controller:SATA hit the icon to add disk.

Choose VDI file type. This format has benefit of compacting files and resizing.

 On next screen choose “Dynamically Allocated” physical hard drive.
Next,  choose file location and size. Give a good name (name_DATA) and location and select around 100 GB or as seen necessary for your work.
Add another disk (name_SWAP) for swap partition on linux. Allocate 8 gb file. I chose dynamically allocated for swap, but if performance is of concern you can choose fixed type for better performance. You’d have to wait for the big file to be created though.
Next In  Settings -> storage ->  Controller:IDE , CD/DVD Drive. Load up the ISO by clicking the cd icon next to drop down.

Hit OK. Start the VM by double clicking or hitting Start.
Virtual Box starts up the Linux installation process.

Hit Ok on this message, once you get Linux fully installed it won’t affect you.
  Follow the upcoming menus
  Choose ntp time server
  Choose Create Custom Layout  option, instead of use all space option, so that you can layout swap in other 6gb partition.

Create standard partition on the large 30gb hard drive, give its mount point as /

 On other drive choose swap as the file system type and click fill to maximum allowable size.

Choose Software Development Workstation installation option; Note that basic server option doesn't give gui and is useful for server class systems; desktop option also had issues in installing VB guest additions.

 

Create group dba, user oracle by using advance user creation option.

  Reboot your VM
You should Install guest additions as it gets rid of the mouse locking , help resize your window automatically .
Once the Linux VM is up, do an  yum update ; repeat if needed. You’re now all set to install your favorite software on it.

Please let me know if you found this useful, It took me some time to figure this out even with help of a good reference as mentioned below..

Author: Dhiraj Soni
Date: Feb 4, 2014

References:
VirtualBox - Creating a Base OEL Image, by Jim Fisher   Nov 4, 2010

VirtualBox - a virtualization technology

One of the technologies I find hard to live without is the virtualization technology. On daily basis I utilize Linux OS virtual machine(VM) running on my Windows Laptop. If you're not using this technology yet, perhaps this article can help you look into utilizing this.

Virtualization is seen as one of the enabling technologies of this generation. It enables much better utilization of the huge processing power of machines now available. Still, this was largely seen as domain of enterprise computing not at a laptop level. With advent of laptops of 4GB+ ram, it became more feasible to utilize virtualization at desktop/laptop levels. One such enabling technology is using open source VirtualBox (VB) virtualization (https://www.virtualbox.org/). This is comparable to VMWare if you're familiar to that.

With VB a key benefit is you get a self contained virtualized OS VM platform which you can move around with ease on any other PC you have. The virtual OS could be of many flavors like Windows, Solaris, Linux and Mac OS X. You can install any software on that VM and work with it like you do on a native OS. 

You can possibly work with multiple VMs on a single laptop, and you can also relocate the full working environment to other laptops with ease. You don't have to go though painful process of reinstalling your software on OS on other laptop where you're moving to.

Another benefit is to have a snapshot of the VM available, this is a point in time of the current state of your OS and you can revert back to this state later. This allows you to install software and if it doesn't work then you can revert back your VM state of the last snapshot. This saves a lot of time and effort if something goes wrong.

These days many vendors like Oracle give out pre-built VMs with their software installed on it. So you save lot of time by just reusing their VMs as your starting point for your development work. Few pre-built developer VMs are available here at oracle site.

VirtualBox’s many other benefits can be found in its very useful documentation. You can read through this manual to get a good understanding on how to go about setting up and using this technology.