sabato 11 aprile 2009

Preparing the virtual machine

Lighttpd and FastCGI are technologies compatible with a wide range of operating systems; at the moment, for our experiments, in my opinion, a good choice is Ubuntu Server, a Linux distribution derived from Debian as the well known Ubuntu Desktop distribution.

I chose Ubuntu because of some peculiarities:
  • it's light and text-based
  • it's well supported and updated
  • with APT you can easily install new software
If you prefer to follow my blog testing FastCGIs in a different environment make sure that it supports Lighttpd and it has a C/C++ ANSI compiler.

After having downloaded the ISO image of Ubuntu Server 8.10 I preferred to keep Windows and to install Ubuntu in a virtual machine.

If you too prefer to keep your operating system and in the same time experiment Ubuntu Server in a virtual machine, you can download and install VirtualBox.
After the installation of the right version of VirtualBox for your host system (in Windows is an easy exercise for the “next” generation :-)), you must follow some easy steps to obtain a full working environment ready to experiment FastCGIs.

To set up a virtual machine ready to Ubuntu Server you must follow my instructions:
  • Run VirtualBox
  • Start a New virtual machine
  • Chose a name for the virtual machine (for example FLUS = FastCGI, Lighttpd, Ubuntu, Sqlite)
  • Set OS Type and Version (Linux / Ubuntu)


  • Create a Virtual Hard Disk:
    Pressing New a panel titled "Welcome to the Create New Virtual Disk Wizard" will be opened; set "Hard Disk Storage Type" selecting "Dynamically expanding storage" and, if necessary, set "Virtual Disk Location and Size"; press Summary and then Finish.
  • Finish the Wizard
To start the installation of Ubuntu we have only to set up the virtual machine:
  • Select the virtual machine just created (FLUS), push “Settings” and adjust some options:

    General => Advanced => Enable PAE/NX



    Network => Adapter 1 => In "Attached to:" select "Host Interface"



    CD/DVD-ROM => "Mount CD/DVD Drive" => "ISO Image File" and select the Ubuntu ISO image (ubuntu-8.10-server-i386.iso)

Now the virtual machine is ready to start the installation of Ubuntu Server and of every needed package. We will see how in the next post.

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