Tuesday, August 19, 2014

Installing Fedora in VMWare Fusion to run Git from Linux

Just FYI I'm leaning Mac, VMWare Fusion, ISOs, Linux distros, GIT (and security, Cisco network gear, AWS) all at the same time. Forgive me for not being an expert at everything. I do have a bit of experience.

I decided to install a Linux VM to test running Git from it. I just wanted a Git repo to store some Cisco ASA config files. I never got to the Git part. It took me all the time I had just to get the Linux VM running.

The instructions on web sites I went to were far from obvious. After going through this I think I can boil this down to 12 steps to help the next poor soul who wants to accomplish this feat for the first time:

1. Go to FedoraProject.org
2. Click download
3. Click on Formats in sub menu
4. Click on 64bit DVD option (unless you 
have 32 bit older machine of course).
5. Download starts immediately.
6. Use Windows File Integrity Checker to check the integrity of the file you downloaded: http://websitenotebook.blogspot.com/2014/12/windows-file-integrity-checker-like.html
7. Right click (on downloaded file on Mac) and burn to blank CD
8. Start Fusion. 
9. File, new, choose appropriate Linux options
10. On the top of vm screen click the icon with cd coming out of drive.*
11. Choose disk option and select the file burned to CD
12. Follow prompts to install Fedora on the VM

* If your VM doesn't see the CD Rom drive have to stop the VM and associate the drive with the VM while it is stopped. Then play the VM and choose the file on CD as noted above.

If you want to know the convoluted waste of time I had to go though to figure out those steps, to understand what poor instructions do to people, read on.

1. Download Fedora - hopefully got the right version.
2. Says I need a thumb drive or CD to run. Find thumb drive. Hope has enough space.
3. Download checksum file to same directory
4. Run curl command to Fedora web site which does something
5. Try PGP command which fails because don't have PGP installed
6. Try to install PGP. Apparently bought by Symantec now.
7. Read about PhilipZimmermann.com - cool.
8. Login at Symantec (recover password)
9. Download and install PGP
10. Realize command on Fedora site is is gpg, not pgp
11. Visit OpenPGP.org seeking free version of GNU privacy guard
12. Search and find downloads on various web sites. gnupg.org seems to be official.
13. Get the Mac version. More checksums to verify that.
14. Is meant for email. Wants my address book. No.
15. Command line verification doesn't work with Mac version as written. This is a pain in the ass.
16. Tried the SHA checksum and that didn't work either. Maybe I'll write my own checksum software.
17. Well I'm putting this on a disk to run in a VM so let's skip to that for now. In theory in VMWare won't have access to the host. (not necessarily recommended but I will follow up on this later). 
18. Turns out on Mac you can just right click and burn to disk. Ok forget the USB drive. Go find disk and external drive...(oh yeah there's my Windows 2012 CD in my CD drive...remove and replace with new, blank disc.)
19. Right click on downloaded file, burn, enter some stuff. Wait.
20. Open VMWare Fusion, choose file, new, cd just created, Linux, Fedora, 64 bit, finish, save
21. No worky. Says it can't find boot files.
22. Aparently I downloaded live image which won't work in VM - intended to run from CD. Perhaps requires Internet access. Not what I wanted. Bah. Or maybe I did something else wrong. Search for a different version.
23. Oh...there are the USB instructions. Huh. Later.
24. Let's try downloading the DVD version which creates an ISO and actually installs the OS.
25. Get another blank disk.
26. Burn, Wait....surf the web for Linux training that includes overview of distros, LiveCDs and VMs (already took one security class but that assumes you have the OS installed...)
27. Dang. OS not found. Mouse stopped working. Hosed. 
28. Hard reboot. What? Download not finished. I guess I had multiple downloads going on clicking around the Fedora web site trying to find DVD version.
29. Move all downloads to trash and re-download half finished DVD version. Watch the download bar to make sure it completes this time.
30. Downloads won't complete. Restart machine.
31. Figure out downloads hung up in Safari. Stop all but the one I want.
32. Download working again...wait for full download.
33. Install Google Chrome - going to see if downloads work better just in case Safari hangs again. While I wait.
34. Burn downloaded file to disc. Do some other stuff - 
35. Finally. Try to start VM with instructions above again. Same error when I try to run the VM.
36. FIddle Fiddle Fiddle.
37. Search the web some more and find instructions for old version of Fusion and different version of Linux. No dice. Menus changed. 
38. Finally instructions that indicate creating the vm without installing the OS and going to menus I don't have. Hmm. Clues.
39. Instead of trying to play the vm I click around on all the icons at the top of the vm in fusion and finally see "choose a disk or disk image" when I click the cd drive looking icon.
40. AHA! I choose the ISO file I burned to the CD. Now it looks like it's installing something. Go through steps.
41. On the installation summary page I have to click on installation destination and choose OK. Not sure that's the best option but allows me to click begin installation.
42. Once I got his far following the prompts seemed to work.

--- epilogue --- 
So I went to dinner with a friend and he was chastising me for not looking on YouTube. I explained that I kept thinking I had it figured out but kept getting foiled.

So anyway I looked on YouTube and saw videos but they didn't encompass the end to end process of downloading Fedora and then getting that download into a format (ISO on a disk) that would work in a VM. 

Maybe it's out there but would take some more searching. I'm done :) maybe someone will create one.