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Trying out the Raspberry Pi Developer VM v0.8

fustini

Howdy,

 

Russell Davis (aka ukscone) released the new Raspberry Pi Development VM v0.8 on Sunday, so I downloaded and gave it a try.  It can be downloaded here on element14 at:

 

http://downloads.element14.com/downloads/RaspberryPi-Development-VM-v0.8.ova

 

However, it is 8.2 GB, so you may find the torrent to be a better option:

 

http://downloads.raspberrypi.org/tools/ukscone/RaspberryPi-Development%20VM%20v0.8/RaspberryPi-Development%20VM%20v0.8.torrent

 

It is a .ova file which is an exported VirtualBox virtual machine for developing software for the Raspberry Pi.  It contains configured targets for Fedora Remix, Debian & Arch.  There is plenty more info in Russell's readme:

 

http://downloads.raspberrypi.org/tools/ukscone/RaspberryPi-Development%20VM%20v0.8/README.txt

 

However, he does caution "as things currently stand this VM does not actually emulate any of the RaspberryPi hardware" and "it is only meant to help build/port software using desktop tools".

 

Well, now, let me give a quick look at what I did:

 

1) I'm running Ubuntu 11.04 and did not have VirtualBox, so I installed it this way:

 

apt-get install virtualbox-ose-qt

If you are on another OS, then check out the VirtualBox website to download and install the correct version for you:

 

https://www.virtualbox.org/https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads

 

 

2) Then I had to import the downloaded .ova file into VirtualBox which I did via:

VBoxManage import RaspberryPi-Development-VM-v0.8.ova

I hadn't used VirtualBox before so please comment if there is a better way to do this.  It did take a noticable amount of time to finish (~15 min), and I pretty much couldn't do anything else on my system during it due to the load.  Here's a screenshot of my terminal:

image

 

3) Finally I was ready to fire up VirtualBox which I did via Applications->Accessories->VirtualBox OSE in my GNOME desktop (consult the VirtualBox website for details on other OSes).  I clicked ok through a couple dialogs about configuration and then finally the VirtualBox manager window opened:

image

4) I happily clicked the Start button and the VM booted.  It is an Ubuntu system running LXDE.  To do a quick test of the cross-compliation, I typed up a quick C program and compiled it for the ARM target:

image

 

And that's all I've done so far.  I'm thankful that Russell put in the hard work to make it easier for everyone else.  He mentioned that he will release updates as just tarballs, so folks will be spared having to do the massive download again.  I'm very curious to see if some clever people get emulation working in the VM, so that the executables could be tested out.  I also think this VM could be useful once I eventually get a Pi and want to take advantage of my laptop's Intel horsepower to compile additional software I may need.

 

Has anyone tried this VM (or others)?  I'd be interested to hear what your experience was like and what you are using it for.

 

 

Cheers,

Drew

  • I just came across Russell's YouTube channel which has some interesting demo videos for those working with this VM:

     

    http://www.youtube.com/user/ukscone?feature=watch

     

    Including the latest:

     

    Acorn Electron emulator elkulator running in the RaspberryPi development VM


  • I've found this forum, but it's almost four years old (a lifetime in developer time). the link to the torrent is way out of date. Do you have a more up-do-date link?

  • in reply to e14 Contributor

    The "deveoper VM" was a good idea back in 2012: There were too few raspberry pi's around for everybody, and the pi is not a terribly quick machine.

     

    Nowadays, you can get as many raspberry pis as you need, but more importantly using a raspberry pi 2 as a development machine is quite acceptable performance wise. So I don't think anybody can be motivated to maintain such a software system that is not very useful anymore.

    (If the link had still worked, the VM would have been outdated!)

  • in reply to rew

    I'm a bit of a latecomer when it comes to these little devices, but very enthusiastic. I managed to hook up my first RPiB2+ on wireless that is controlling a K8200 3D printer my roommies and I recently build from a kit, and instaled OctoPi (OctoPrint for RPi). I was hoping to develop images in a VM environment, but I suppose I can just pop the OPi SD card out and fool around with the actual hardware on a different card when we aren't printing stuff. I found a couple of .ova's for VirtualBox, but they are pre-loaded with some other flavor of the OS. Again, found this today and wanted to ask, thanks again for the reply.

     

    - MT