Dpatchbox Emulator: Usage Manual For Virtual Machine Emulator

The document provides a usage manual for the DPatchbox Virtual Machine Emulator. It describes the system requirements and limitations. The emulator allows accessing and controlling remote virtual machines through a web browser. It makes use of technologies like Oracle VM VirtualBox, RDP, jQuery and PHP. The system setup involves installing requirements on the host and client systems. Execution scripts are used to configure and run the vboxwebsrv services for individual clients on the host system. The usage manual provides steps for installing, configuring and using the emulator to access and manage virtual machines.

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Dpatchbox Emulator: Usage Manual For Virtual Machine Emulator

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DPatchbox Emulator
Usage Manual for Virtual Machine Emulator
Rev 0.2 August 13th, 2012

This main objective of this document is to describe about the DPatchbox Virtual Machine Emulator in web-browser. It provides usage guide for system requirements, installation and operation. The user for this document should be familiar with Unix commands, Web server and PHP.

DPatchbox Project | Rev 0.1

Table of Contents
1. Introduction ................................................................................................................................................... 3 1.1 System Overview ..................................................................................................................................... 3 1.2 Requirements ........................................................................................................................................... 3 1.3 Limitations ................................................................................................................................................ 3 2. System Summary ......................................................................................................................................... 4 2.1 Description................................................................................................................................................ 4 2.2 Project Setup ............................................................................................................................................ 4 2.3 Execution Scripts ..................................................................................................................................... 5 3. Using the System ......................................................................................................................................... 6 3.1 Usage Manual .......................................................................................................................................... 6

Usage Manual for DPatchbox Emulator

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DPatchbox Project | Rev 0.1

1. Introduction
1.1 System Overview
DPatchbox Emulator allows you to access and control remote virtual machine or Virtual OS instances. It was designed as a requirement of running virtual machines in the DPatchbox Project UOS-Resource Store run over the browser. It is an extension to the UOS-Resource Store application over web that allows accessing and using virtual machine in a different browser window. Dpatchbox Emulator makes use of the following technologies: Oracle VM VirtualBox VirtualBox RDP Web Control (Flash based RDP client) jQuery and jQuery UI (JavaScript libraries)

1.2 Requirements
Host System Requirements (Unix system only): Apache Server and PHP configured VirtualBox Installation with extension pack Expect utility Client System Requirements: Any web-browser Flash browser plug-in

1.3 Limitations
Currently, host system is running only on Unix based environment as there are several shell scripts and multiuser environment. For demo, all the individual client/user emulator vboxwebsrv services are auto-configured through a single script, to run on the same machine as web server. However, it can be manually configured on different machines. The username for clients is strictly limited to alphanumeric characters only. While the VM is running, only one user can view the Console, where the user actually interacts with the VM. The last logged in users VM list is viewable to the currently logged in user temporarily.

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DPatchbox Project | Rev 0.1

2. System Summary
2.1 Description
The system setup is as given below:

Central Emulator Server is the main server for hosting the Emulator. Apache(or any web server) with PHP is configured to run on the Central Server. The Admin shall have to configure vboxwebsrv service for his own machine as well as for the individual clients virtual machine. Dpatchbox requires that vboxwebsrv (a program distributed with VirtualBox) is running on your Dpatchbox emulator service host. This program MUST be run as the same user that administers virtual machines. On Unix, this simply means the same user that can log into your machine as when you run VirtualBox. In setup figure above, all the clients D-Emu Server with vboxwebsrv service can be configured to run on different servers with IP set accordingly. For demo, all the clients vboxwebsrv service are running on the same machine as the admins i.e. single machine.

2.2 Project Setup

The software was installed and checked on Ubuntu based hosts machine. We have tested the project with the following machine setup configuration:

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DPatchbox Project | Rev 0.1

Package Host Unix Machine Apache Server VirtualBox expect Bash PHP Client Browser Flash Browser Plugin

Version - Ubuntu 11.10 and 12.04 - 2.2.20 (Ubuntu) Built: Feb 14, 2012 - 4.1.18 r78361 - 5.45 - 4.2.1 - 5.3.6-13ubuntu3.8 - Firefox 14.0.1, Chrome 20.0.1132.57 - Adobe Shockwave Flash 10.2 r153

2.3 Execution Scripts

1. PortRange.sh This creates a file with list of port numbers available within the range for the 2.

3. 4. 5.

vboxwebsrv service. Makeconfig.sh From the list of available ports made by the above script, this script recreates config.php file with an array of clients server IP details with username, password, IP and port number. AddUsers.sh From the list of users made from within the DPatchbox website, this script creates users on the machine with their home directory. RunDboxInstances.sh This script will run the vboxwebsrv service for all the users that are created in the machine with the above script. Dbox,sh This script will run the above four scripts in sequence. Run this script after addition of every user in the Dpatchbox system interface with the IP address of the machine as parameter.

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DPatchbox Project | Rev 0.1

3. Using the System

3.1 Usage Manual

1. After installing all the requirements for Host, we have to run vboxwebsrv service on the host. 2. The DPatchbox folder is saved in the server root directory. In that folder, we have to configure config.php in that folder and enter the details (IP/Port/Username/password) for the Admin that is running the vboxwebsrv service. We have to change the details in the config1 file in scripts folder too for admin login. 3. In browser, go to the directory url and login via admin user. Under File>Preferences, add the client names in the Users tab. 4. After that, run the script named DBox.sh script with the server IP as parameter (Ex: $sudo ./Dbox.sh 192.168.1.5). This will auto run all the scripts mentioned in previous section. This will create users in the system with the names entered in step 3 and will automatically run the vboxwebsrv service for all those users. A new config.php is also created with the client list array in it. 5. Refresh the browser and login again with admin. Setup virtual machines for all individual clients.