Installing Fedora 13 in VirtualBox

Screen capture tour and installation guide for Fedora 13 on VirtualBox.

This tour will focus on GNOME version of F13, Fedora-13-i686-Live.iso, this is available at Fedora website or mirror sites near you. Depending on your internet connection, this can take a while as this is a 700MB iso image.

Below my VirtualBox guest configuration for F13.

General
 Name: f13
 OS Type: Fedora
System
 Base Memory: 512 MB
 Processor(s): 1
 Boot Order: CD/DVD-ROM, Hard Disk
 VT-x/AMD-V: Enabled
 Nested Paging: Enabled
Display
 Video Memory: 12 MB
 3D Acceleration: Disabled
 2D Video Acceleration: Disabled
 Remote Display Server: Disabled
Storage
 Storage Controller
  IDE Secondary Master (CD/DVD): Empty
 Storage Controller 1
  SATA Port 0: f13.vdi (Normal, 80.00 GB)
Audio
 Host Driver: Windows DirectSound
 Controller: ICH AC97
Network
 Adapter 1: Intel PRO/1000 MT Desktop (Bridged adapter, Microsoft Loopback Adapter)
Serial Ports
 Disabled
USB
 Device Filters: 0 (0 active)
Shared Folders
 None

Below are the Fedora 13 screenshot during installation.

Figure 1. This the boot screen.

Figure 2. Live CD running inside VirtualBox. Double click on "Install to Hard Drive" icon.

Figure 3. Installation start screen wizard.

Figure 4. Select keyboard layout application to your system.

Figure 5. Since this is a VirtualBox guest install, "Basic Storage Device" is the right option in this screen.

Figure 6. I only have one virtual hard disk defined for this guest machine, so I select that.

Figure 7. Re-initialize this disk as it is the first time it is being used.

Figure 8. Hostname goes here.

Figure 9. Select timezone appropriate for your location.

Figure 10. This will be your guest machine's root password.

Figure 11. Partition layout, default should be fine for guest machine.

Figure 12. Commit partition layout changes to disk. Don't worry here, this will only make changes to the guest machine. Installation should take place right after this screen.

Figure 13. Installation is done!!!

Figure 14. Initial setup screen.

Figure 15. Licensing information.

Figure 16. Create a user here. This should be your regular user when using Fedora.

Figure 17. Set your date and time here or you can use ntp server to get your machine's time sync automatically.

Figure 18. Hardware profile to be sent to Fedora. This is the least that you can do to help this enormous project.

Figure 19. Fedora's default login screen.

Figure 20. Welcome to Fedora 13!!!

By the default, Fedora 13 comes with VirtualBox guest additions pre-installed. This is quite nice actually. On the other hand, VirtualBox is progressing quite fast as well. Lately, VB 3.2.2 comes just barely a month after VB 3.2.0. So, preparing the system for a regular upgrade is not bad.

Installing Guest Additons. But before we do that, let us get the system up to date.

yum check-update
yum update

If you have new kernel coming, then do a reboot. Install necessary pre-requisite for VirtualBox Guest Additions.

yum -y install gcc kernel-devel

Mount Guest Additions (Devices | Install Guest Additions...) in VirtualBox GUI. Once mounted, head to the guest machine and in GNOME, do Places | VBOXADDITIONS_x.x.x_xxxxx. This should mount the iso image under /media/VBOXADDITIONS_x.x.x_xxxxx.

Now, open up gnome-terminal and do:

su
cd /media/VBOXADDITIONS_x.x.x_xxxxx
./VBoxLinuxAdditions-x86.run
cd /
eject
reboot

Enjoy!!!
TT