Question

How do set up a Unix based VirtualBox guest for Java Development? I wish to keep some of my existing development environment (I run Windows) and integrate it using VirtualBox. Is this possible?

Answer 1

It took me some time to come up with a more flexible solution to install not only a development environment on Linux, from scratch, but also cater for a system running on VirtualBox.

I have found that running two systems through VirtualBox running on a Windows 7 Ultimate edition gives the optimal solution for my needs as a Java based web developer with additional bash scripting skills.

Let’s start by my host system (Windows 7 Ultimate) provides me with a proprietary environment where I can install proprietary JDK from Oracle in addition to tools like Photoshop, MS Office, MSSQL, etc. The Ultimate version of Windows 7 allows me to set up XP Mode machines to add IE6, IE7, IE8 to my browser range (you need a new machine for each legacy Internet Explorer). I am also able to test Safari on Windows, but not Linux (to my knowledge). Most of the other tools I use related to Java (IDE’s and Maven, servers), simply need to be unpacked to a specific location or a run o the installer. The two crucial choices I make are: 1) Keep everything in my “%USERPROFILE%” (home) directory & *2)*Ensure my IDE has Maven support.

The idea is to get our host and guest working in unison. The two systems can benefit each other as I demonstrate in the video below. We can set up SVN repositories with tortoise SVN client in Windows to be used as repositories in guest systems. Obviously if you want proper SVN clients on guests in VirtualBox, install them. However your guest IDE’s will be able to use these Windows created repositories. You can go the other way too by sharing a folder and using your guest SVN client to make it into a subversion repository.

Our guest system (Linux), allows us to remove some bloatware from Windows. Things like FileZilla & Putty are no longer needed. Our guest comes with a superior terminal with built in ftp and ssh. We can also create bash scripts now to build/rebuild our Linux development and to download our needs. You can even write bash scripts to download and unpack Maven into a Windows shared directory.

Linux also aids the Web developer with an additional browser which needs to be tested like Konqueror.

More importantly, our Linux system can just be used as a completely different environment to our host. We can set up Open JDK versions and configure our Maven install accordingly which can also be shared between host and guest as the JRE abstracts it from our host/guest.

I have written the following script that downloads and installs Oracle JDK onto your guest, Maven, NetBeans & IDEA. The script also prompts you for a file to write ‘boot’ commands to in an attempt to mount some defaults like ‘.m2’, ‘maven’, ‘SVN’, ‘NetBeansProjects’, ‘IDEAProjects’ from your host to guest. Provided that you have set up VirtualBox with Guest Additions and set up these directories to be shared.

You are prompted for your systems script file which can be used to write startup commands to. I wish there was a universal location for this on Linux but OpenSuse is not playing along so you won’t be able to use the default I provided (type in: /etc/rc.d/boot.local). If you don’t like this feature the script will create ‘on-the-fly’ scripts in your ‘/usr/local/bin’ location.

Finally, because we are working with shared folders on the guest only (if everything is set up correctly), it should be safe to delete your guest because your are sharing projects, Maven, SVN, from host system and the data should still be there.

See this vid

#!/bin/bash
#Author: Yucca Nel http://thejarbar.org
#Will restart system
#Modify these variables as needed...
tempWork=/tmp/work
defaultStartScript=/etc/init.d/rc.local
locBin=/usr/local/bin
javaUsrLib=/usr/lib/jvm
defaultMaven=3.0.4
defaultNetBeansVer=7.1
mavenUsrLib=/usr/lib/maven
defaultIDEA=11.0.1

sudo mkdir -p $javaUsrLib
mkdir -p $tempWork
sudo mkdir -p $mavenUsrLib
mkdir -p $HOME/.m2
mkdir -p $HOME/SVN

cd $tempWork

#Update this line to reflect newer versions of JDK...
wget http://download.oracle.com/otn-pub/java/jdk/7u2-b13/jdk-7u2-linux-i586.tar.gz

#Extract the download
tar -zxvf $tempWork/*
rm -rf $tempWork/*.gz

#Move it to where it can be found...
sudo mv -f $tempWork/* $javaUsrLib/
export JAVA_HOME="$javaUsrLib/jdk1.7.0_02"

sudo ln -f -s $javaUsrLib/jdk1*/bin/* /usr/bin/
rm -rf $tempWork/*
#Update this line to reflect newer versions of JDK...

if ! grep "JAVA_HOME=$javaUsrLib/jdk1.7.0_02" /etc/environment
then
echo "JAVA_HOME=$javaUsrLib/jdk1.7.0_02" | sudo tee -a /etc/environment
fi

source /etc/environment

read -p "Please [Enter] full path name of your local startup script ($defaultStartScript is the default). Please
make sure on this before providing a value by consulting documentation for your system:" locStartScript
locStartScript=${locStartScript:-$defaultStartScript}

read -p "Please [Enter] Maven Version ($defaultMaven is default):" mavenVersion
mavenVersion=${mavenVersion:-$defaultMaven}

read -p "Please [Enter] NetBeans Version ($defaultNetBeansVer is default):" netbeansVersion
netbeansVersion=${netbeansVersion:-$defaultNetBeansVer}

read -p "Please [Enter] IDEA Version ($defaultIDEA is default):" ideaVersion
ideaVersion=${ideaVersion:-$defaultIDEA}


if [ ! -f $locStartScript ]
then
echo "The file you provided could not be found. Remember to include the full path and try again. Exiting in 7 secs..."
sleep 7
exit 1
fi

wget http://mirrors.powertech.no/www.apache.org/dist//maven/binaries/apache-maven-$mavenVersion-bin.tar.gz
tar -zxvf $tempWork/*

#Move it to a more logical location
sudo mv -f $tempWork/apache-maven-$mavenVersion $mavenUsrLib/
sudo ln -f -s $mavenUsrLib/apache-maven-$mavenVersion/bin/* /usr/bin/

#If you have Maven on Windows and use VirtualBox, you can set up the maven to be a virtualbox shared folder.
#The name must match the name used below (ignore if irrelevant to you).


if [ -f /sbin/mount.vboxsf ]
then
sudo /sbin/umount $HOME/.m2
sudo /sbin/umount $mavenUsrLib
sudo /sbin/mount.vboxsf .m2 $HOME/.m2
sudo /sbin/mount.vboxsf maven $mavenUsrLib
fi

if mountpoint -q $HOME/.m2 &&  mountpoint -q $mavenUsrLib
then
tar -zxvf $tempWork/*
sudo mv -f $tempWork/apache-maven-$mavenVersion $mavenUsrLib/
#Add it to the start script to automate process...
if ! grep "sudo /sbin/mount.vboxsf .m2 $HOME/.m2" $locStartScript
then
echo "sudo /sbin/mount.vboxsf .m2 $HOME/.m2" | sudo tee -a $locStartScript
fi

if ! grep "sudo /sbin/mount.vboxsf maven $mavenUsrLib" $locStartScript
then
echo "sudo /sbin/mount.vboxsf maven $mavenUsrLib" | sudo tee -a $locStartScript
fi
sudo chmod +x $locStartScript

#Create a mount and unmount script file...
rm -rf $tempWork/*
echo '#!/bin/bash' > $tempWork/maven-mount.sh
echo "sudo /sbin/mount.vboxsf .m2 $HOME/.m2" >> $tempWork/maven-mount.sh
echo "sudo /sbin/mount.vboxsf maven $mavenUsrLib" >> $tempWork/maven-mount.sh
echo "echo 'mounted maven'" >> $tempWork/maven-mount.sh
echo "exit 0" >> $tempWork/maven-mount.sh

echo '#!/bin/bash' > $tempWork/maven-umount.sh
echo "sudo umount $HOME/.m2" >> $tempWork/netbeans-umount.sh
echo "sudo umount $mavenUsrLib" >> $tempWork/netbeans-umount.sh
echo "echo 'unmounted maven'" >> $tempWork/maven-mount.sh
echo 'exit 0' >> $tempWork/maven-umount.sh

#Script for mounting ALL VirtualBox shared solders....
#If there isn't one create one...
if [ ! -f $locBin/mount-all-from-host.sh ]
then
echo '#!/bin/bash' > /mount-all-from-host.sh
echo "sudo /sbin/mount.vboxsf .m2 $HOME/.m2" | sudo tee -a $tempWork/mount-all-from-host.sh
echo "sudo /sbin/mount.vboxsf maven $mavenUsrLib" | sudo tee -a $tempWork/mount-all-from-host.sh
echo "exit 0" | sudo tee -a $tempWork/mount-all-from-host.sh

#Otherwise if there is one, but no mount, add one...
elif ! grep "sudo /sbin/mount.vboxsf .m2 $HOME/.m2" $locBin/mount-all-from-host.sh
then
sudo sed -ie '$d' $locBin/mount-all-from-host.sh
echo "sudo /sbin/mount.vboxsf .m2 $HOME/.m2" | sudo tee -a $locBin/mount-all-from-host.sh
echo "exit 0" | sudo tee -a $locBin/mount-all-from-host.sh

elif ! grep "sudo /sbin/mount.vboxsf maven $mavenUsrLib" $locBin/mount-all-from-host.sh
then
sudo sed -ie '$d' $locBin/mount-all-from-host.sh
echo "sudo /sbin/mount.vboxsf maven $mavenUsrLib" | sudo tee -a $locBin/mount-all-from-host.sh
echo "exit 0" | sudo tee -a $locBin/mount-all-from-host.sh

fi

#Script for unmounting ALL VirtualBox shared folders...
#If there isn't one create one...
if [ ! -f $locBin/umount-all-from-host.sh ]
then
echo '#!/bin/bash' > $tempWork/umount-all-from-host.sh
echo "sudo umount -a -t vboxsf" | sudo tee -a $tempWork/umount-all-from-host.sh
echo "echo 'unmounted all VirtualBox shared folders'" | sudo tee -a $tempWork/umount-all-from-host.sh
echo "exit 0" | sudo tee -a $tempWork/umount-all-from-host.sh
fi

chmod +x $tempWork/*
sudo mv -f $tempWork/* $locBin/
rm -rf $tempWork/*
fi

sudo ln -f -s $mavenUsrLib/apache-maven-$mavenVersion/bin/* /usr/bin/
rm -rf $tempWork/*


wget http://dlc.sun.com.edgesuite.net/netbeans/$netbeansVersion/final/bundles/netbeans-$netbeansVersion-ml-javase-linux.sh
sh $tempWork/*sh;


#Add Netbeans launcher to your PATH. Doing so allows you to run 'netbeans' command from the terminal
#This line will need to be changed if you changed the default install location (IOW Netbeans is not in ~/)
sudo ln -f -s ~/netbeans-7.1/bin/netbeans /usr/bin/;

#If you use VirtualBox , you can share your projects between Host and guest. Name of shared
#folder must match 'NetBeansProjects'
mkdir -p $HOME/NetBeansProjects

if [ -f /sbin/mount.vboxsf ]
then
sudo /sbin/umount $HOME/NetBeansProjects
sudo /sbin/mount.vboxsf NetBeansProjects $HOME/NetBeansProjects
fi

if mountpoint -q $HOME/NetBeansProjects
then
#Add it to the start script to automate process...
if ! grep "sudo /sbin/mount.vboxsf NetBeansProjects $HOME/NetBeansProjects" $locStartScript
then
echo "sudo /sbin/mount.vboxsf NetBeansProjects $HOME/NetBeansProjects" | sudo tee -a $locStartScript
fi
chmod +x $locStartScript

#Create a mount and unmount script file...
rm -rf $tempWork/*
echo '#!/bin/bash' > $tempWork/netbeans-mount.sh
echo "sudo /sbin/mount.vboxsf NetBeansProjects $HOME/NetBeansProjects" >> $tempWork/netbeans-mount.sh
echo "mounted NetBeansProjects" >> $tempWork/netbeans-mount.sh
echo "exit 0" >> $tempWork/netbeans-mount.sh

echo '#!/bin/bash' > /netbeans-umount.sh
echo "sudo umount $HOME/NetBeansProjects" >> $tempWork/netbeans-umount.sh
echo "unmounted NetBeansProjects" >> $tempWork/netbeans-mount.sh
echo 'exit 0' >> $tempWork/netbeans-umount.sh

#Script for mounting ALL VirtualBox shared solders....
#If there isn't one create one...
if [ ! -f $locBin/mount-all-from-host.sh ]
then
echo '#!/bin/bash' > $tempWork/mount-all-from-host.sh
echo "sudo /sbin/mount.vboxsf NetBeansProjects $HOME/NetBeansProjects" | sudo tee -a $tempWork/mount-all-from-host.sh
echo "exit 0" | sudo tee -a $tempWork/mount-all-from-host.sh

#Otherwise if there is one, but no mount, add one...
elif ! grep "sudo /sbin/mount.vboxsf NetBeansProjects" $locBin/mount-all-from-host.sh
then
sudo sed -ie '$d' $locBin/mount-all-from-host.sh
echo "sudo /sbin/mount.vboxsf NetBeansProjects $HOME/NetBeansProjects" | sudo tee -a $locBin/mount-all-from-host.sh
echo "exit 0" | sudo tee -a $locBin/mount-all-from-host.sh
fi

#Script for unmounting ALL VirtualBox shared folders...
#If there isn't one create one...
if [ ! -f $locBin/umount-all-from-host.sh ]
then
echo '#!/bin/bash' > $tempWork/umount-all-from-host.sh
echo "sudo umount -a -t vboxsf" | sudo tee -a $tempWork/umount-all-from-host.sh
echo "echo 'unmounted all VirtualBox shared folders'" | sudo tee -a $tempWork/umount-all-from-host.sh
echo "exit 0" | sudo tee -a $tempWork/umount-all-from-host.sh
fi

chmod +x $tempWork/*
sudo mv -f $tempWork/* $locBin/
rm -rf$tempWork/*
fi

wget http://download-ln.jetbrains.com/idea/ideaIC-$ideaVersion.tar.gz;
tar -zxvf $tempWork/*;

#Move it to a better location...
mv -f $tempWork/idea-IC-* $HOME/;
rm -rf $tempWork/*

sudo ln -f -s $HOME/idea-*/bin/* /usr/bin/;

#If you use VirtualBox , you can share your projects between Host and guest. Name of shared
#folder must match 'IdeaProjects'
mkdir -p $HOME/IdeaProjects

if [ -f /sbin/mount.vboxsf ]
then
sudo /sbin/umount $HOME/IdeaProjects
sudo /sbin/mount.vboxsf IdeaProjects $HOME/IdeaProjects
fi

if mountpoint -q $HOME/IdeaProjects
then
#Add it to the start script to automate process...
if ! grep "sudo /sbin/mount.vboxsf IdeaProjects $HOME/IdeaProjects" $locStartScript
then
echo "sudo /sbin/mount.vboxsf IdeaProjects $HOME/IdeaProjects" | sudo tee -a $locStartScript
fi
chmod +x $locStartScript

#Create a mount and unmount script file...
rm -rf $tempWork/*
echo '#!/bin/bash' > $tempWork/idea-mount.sh
echo "sudo /sbin/mount.vboxsf IdeaProjects $HOME/IdeaProjects" >> /idea-mount.sh
echo "echo 'mounted IdeaProjects'" >> $tempWork/idea-mount.sh
echo "exit 0" >> $tempWork/idea-mount.sh

echo '#!/bin/bash' > $tempWork/idea-umount.sh
echo "sudo umount $HOME/IdeaProjects" >> $tempWork/idea-umount.sh
echo "echo 'unmounted IdeaProjects'" >> $tempWork/idea-mount.sh
echo 'exit 0' >> $tempWork/idea-umount.sh

#Script for mounting ALL VirtualBox shared solders....
#If there isn't one create one...
if [ ! -f $locBin/mount-all-from-host.sh ]
then
echo '#!/bin/bash' > $tempWork/mount-all-from-host.sh
echo "sudo /sbin/mount.vboxsf IdeaProjects $HOME/IdeaProjects" | sudo tee -a $tempWork/mount-all-from-host.sh
echo "exit 0" | sudo tee -a $tempWork/mount-all-from-host.sh

#Otherwise if there is one, but no mount, add one...
elif ! grep "sudo /sbin/mount.vboxsf IdeaProjects" $locBin/mount-all-from-host.sh
then
sudo sed -ie '$d' $locBin/mount-all-from-host.sh
echo "sudo /sbin/mount.vboxsf IdeaProjects $HOME/IdeaProjects" | sudo tee -a $locBin/mount-all-from-host.sh
echo "exit 0" | sudo tee -a $locBin/mount-all-from-host.sh
fi

#Script for unmounting ALL VirtualBox shared folders...
#If there isn't one create one...
if [ ! -f $locBin/umount-all-from-host.sh ]
then
echo '#!/bin/bash' > $tempWork/umount-all-from-host.sh
echo "sudo umount -a -t vboxsf" | sudo tee -a $tempWork/umount-all-from-host.sh
echo "echo 'unmounted all VirtualBox shared folders'" | sudo tee -a $tempWork/umount-all-from-host.sh
echo "exit 0" | sudo tee -a $tempWork/umount-all-from-host.sh
fi

chmod +x $tempWork/*
sudo mv -f $tempWork/* $locBin/
rm -rf $tempWork/*
fi

if [ -f /sbin/mount.vboxsf ]
then
sudo /sbin/umount $HOME/SVN
sudo /sbin/mount.vboxsf SVN $HOME/SVN
fi

if mountpoint -q $HOME/SVN
then
#Add it to the start script to automate process...
if ! grep "sudo /sbin/mount.vboxsf SVN $HOME/SVN" $locStartScript
then
echo "sudo /sbin/mount.vboxsf SVN $HOME/SVN" | sudo tee -a $locStartScript
fi
chmod +x $locStartScript

#Create a mount and unmount script file...
rm -rf $tempWork/*
echo '#!/bin/bash' > $tempWork/svn-mount.sh
echo "sudo /sbin/mount.vboxsf SVN $HOME/SVN" >> /svn-mount.sh
echo "echo 'mounted SVN'" >> $tempWork/svn-mount.sh
echo "exit 0" >> $tempWork/svn-mount.sh

echo '#!/bin/bash' > $tempWork/svn-umount.sh
echo "sudo umount $HOME/SVN" >> $tempWork/svn-umount.sh
echo "echo 'unmounted SVN'" >> $tempWork/svn-mount.sh
echo 'exit 0' >> $tempWork/svn-umount.sh

#Script for mounting ALL VirtualBox shared solders....
#If there isn't one create one...
if [ ! -f $locBin/mount-all-from-host.sh ]
then
echo '#!/bin/bash' > $tempWork/mount-all-from-host.sh
echo "sudo /sbin/mount.vboxsf SVN $HOME/SVN" | sudo tee -a $tempWork/mount-all-from-host.sh
echo "exit 0" | sudo tee -a $tempWork/mount-all-from-host.sh

#Otherwise if there is one, but no mount, add one...
elif ! grep "sudo /sbin/mount.vboxsf SVN" $locBin/mount-all-from-host.sh
then
sudo sed -ie '$d' $locBin/mount-all-from-host.sh
echo "sudo /sbin/mount.vboxsf SVN $HOME/SVN" | sudo tee -a $locBin/mount-all-from-host.sh
echo "exit 0" | sudo tee -a $locBin/mount-all-from-host.sh
fi

#Script for unmounting ALL VirtualBox shared folders...
#If there isn't one create one...
if [ ! -f $locBin/umount-all-from-host.sh ]
then
echo '#!/bin/bash' > $tempWork/umount-all-from-host.sh
echo "sudo umount -a -t vboxsf" | sudo tee -a $tempWork/umount-all-from-host.sh
echo "echo 'unmounted all VirtualBox shared folders'" | sudo tee -a $tempWork/umount-all-from-host.sh
echo "exit 0" | sudo tee -a $tempWork/umount-all-from-host.sh
fi

chmod +x $tempWork/*
sudo mv -f $tempWork/* $locBin/
rm -rf $tempWork/*
fi

sudo rm -rf $tempWork
sudo /sbin/reboot

exit 0