Ubuntu 12.04LTS (Precise Pangolin) on VirtualBox

A few notes on installing v. 12.04 on VirtualBox.

• I like to have Ubuntu available to me on my laptop. Rather than install Ubuntu Desktop, as I have in the past, I've installed only the server and now ssh into it from my laptop. This turns out to be much less CPU-intensive to operate. There is no need to install Guest Additions (can't be installed, anyway) and you can cut/copy/paste directly from your Terminal window if you need to. The only small hitch is that you cannot use the mouse or host OS clipboards inside VirtualBox's own window for the guest OS — but you won't need to after the initial installation.

• So far, all my scripts and code from 10.04 work without any observed hitches on 12.04. The only problem I have had is with the halt command, which leaves the virtual OS shut down but hanging. This can be avoided by using

  poweroff -h 0
  

  . The poweroff command requires you to specify a time for shutdown; using 0 (minutes) is marginally less work to type than now.

• Since my router authenticates MAC addresses, it's easiest simply to assign the same MAC address manually to each VB installation on a given laptop. It would not be very feasible to run more than one of these at the same time, because of memory considerations — so there's little chance of conflict between them. MAC addresses are set at

  Settings => Network => Adapter 1 (etc.) => Advanced
  

  . All VirtualBox installations seem to use the same MAC prefix 080027, so you only need to specify the same final six hex digits. Of course, you can set up an entirely different prefix if you like.

I have posted some comments on some issues related to launching VirtualBox virtual machines at

• Resolving VirtualBox error VERR_INTNET_FLT_IF_NOT_FOUND
• Identifying the active bridge adapter for use with a headless virtual machine on VirtualBox

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