Building Ubuntu VM challenges

[ColoradoMarmot]

Well, shoot.  

Finding the right ubuntu ISO's is a huge PITA.  No wonder Linux never succeeded on the desktop 🙂

Seriously, most of the links in the testing guide aren't valid anymore.  All of the arm links I can find for 21.x releases are for server only.  And for 22.04, the installer crashes and won't work.

Tried Debian too, but for the life of me I can't get the tools to install.  I know I'm rusty, but wow this is a major challenge.

[Technogeezer]

@Anders56 that’s the experience I’ve had with Debian as well.

The only kernels I have encountered that have required the use of acpi=force have been the 5.15 and later ones from Ubuntu’s Mainline.  5.15+ kernels from Debian, Fedora, OpenSUSE, CentOS 9 Stream, RHEL 9 beta, and Kali do not require this voodoo. 

It would be very interesting to know what Ubuntu is doing that the others are not. Especially since the Debian 5.15 kernels work. 

[todivefor]

@Technogeezer I am still not able to get anywhere. I boot the ISO from today. Set acpi=force and boot, no problem. After it comes up I take a snapshot. Install ubuntu and don't restart. Take snapshot. Kernel is 5.15.0-18-generic. Check /etc/gdm3/custom.conf, wayland is already disabled (uncommented). Reboot from within ubuntu, nothing, dead. Restart from Fusion menu, get error 64K not aligned. Never get to grub menu. I'll be the first to admit, I don't know linux. Although I have had an ubuntu VM for 5-8 years. I just like to play. Like you I'm a techno-geezer 😜 Either I am missing something stupid or

jammy-desktop-arm64.iso

2022-02-15 08:28

doesn't work.

[Technogeezer]

@todivefor Hang tight for a few. I'll download the same Jammy ISO and I'll walk through a brand new VM creation/installation to see if I can get you moving forward.

[Technogeezer]

@todivefor I was able to walk through the install on the new Jammy ISO. I've updated my procedure accordingly.

• Boot the installer ISO with the additional "acpi=force" argument.
• Once the live environment is up and running, install Ubuntu to your hard drive. At this dialog

Don't click either option. Instead. open a Terminal session and sudo to root.

• Edit /target/etc/gdm3/custom.conf (NOT /etc/gdm3/custom.conf) and uncomment the DisableWayland line. Save and exit the editor.
• Shut down the VM. You may need to do this from the VMware menus.
• Start up the VM. (This part is tricky as you need to force Ubuntu into displaying the grub menu if you took the defaults for disk installation. I had used the LVM option on install of my VMs which displayed the grub boot menu without my having to do anything)
  
  As soon as you power up the VM, click in its window and hit the "Esc" key slowly 2 or 3 times. You want to stop hitting "Esc" when the following appears:

If you get this instead, you've hit too many "Esc"s,

in which case you should restart the VM from the VMware menus and try again.

Or if you get the 64k alignment message, you didn't do things quite quickly enough and you should restart the VM from the VMware menus and start again.

(why did Ubuntu have to make this so difficult?)

• Once you do get to the grub boot menu, select "Ubuntu", then edit the boot string like you did for the installer ISO to add the "acpi=force" argument. Boot the kernel (ctrl-x).
• The VM should come alive in a graphical session. Log in.
• Open Terminal and sudo to root.
• Edit the /etc/default/grub file and:
  - Add the acpi=force argument to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT.
  - Comment out the GRUB_TIMEOUT_STYLE=hidden line. That will force Ubuntu to always show the grub boot menu like it should have done all along. This also gains you access to the recovery mode of the installed Linux kernel.... Also will let you easily choose an older kernel should an update install another one and something goes wonky...
  - Change GRUB_TIMEOUT to something like 10 seconds...
  - Save and close the file.
• Run "update-grub" from the shell prompt.
• Install both open-vm-tools and open-vm-tools-desktop.:
  apt-get update
  apt-get install open-vm-tools open-vm-tools-desktop
• Reboot your VM.

[todivefor]

@Technogeezer that worked! I never would have gotten there. I always selected "continue testing" then the edits. I also did have trouble getting into grub. Kept ending up in the firmware menu. Once in grub menu, the edit looked different than I had seen before, but found where to set "acpi=force." The other edits were very helpful, and nice explanations. I thought I would have to change the kernel, but no, 5-15.0-18-generic. Your instructions were spot on. Now to play.

Thank you.

[geekwannabe]

I have a macbook M1 running Monterey. I downloaded the same "jammy-desktop-arm64.iso" 22.04 build from https://cdimage.ubuntu.com/daily-live/current/

and tried with the VMWare fusion tech preview. But it does not proceed to install. As soon as the iso image is selected, it says

EFI Stub: kernel image not allowed on 64k boundary.

I saw your other post for some grub settings but I am not entirely familiar how to set it even before beginning the installation. Is there any video or can you help with some screen prints of any prerequisite steps needed before the install ?

[todivefor]

@geekwannabe I'm not very adept at using this discussion software, so don't know how to reference back to a post. Look earlier in this thread. I asked the same question. @Technogeezer answered how to get around this. Then a couple posts back he explains how to continue after installation. The "Tech Preview Guide" and this thread are key.

[geekwannabe]

@todivefor - thank you. But my issue is, am not familiar how do the first step. The document and other steps come next.

After downloading the ISO, I click File -> New from VMWAre Fusion and select the ISO. 

But @Technogeezer mentioned "Boot the installer ISO with the additional "acpi=force" argument."

I need help in how the above can be done. where exactly before choosing the ISO do we mention this in the mac fusion VMware.

[Technogeezer]

@geekwannabe ,

Set up your virtual machine with the ISO on the virtual CD-DVD drive and with the hard disk, CPU, and memory configurations you want.

The changes that are recommended come after you boot the installer ISO. 

The instructions on how to make the changes to the installer boot are in a reply earlier in this thread. The simple version is:

• Boot the VM.
• You will get a prompt from the GRUB boot loader. At the GRUB boot prompt, use the arrow keys to  highlight "Ubuntu". Instead of hitting return, type the letter "e" as instructed to edit the boot command.
• You will see a set of commands that GRUB would execute for booting the installer.
• Use the arrow keys on your keyboard to move the cursor just before the three '---' on the line that says 

linux /casper/vmlinuz quiet ---

• Type in "acpi=force ". The line should now read:

linux /casper/vmlinuz quiet acpi=force ---

Type ctrl-x as instructed to continue the installer boot.

You might want to review the Ubuntu documentation on the boot process and the Linux GRUB boot loader. It's a basic Linux skill that will come in handy regardless of which Linux distribution you are using.

[brijendravarma]

@Technogeezer 

Thanks a lot. Totally Worked🙌

[geekwannabe]

Thanks so much @Technogeezer 

I was able to get until the point where you have mentioned:

• Once you do get to the grub boot menu, select "Ubuntu", then edit the boot string like you did for the installer ISO to add the "acpi=force" argument. Boot the kernel (ctrl-x).

(At the very first time I was able to add it) However, this time, pressing "e" shows a different menu. Does this look right? If so, where to added the acpi=force?

[Technogeezer]

Yes this looks right. You're now booting from the VM's hard drive. And now you have to get Ubuntu running in order to complete the persistent workaround.

Move the cursor down to the line that starts with "linux", then move it right until you end up after the word "splash". Insert "acpi=force" there (making sure there's a space before and after it).  

Then ctrl-x to boot.

At that point, drop into a terminal, sudo to root, and edit /etc/default/grub as indicated. Run update-grub as root after that's done and you won't have to add the argument again. 

[geekwannabe]

Thank you so much @Technogeezer and @todivefor 

I was able to complete it successfully and its working now. 

[gringley]

I did a 21.10 ISO from the normal download page and installed as server.  There were some scary error messages at times but it worked.  There was a point where the install prompted me to update to 22.04? and I said yes and it seemed to connect, but I still got a 5.13 kernel and otherwise seems to get a 21.10 image.  I took that and added desktop, and then upgraded the kernel to 5.14 and my image seems OK.  I see though again that bridged networking is using the MacBook's MAC address and not the VMs MAC address?

[ColoradoMarmot]

Well, got it up, but for the life of me I can't get the vm tools actually to work.  Sharing says that they're not running.  apt-get install says they're already installed.  Any ideas?

[gringley]

Not sure what to think?!?  Did you install a desktop image? I installed a server image, upgraded to the 5,14 kernel and then added desktop to it.  I can resize and then drag and drop to an open file window in the 21.10 guest.  A file drag to the Ubuntu desktop seems to misfire though.

[ColoradoMarmot]

installed the latest Jammy desktop build (5.15 kernel) using your instructions (thanks much!).  I can manually resize in the guest (I missed the drag not working in the TP guide when I first posted), so I know that at least that part is running, but the shared folders function in preferences says 

so nothing shows up as a mounted drive.  Drag/drop to a files folder does work (host to guest).  Guest to host gives:

When I try to drag the file out of the files window across the desktop to the mac.

[Technogeezer]

The error message in the sharing preferences is a red herring. Fusion doesn’t know if you have open-vm-tools installed in the guest so it displays that message even if you have them installed. 

Assuming you have open-vm-tools installed, what happens if you disable, then re-enable the folder sharing in the GUI? Or edit /etc/fstab to include the workaround of the FUSE hgfs mount?

I’ll give a guest-to-host drag and drop a whirl later today and see if I can see what you’re seeing.

[todivefor]

As @Technogeezer says, I get the tools not installed message, but shared folders (sometimes have to disable/enable), drag and drop both ways, and cut and paste both ways all work. Jammy desktop build (5.15 kernel) from a couple weeks ago.

[Technogeezer]

I just saw this error message when trying to drag/drop a document from the host to the Ubuntu desktop.It appears that if you drag/drop to the desktop directly the file doesn't appear. Trying it a second time gave me that error message.

If I open the "Files" application and drag/drop to the Desktop folder, it seems to work.

Not going to rule out flakiness in the open-vm-tools-desktop for ARM...

Looks like I have an upgrade that's available. I'm installing it and let's see if the symptoms change.