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Installing using a virtual machine works OK

Posted: Tue Apr 02, 2013 7:45 pm
by cbgoodbuddy
Greetings--

I wanted to minimize the down time of my fit-pc2 when I upgraded to Mint 13, so I decided to install onto a fresh hard drive using a VirtualBox virtual machine in my desktop computer, then swap in the new drive into the fit-pc2. I followed the installation instructions posted by Compulab for Mint 13, and I'm happy to report that this worked well.

I downloaded the Mint 13 ISO file and mounted that as a CD in a VirtualBox linux machine. I also mounted the hard drive via USB. The command to do this is on a Mac is:

Code: Select all

sudo VBoxManage internalcommands createrawvmdk -filename USBdisk1.vmdk -rawdisk /dev/disk1
This creates a VirtualBox disk file that can be mounted within your virtual machine, and which "points" to your local hard drive. You will need to change /dev/disk1 to the approriate disk volume; use "diskutil list" on a Mac to find out which one. It's also possible to mount the drive directly as USB, but this causes problems with a Mac because the host operating system tries to mount it first, which prevents VirtualBox from mounting it.

The installation is slow over USB, but it works. The only caveat is that once you downgrade X according to the instructions, you won't be able to reboot into graphical mode within the virtual machine. So be sure to do all of your system updates before shutting down the virtual system.

Best wishes,
Craig