vbox

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  1. vbox

The virtualbox installation is no longer supported. Please read the getting started page.

This is the simplest installation method: you download a VirtualBox image with everything setup for you.

1. download the image

You can download it from berlios.de (faster) or from here.

[new] There is also a vmware image: zena_vmware.
[new] The vbox version supports Bonjour (see below).

2. install VirtualBox

Download and install from virtualbox.org.

3. server image

Open the zip archive and move the virtualbox image called zena.vdi to your hard drive (in your Documents folder is a good idea, you won’t be able to move it afterwards).

4. create the machine

4.1 Launch VirtualBox and press “new” :

new

4.2 Set name and machine type:

set name

4.3 Set RAM size to 512

set memory size

4.4 Choose existing hard disk

choose existing disk

4.5 Clic “add” and select the server image zena.vdi

add disk

4.5 Clic “select” and “finish”. You are done with the server. Before starting it, you should configure the network for this server:

5 configure network

The easiest solution is to use Bonjour and connect with url “zena.local” and bridge the network interface (point 5.1). If you want to use “NAT”, please jump to point 5.3.

5.1 Use host network: select “network” configuration

network configuration

5.2 Configure the network to use the same interface as your computer. This will allow the server to be accessed from any computer in your network.

network setup

Select the host interface you want to share with your virtual machine (the one you are using).

You are done (skip to point 6).

5.3 NAT setup

If you want to use the default “NAT” configuration, you can simply issue the following commands on your machine (not on the server):

# VBoxManage setextradata "zena" "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcnet/0/LUN#0/Config/zena/Protocol" TCP
# VBoxManage setextradata "zena" "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcnet/0/LUN#0/Config/zena/GuestPort" 80
# VBoxManage setextradata "zena" "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcnet/0/LUN#0/Config/zena/HostPort" 8888

6. start server

start server

7. configure access to server

You have different choices here:

a. you use NAT

Nothing to do, the server runs as “localhost”.

b. Bonjour

Nothing to install on mac os X. On Linux you should install avahi. On Windows install Bonjour for Windows

You can now connect to the server with the url “zena.local”.

c. you can edit your /etc/hosts file with the machine’s IP

To access the server, you need to configure your /etc/hosts file to resolve the special host zena.host. To do this, you should first find the IP of the server:

7.1 login as root:

Please note that the server uses a “US” (QWERTY) keyboard !

  • login: root
  • password: zena

7.2 type “ifconfig” to learn about the IP adress:

find ip using ifconfig

7.3 edit /etc/hosts on your computer (not in the virtual machine):

$ sudo pico /etc/hosts

Add a line at the end:

10.0.0.25    zena.host

(replace 10.0.0.25 by the ip found before)

8. start playing !

Type zena.host (use localhost:8888 if you used NAT) into the browser url:

zena

This should resolve to the IP of your virtual machine and open the site “zena.host”.

You can now login and start editing nodes and templates.

update often !

And since this is a beta release and we won’t be updating this vbox image, you should abuse of the “update zena” function found in the admin part:

update zena

This gives you access to an “update” link which will trigger a code update and server restart.

Good luck and keep in touch !

comments

  1. Sunday, October 12 2008 00:16 Gaspard Bucher

    The vbox has been improved with an “update zena” feature. Enjoy !

  2. Wednesday, November 12 2008 07:49 Gaspard Bucher

    Virtual box image is not stored in an “iso” image anymore. This caused problems on non-mac operating systems.

  3. Tuesday, November 18 2008 01:10 Pascal Jerney

    I run zena in a virtual box, set up with NAT on port 8888. My browser connects to the server, but forwards to the file ‘awstats.pl’ which requires a username and a password. The zena page is not shown…

  4. Wednesday, November 19 2008 09:19 Gaspard Bucher

    I have updated this page for NAT setting.

    You need to download the new “zip” image for this change to work (the new image also has some fixes for upload progress and the latest code).

  5. Wednesday, November 19 2008 09:29 Gaspard Bucher

    Uploading new image… please wait.

  6. Wednesday, November 19 2008 12:28 Gaspard Bucher

    New image with NAT support uploaded.

  7. Wednesday, December 17 2008 18:58 Xose Ramos

    What a bummer :( I was very anxious to test Zena. And everything seemed quite simple (virtual machines are a great way to test software, in fact I even planned to do all my development on the virtual machine).

    But everyting went completely wrong. I was not able to work with Zena. And it was not the fault of the image… The image worked fine.

    I think the problem was more to do with VirtualBox and the virtual network options. This was the very first time I was using VirtualBox (for Windows). When I installed it I already got a warning telling that the VirtualBox network drivers “had not passed the test of Windows XP, and it was risky to use them”. I thought that should be not so serious and I went on.

    I made two tests:

    Using NAT
    Well, the configuration went ok, and the virtual machine started correctly, but there was absolutely no network. The virtual machine did not had any “eth” interface, just the “lo”. I tried it to connect but the client failed when doing DHCP.

    Using the Host Interface Neworking
    This was even worste. I enabled it, and I had to create a virtual network interface. The installation wen’t quite bad, and I simply managed to crash my WiFi Interface. So I lost my network connection.
    And inside the virtual machine, like before, it was not possible for the Debian system to find any remote network. It was like it was not even recognizing the virtual net card.

    Well, everything ended quite bad, because I had to spend some time trying to make my Wifi to work again. I had to remove all the drivers that VirtualBox had created because somehow they were disrupting XP drivers.

    So I could not test Zena this way. I am still interested in giving it a try, but I will not install VirtualBox in my computer again. Too much risky.

    VMWare works fine in here though. Could it be possible to have a VMWare image?

  8. Friday, December 19 2008 09:54 Gaspard Bucher

    Xose, I do not have the time right now to prepare an image for vmware, but there is an easy solution:

    1. you create an empty debian server
    2. you install wget to download the script
    3. “wget http://zenadmin.org/en/documentation/textdocument490.sh”
    4. you run the script (details on what it does here)
    5. any question… mailing list

    Thanks for your patience, I hope you manage to make it work.

  9. Friday, December 19 2008 09:57 Gaspard Bucher

    PS: you can use the business card iso from the debian site to install the basic server (only install the base system).

    PPS: to install “wget”, type as root
    “aptitude install wget”

  10. Friday, December 19 2008 10:26 Gaspard Bucher

    Well… I do not have the time, but I’m still doing it (creation of a vmware image). Installation and upload can take up to 3h, so please wait…

  11. Friday, December 19 2008 17:18 Gaspard Bucher

    New vmware image uploaded.

  12. Tuesday, December 30 2008 22:32 Jérémie Ecoffey

    Salut Gaspard!

    J’ai enfin un peu de temps pour tester zena. J’ai installé l’image et la virtual box, mais quand je tape le mot de passe que tu indiques plus haut, il me dit que c’est pas le bon… du coup, je suis un peu coincé pour continuer l’installation.
    J’ai aussi essayé en NAT, mais apparemment, safari ne trouve rien à localhost:8888. Même après les lignes de terminal données plus haut…

    Un truc que j’ai loupé?

  13. Thursday, January 01 2009 19:18 JBB

    Jérémie j’ai rencontré un problème similaire et cela provenait simplement de ce que ma machine virtuelle est configurée en clavier QWERTY. le mot de passe (zena) devient wenq dans ce langage étrange.

  14. Thursday, January 01 2009 19:27 JBB

    I installed the vbox on my PC with Win XP without using the NAT.
    So far everything seems to work properly, I will be starting to play around. Thanks Gaspard!

  15. Saturday, January 03 2009 09:11 Gaspard Bucher

    I will be updating the vbox image to support “Bonjour”. This means that we can skip point 7 and directly type “zena.local” in the browser…

    [JBB] For the QWERTY keyboard issue, I have advertised this point in the settings part of the tutorial.

  16. Saturday, January 03 2009 16:45 Gaspard Bucher

    VirtualBox with Bonjour support uploaded.

  17. Wednesday, February 18 2009 14:15 mot

    Gaspard, are you sure that “update zena” button works?

    Just downloaded vbox image, started it, went to admin area, hit “update zena” button and:
    “Please wait while the code is updated and the site restarts (page reloads every 30s).”

    After half an hour nothing changed. Vbox image for sure has access to internet.

  18. Sunday, February 22 2009 15:12 Gaspard Bucher

    It seems that the “update” should handle the installation of new gems when these are missing. Running the following command in the server should fix it:

    # sudo gem install querybuilder rake hoe gettext mongrel mongrel_cluster rmagick tzinfo syntax mongrel_upload_progress uuidtools daemons json capistrano yamltest ruby-debug --no-ri --no-rdoc

    I am too busy upgrading zena to rails 2.x right now to propose a better fix.

  19. Wednesday, January 06 2010 15:32 Gaspard Bucher

    Vbox testing is no longer supported. Please read the getting started page.