After creating and launching a VirtualMachine on a Vista host, I captured the following screenshots to document the process of installing Ubuntu 8.10.

Post install, I updated the Network Interface config and enabled the Firewall.

Ubuntu Install Screenshots

Network Interface

DHCP was enabled during install, so after logging on, I edited the network interface config to set a static IP address.

sudo vi /etc/network/interfaces

Remove the DHCP line:

#iface eth0 inet dhcp

replacing it with:

iface eth0 inet static
address 192.168.0.100
netmask 255.255.255.0
network 192.168.0.0
broadcast 192.168.0.255
gateway 192.168.0.1

restart the networking service to apply the changes

sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart

If you need to edit your DNS, you can do so via:

sudo vi /etc/resolv.conf

Firewall

I enabled the firewall software (UFW) that came with Ubuntu, opening it up to allow OpenSSH, Apache and Samba

sudo ufw allow OpenSSH
sudo ufw allow "Apache Full"
sudo ufw allow Samba
sudo ufw enable

To verify the firewall is working properly,

sudo ufw status verbose

which should produce the following results:

Status: loaded
Logging: on
Default: deny
New profiles: skip

To                         Action  From
--                         ------  ----
22/tcp (OpenSSH)           ALLOW   Anywhere
80,443/tcp (Apache Full)   ALLOW   Anywhere
137,138/udp (Samba)        ALLOW   Anywhere
139,445/tcp (Samba)        ALLOW   Anywhere

Logout

Given that the console is constantly grabbing control of my mouse and frustratingly small, I logged out, logging back in via SSH to do the remainder of the configuration.

logout

If you haven’t already done so, now would probably be a great time to make a backup/copy of your VM.