MacOS (ARM64/M1/M2)

Warning: CSC3150 VM Configurations on ARM64 arch is still experimental. You may or may not encounter unknown problems in the projects. Take your own risk.

** IMPORTANT UPDATE FOR FALL 2023 FROM THE AUTHOR **

I was informed of the usage of this manual for fall 2023. Last year, I made a mistake in not allocating enough storage space for the VM on arm64 arch (e.g. apple silicon M1/M2) so that in project 1 the kernel build may crash when running out of disk space. To avoid bringing nightmare to students this year, I built a new version of system archive and please make sure you download and configure with the new version. (if you have already set up, please delete it and do it with the new archive). This new version already has build-essential installed as well.

New link: download from cuhko365-sharepoint

Heads-up for students who has configured with the outdated archive and need to redo it

When redoing the configuration and try to ssh into the new VM, you may find error of "Host Key Verification Failed" (a bit of simple security bs that you can ignore: this is because ssh client adopts a "leap of faith" model in verifying the authenticity of the server and marks down in ~/.ssh/known_hosts file the host key fingerprint calculated with cryptographic hash functions like sha-256 at the very first connection which is compared against at each subsequent connection to avoid man-in-the middle-attck aka MITM).

Simple (yet brute-force) solution:

rm ~/.ssh/known_host at your host system (i.e. terminal at Mac OS)

Set up VM

Download and install UTM (link) and download the system archive (2.24 GB, link updated).

Decompress the zip file (you should get a UTM system archive file). Put the system archive to your course directory (please reserve at least more than 20GB of space). Then launch UTM -> Create a New Virtual Machine -> Open -> Select the system archive. After the VM sucessfully launches. The VM is set up.

Set up SSH

In terminal, make sure you can connect to the VM: ssh csc3150@localhost -p 31500 (password is also csc3150).

Set up VS Code (Optional)

To simplified the workflow, you are recommended to set up Remote SSH plugin in VS Code.

Install Remote SSH Plugin

After installing, go to the remote explorer tab, click add in SSH-TARGETS.

Launch a new window with target called "localhost"

Launch a window

The first time you connect to the VM via VS Code, it may take some time for it to load. Wait patiently. After it finshes loading, start a terminal.

Start a terminal (in remote machine)

In the terminal you just opened, install essential dependencies and libraries: sudo apt update && sudo apt install -y build-essential (it may take a while). After it finishes, create a directory for the course: mkdir -p ~/csc3150

After everything, you can open a folder in the VS Code window to locate to the directory you create:

Make a directory for the course

Finally, try a hello world program on the VM

Hellow World

As usual, open a (remote) terminal in VS Code and compile the hello world program (gcc hello.c -o hello) and try to run it.

You are good to go

Set up Private Key Auth. (Optional)

You are recommended to set up private key ssh authentication to avoid inputing password everytime and frequent disconnection from the ssh server on VM. Procedures are as follows:

Generate ssh key pair: in terminal execute ssh-keygen leave both the file name and passphase blank (adopt default settings).

Generate SSH Key Pair

In some cases, you may already have a key named id_rsa in ~/.ssh/. It's fine and do NOT override the previous one (as it may be used by other applications).

Do NOT Overwrite

Then just copy the public key to server by executing:

ssh-copy-id -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub -p 31500 csc3150@127.0.0.1

Copy the Public Key to Server

You are all set. Now you don't need password any more to connect to the VM, and the connection in VS Code will be more stable.