Monday, December 30, 2013

Getting started with Big Data - Part 2 - Installing Ubuntu on top of VirtualBox

In an earlier blog entry we looked into how to install VirtualBox on top of Windows, now it's time to install Ubuntu 12.04 64-bit Desktop which is latest LTS release as of this writing.

The reason for using 64-bit is that 64-bit OS addresses more RAM than a 32-bit OS and that some of the Big Data frameworks like Impala can be only deployed on a 64-bit OS. An Ubuntu Server edition could have been used instead of a Ubuntu Desktop edition, but the Desktop edition provides a nice UI (defaults to Unity) which makes it easy for those who want to get started with Linux.

- The first step is to download Ubuntu 12.04 and not the point release 12.04.3. There are some problems installing the Ubuntu 12.04.3 point release as mentioned here. The `ubuntu-12.04-desktop-amd64.iso` image can be downloaded from here or one of the alternate sites.

The md5 hash of the image is `128f0c16f4734c420b0185a492d92e52` which can be got once the iso file has been downloaded. Here is how to get the md5 hash for different OS. The md5 hash makes sure that the iso file which has been downloaded is not corrupted or tampered with.

- Start the VirtualBox and click on the `New` on top left.
Screen 1

- Give the VM a name and select `Linux` as the type and `Ubuntu (64-bit)` as the version.
Screen 2

- Allocate some memory out of the Host OS to the Guest OS. Start with 1GB. Note that the amount of memory allocated can be changed later also from the VM settings.
Screen 3

- Select the `Create a virtual hard drive now` option. The Guest OS will be installed in this file.
Screen 4

- VirtualBox supports multiple variants of disk images, more about them here. For this installation choose the default VDI type.
Screen 5

- A `fixed file size` or `dynamically allocated file size` can be selected.  A `fixed file size` is slow to create initially, but is faster at runtime. It's the other way with the `dynamically allocated file size`. Choose the `Fixed size` option.
Screen 6

- Select the file size for the Guest OS, this corresponds to the Hard Disk space allocated to the guest OS. 10GB would be a good start for Ubuntu and some of the Big Data frameworks to be installed in it.  
Screen 7

- Based on the size of the file, it will take a couple of minutes for the file to be created.
Screen 8

- Select the newly created VM and click on `Settings`. Select the `Storage` option and click on the `+` symbol to add the downloaded `ubuntu-12.04-desktop-amd64.iso` as a CD to the Guest OS.
Screen 9

- Select the `Choose disk` option and point to the `ubuntu-12.04-desktop-amd64.iso` which has been downloaded earlier.
Screen 10

Screen 11

Screen 12

- Select the VM and cick on `Start` to start the installation process.
Screen 13

- Select the `Install Ubuntu` option.
Screen 14

Screen 15

- Select `Something else` option to create custom partitions.
Screen 16

- Allocate some of the space to Swap and the rest to the root (/). Once the partitions have been selected, the installation will continue in the background by clicking `Install Now`.
Screen 17

- Select the location, this would be used for setting the timezone of the Guest OS.
Screen 18

- Select the keyboard layout.
Screen 19

- Enter the appropriate username/password. The root user by default is locked in Ubuntu. The user created has administrative privileges and can be used to manage (add/remove) programs in Ubuntu and other administrative activities using sudo.
Screen 20

-  After a couple of minutes, restart to complete the installation process.
Screen 21


With the installation of Ubuntu complete, many of the installation/configuration process mention in the earlier blog articles can be done.

a) Installing and configuring Storm on Ubuntu 12.04
b) Installing/configuring HCatalog and integrating with Pig
c) Integrating R and Hadoop using rmr2/rhdfs packages from Revolution Analytics
d) Installation and configuration of Apache Oozie

Also, as one gets comfortable using Ubuntu as Guest, Ubuntu can be configured as Host OS to dual boot along with Windows or some other OS. In the upcoming blog we will take look into how install Apache Bigtop on Ubuntu.

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