This is the first part of a series of articles that will introduce coLinux and describe how to create your own Fully-updated and Windows Hosted version of Ubuntu Hardy.

For a brief introduction to coLinux, see my previous post here.

This first article will describe how to download, install and then test the installation to ensure the base functionality is working.

Visit the coLinux download pages on sourceforge (here) and get the latest version. As of writing this article, the latest version of coLinux-stable is 0.73-linux-2.6.22.18 (Direct Link). We will be looking at some more recent and unsupported version in later posts, but this is the best way to start.

Download the file and run it under Windows to start the install.

When you come to the ‘Choose Components’ page, DESELECT the option for ‘Root Filesystem image Download’ - we are going to create our own image from scratch.

Before you go any further, expand the ‘coLinux’ item and look at the avaliable options.

• The first two are console interfaces to coLinux and I recommend you keep them both.
• The next 3 are different types of network interfaces between coLinux and windows. The first will install a new virtual netwrok card on your Windows PC and is a little harder to set up but more versatile. The second is the easiest, but limited to external connections. The last one is best but needs WinPcap installed on your windows PC.
• Second last is for a virtual serial device, may as well keep it.
• The last option installs debugging versions of the tools, which can be useful if you are having problems.

For me, I deselect ‘Virtual Ethernet (TAP-win32)’ and ‘Bridged Ethernet’ since the basic ‘SLiRP’ networking does me fine - still gives access to the internet for all you will need. Other options I leave selected. Feel free to install with all the options checked if you want, we may even be using them in future articles….

Now press next, and you have the option to choose the installation directory. For ease of use (and making portable later) I would change this to ‘C:\coLinux’.

Complete the installation.
Congratulations, that’s it installed!

Now, lets just make sure that it is compatible with all our system by running a ram-disk (in memory) version.

Open a command window in c:\coLinux (or wherever you installed it) and type the following:

colinux-daemon kernel=vmlinux initrd=initrd.gz root=/dev/ram0

Very quickly you will have a cmd window pop up and see the kernel booting up. Not long after this the ‘Cooperative Linux Console” will appear with the note

"Please press Enter to activate this console"

Do it!

You will now be dropped into a ‘busybox’ command promt where you can try out some basic Linux commands. When you are happy, just type

Halt

and the coLinux will shut down. You can now close both these windows.

OK, in this article we managed to install coLinux and test it. In the next article we will start to make a complete Ubuntu system from scratch……

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