CS 444 Artificial Intelligence

Spring 2021

Installing an Ubuntu/Mint Virtual Machine with VirtualBox

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 444.

Install Virtual Box and the Virtual Machine Image

  1. Download and install the VirtualBox software for your platform from https://www.virtualbox.org
  2. Download the virtual machine image from the JMU's (UUG) site: https://w3.cs.jmu.edu/uug/. The file you want is normally named image-XXYYa.ova, where XX is the semester that the image was created (sp} for Spring, fa for Fall) and YY is the 2 digit year. This file is rather large (1.8 GB).
  3. Start VirtualBox
  4. Select File, then Import Appliance..., then select the file you downloaded (image-XXYYa.ova ) and click on import to create the machine
  5. Start the machine by double clicking on the name (JMU Linux Mint XXYY) on the left side of your VirtualBox window
You will then need to proceed through the Linux OS configuration screens.
  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, I will able to login to the virtual machine using my username and password.

Install Guest Additions and Configurations

To allow your VM to run more smoothly, install the Guest Additions.
  1. Start your VM and log in
  2. Click on the devices menu in your OS (not within the VM, see Figure fig:deviceMenu and select Insert Guest Additions CD image...
  3. The system will then prompt you to run the image, click Run. Enter your VM password when prompted.
  4. When completed, you will get a Press Return to close this window..., so press return.
  5. Restart your VM.
Some releases of VirtualBox seem to set the display scaling to 200\%. To check this setting, go to the VirtualVM menu, Preferences, then click on the Display icon. Check the scale factor setting and adjust to your preference. I set mine to 100%.

Configuring CPU and Memory

Training machine learning models can be a computationally expensive task. Fortunately, a lot of tools kits utilize approaches that employ parallel computation utilizing multiple CPU cores and graphic proceessing units (GPUs). Visualizing ML models can also be expensive. You can increase the amount of CPU core's and video memory available to your virtual machine.
  • On the VirtualBox home screen, select your virtual machine and then click the yellow gear button for settings.
  • The click the system button and select processor (as shown in the image below). Increase the CPUs/cores.
  • Click on display, and increase video memory to its maximum settings (128 MB) and make sure that Enable 3D acceleration is checked. An example of this configuration is shown below (right).
CPU Config
Video Memory Config