CS 354 Autonomous Robotics

Fall 2020

Installing an Ubuntu/Mint Virtual Machine with VMWare Fusion on a Mac

A virtual machine image is maintained by JMU's Unix User Group (UUG). This set of instructions starts with that image and suggests a few customizations for CS 354.

Very important

Note that you MUST install the Spring 2020 version of the machine from the image file image-sp20a.ova. The version of ROS 2 used in this class (Dashing) is not supported under Ubuntu/Mint 20.

Install VMWare Fusion and the Virtual Machine Image

  1. Download and install the VMWare Fusion (the regular version, not the Pro) from https://www.vmware.com/products/fusion/fusion-evaluation.html
  2. Download the virtual machine image This file is rather large (1.8 GB).
  3. Start VMWare Fusion, accept the trial period and send Dr. Molloy an email so he can obtain a license key for you (or if you selected Mac on the course survey then you can avoid sending the email).
  4. Select the "+" key (circled below in red), and then New... from the menu (circled below in blue).
  5. Select Import an existing virtual machine (circled below in red). Then navigate to and select the image-sp20a.ova file you downloaded
  6. Select a name for your VM and then click save (screen capture shown below)
  7. You may receive a message indicating that the file did not pass OVF specification conformance, you can click retry and it should import this time
  8. You can then right click on the virtual machine in the list and click settings. (see below). Then click on the processors & memory and increase the number of processors (at least 2) and memory (4 G if you can do it). Then click the Display and click the Accelerate 3D Graphics.
  9. Start your machine
You will then need to proceed through the Linux OS configuration screens. The screen might be a little difficult to read at this point, but, this will be resolved after the next few steps.
  1. Select English and then continue
  2. Take the default keyboard (English (US) and press Continue
  3. Take New York as the default timezone, and press Continue
  4. Select your name (use your e-id. For example, I used molloykp). This will auto populate the next 3 fields.
  5. Select a password and then press Continue
The system will then execute a few configuration scripts (this took about 2 minutes on my laptop). At the conclusion of this process, you will need to login to the virtual machine using your username and password.

Install Guest Additions and Configurations

To allow your VM to run more smoothly, install the VMWare additions.
  1. Start your VM and log in
  2. Start a terminal window, and run the following commands
    3. 
                         sudo apt-get update
                         sudo apt-get install open-vm-tools -y
                         sudo apt-get install open-vm-tools-desktop -y
  3. Shutdown your VM
  4. Verify in settings that you 3d acceleration is still selected (wrench icon, Display). I also select under battery life to always use high performance graphics.
You can now proceed with the ROS installation instructions.