| title | description | published | date | tags | editor | dateCreated |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
New Development VM |
Using your new development virtual machine |
true |
2024-02-27 16:36:57 UTC |
markdown |
2020-02-06 01:44:48 UTC |
A virtual machine, or VM, is an emulation of a computer system. Many different virtual machines can be hosted on one piece of computer hardware, but they each appear as their own individual computer system.
You will use an IP address to access this system, or, hopefully soon, a hostname. The IP address is a set of 4 numbers that uniquely identifies the computer on the network (e.g., 172.31.2.118), and the hostname is the human-readable name of the computer (e.g., test-dev).
These VMs run Ubuntu, a Linux distribution. Linux is the operating system that runs most of the worldwide web, as well as all Android phones, and many other types of computers. This VM uses Ubuntu Server with a command line interface (CLI), but there are many desktop versions of Linux as well. Read our Linux documentation to learn more about using Linux.
You can access your VM with a username and password. The initial password is the same as your username (likely the same as your Berea College username - check your email), and you may be prompted to change it on your first login. A better way to access your VM is with public key authentication for SSH. A single key can access multiple VMs, and you will not have to enter your password every time you log in. Read our SSH documentation to learn how to set that up!
The super-user in Linux is called root. Some system operations and system log files require super-user permissions. You have the ability to perform these tasks by using the sudo command. Example: sudo shutdown -r now instead of shutdown -r now. See our Linux documentation for more details. Also,
https://xkcd.com/149/
If you navigate to http://172.31.2.118/ in your browser, using your own IP address, you will see a website that is run from your new VM. You can edit this site to be whatever you want (nothing illegal, please) by changing the files in the www/ directory inside your home directory. If you wanted to run it using Python, PHP, or NodeJS (installed), or other server tech, you can find documentation on the web for it.
Using www/ for these applications may not work the same way. Some applications will require Apache configuration to run permanently.
Note: Class-specific or application-specific virtual machines may have this functionality removed or altered.
Your VM has the database engine MySQL installed. You can access it from the command line using the mysql command, or using phpMyAdmin at http://172.31.2.118/phpmyadmin. By default you can access the database with the user root and password root, and from there you can create any other users and databases you need for your work, either through the CLI or phpmyadmin. Example: mysql -u root -proot. Read the database documentation for more information.
Both Python versions 2 and 3 are installed on your machine, with Python 3 set as the default. You may have to work on a project that requires you to use python 2, but you should not use python 2 for new projects. See our Python documentation for more details about setting up virtual environments and general Python usage.
A few CS classes and most of the Student Software Development Team applications use the Python web framework Flask. Flask is a quick way to get a python application up and running on the web. See our Flask documentation for an overview.
The default webserver on this VM is Apache. There are many, many different ways to configure Apache, and by default only your www directory is served. For more examples of common use cases, see our Apache documentation
This VM has docker and docker-compose installed. Docker is an application that lets you run projects and applications in containers with their own controlled and isolated operating environments. It is also a good way to run others' applications, as all dependencies are taken care of by their configuration. Docker is useful in cloud workflows as well, as there are tools that let you spin up multiple docker containers at once. Read our docker documentation for more information.
Check out zsh, vim, and tmux for productivity, or cmatrix and nethack for fun!