One of the most talked about technologies these days is virtu¬alization. Which is why this year's PCQLinux is heavily focused to¬ward this and therefore brings to you a number of different ways of installing and implementing it.

PCQLinux 2008 Core First off, we have the PCQLinux 2008 Core system. The Core is a very basic in¬stallation of PCQLinux that contains only a very minimal set of tools, Gnome front-end, and the VirtualBox applica¬tion to load virtual machines. To install the Core on a machine, drop in the CD it comes in and boot up the system. En¬sure that the system will boot from the CD /DVD drive. This can be done either by changing the boot order in the BIOS (which changes it till the time you change it to something else) or by a one¬time boot order (which changes it only for the current boot).

Once the system starts the boot up from the CD, you will be welcomed by the PCQLinux logo. Simply press <En¬ter> to start the installation process. Once the process checks your video and other hardware, you will come to the first question screen. Depending on whether your current system is new or old, you might be prompted to create new partition tables on the hard disk. Se¬lect yes in case you are prompted. You will then move to the next step.

This is the step where you need to be extremely careful in selection. If you have an existing OS which you would like to retain, you will need to use any free space and install PCQLinux on that. If you wish to remove other Linux parti¬tions or all other partitions, select the appropriate choice and proceed. You can confirm and verify the selections when prompted if you wish. You will now be prompted for a password for the 'root' user. Make sure you have a secure and strong password-but which you can remember later on. Once this step is completed, the installation will then continue without any intervention required, till it actually completes.

The installation of the files will take a while to complete. You will see the total, installed, and remaining for both number of packages and time. When finished, you can reboot your machine and take out the CD from the drive. Congrats-your machine will now boot up using PCQLinux 2008 Core. Once the system boots up, you will be greeted with a text-based login prompt. Use the login as 'root' and the password you entered earlier to login. As soon as you login, you can enter the command 'startx' to bring up the PCQ Linux graphical environment which is Gnome.

PCQLinux 2008 Virtual Appliances
The PCQLinux Virtual Appliances are pre-installed appliances based on the PCQLinux 2008 Core sys¬tem. Each appliance is configured with a different set of applications and services. The best part about the appliances is that you can even run them on Windows if you wish by simply installing the Windows version of innotek's VirtualBox software. On PCQLinux 2008 Core, the software is already available and installed.To get up and running with the appliances, drop in the Appliances DVD in your DVD drive. Open up the INDEX.HTM file in the root of the DVD (see screenshots on next page). This will give you a small introduction to the appliances as well as links to all the ones included. Click the one you wish to work with. The browser will then prompt you to either open or save the file locally. We recom¬mend that you open/run the file directly from the browser so as to save space on your hard disk. If you are on Windows, you can use WinRAR to open the BZ2 file. On PCQLinux the file will open the Archive Manager.

Extract the file into any location that has enough disk space. Once extracted, fire up VirtualBox. Click the New button to create a new virtual profile. Give the new profile a name and also select the OS Type to be 'Linux 2.6'. In the next step, assign an amount of RAM to this appliance. We suggest a minimum of 512 MB for each VM.
Now comes the step when you need to attach the appliance hard disk that you extracted. Click the 'Ex¬isting' button. In the new Window that comes up, click 'Add' in the toolbar and browse over and select the .VDI file you extracted. You should now see this file in the hard disk list. Click on finish and review the settings of the new appliance in Virtual Box. You can now click the Start button to fire up the virtual appliance.

With this the installation and implementation of PCQLinux 2008 is complete. You can add more virtual appliances to your machine from the DVD or cre¬ate your own. Articles on how to use the individual appliances are given in this issue, so do read them to see how you can use them the best possible way.

Set up the appliances to network
The default networking option for VirtualBox appli¬ances allows the appliance itself to access the outside world (your network/Internet) but the outside world cannot access the appliance. Hence we need to set up something called the Host Interface networking. The way to set up this is as follows.
Boot up PCQLinux 2008. Login as root. We assume that the device name of the Ethernet or network inter¬face is ethO. This is true for most cases-unless you have more than one network card. Make a copy of the file named ifcfg-ethO (found in /etc/sysconfig/net¬work-scripts) as ifcfg-brO in the same directory.

Open the file ifcfg-ethO in a text editor and append a line as: BRlDGE=brO Next, open the file named ifcfg-brO and add the fol¬lowing line: TYPE=Bridge
Save the files and reboot.

Upon reboot, login as root. Now we will need to set up something called a TAP interface for each appliance. For this issue the following:
usr b/vHtualbf'x'VBoxTu!lctl t vboxO brctl addif brO vboxO lfcc 1fiq 'boxO up
N ow you have a device called vboxO which can be used by a VirtualBox appliance. If you want to boot up more than one appliance then repeat the above com¬mands, replacing vboxO with vboxl, vbox2, vbox3, and so on.

A note on the firewall. By default, PCQLinux 2008 comes with the firewall enabled. We suggest that you first disable the firewall temporarily by issuing 'serv¬ice iptables stop' or permanently. For the latter, launch security level configurator by issuing system¬config-securitylevel and select Disabled. We need to do this because depending on the appliance and the networking (especially D H CP), the firewall may prove a hindrance to set up the network and access the serv¬ices running on the appliance. Once you have suc¬cessfully played, tried, or tested the appliances, you can enable the firewall and the specific ports to make your appliance accessible from outside. This again can be achieved using system-config-securitylevel.

Next, as explained in the article 'Installation & Im¬plementation', extract the compressed (bzipped) ap¬pliance and open it in VirtualBox. Next, select the appliance and click on Settings>Network>Adapter o. Check the boxes labeled 'Enable Network Adapter' and 'Cable Connected.' Select 'Host Interface' from the 'Attached to' dropdown. For 'Interface Name,' type in vboxO. Click on OK. Start the appliance.

Now suppose you want to boot another appliance, then make sure:

1.Issue the above commands with vboxl substituted for

vboxO
2.Type vbox2 for 'Interface Name' on VirtualBox

Static IP addresses for the appliances

By default, PCQLinux appliances are configured to pick up a dynamic IP address from a DHCP server. In case you are not running a DHCP server in your net¬work, then let the appliance boot. It will obviously not be able to get an IP address during boot up. After the appliance boots, login as root (in the appliance). Type in the command 'system-config-network' (on the com¬mand line or in X Window) and set up the IP address as per your network.