3-10 VMware Usage
Learning Objectives
This chapter will teach you how to create a stable and isolated development environment using VMware, preventing it from affecting your host system and fully utilizing the USB Passthrough feature for hardware testing. You'll also learn about VMware Workstation Pro's free policy for personal users and its setup, helping you build a complete development environment without additional costs.
By the end of this chapter, you'll be able to:
1. Master how to use VMware to create an Ubuntu virtual machine, preparing your Pandora development environment.
2. Understand the VMware USB Passthrough feature, which allows you to mount physical USB devices to your virtual machine for driver and device testing.
3. Learn about VMware Workstation Pro's free policy for personal users and activation settings, enabling you to set up a complete development environment without extra cost.
Installing the Virtual Machine
1. Download Ubuntu ISO File Please download ubuntu-20.04.6-desktop-amd64.iso from https://releases.ubuntu.com/focal
2. Install VMware Workstation Pro If you haven't installed VMware Workstation Pro yet, you can download and install it from the official VMware website: https://www.vmware.com/products/desktop-hypervisor/workstation-and-fusion
3. Create a New Virtual Machine
4. Select the Ubuntu ISO file.
5. Set the system account password.
6. Configure the virtual machine name and storage location.
7. Enter the virtual disk size.
This space is the maximum limit; it won't immediately occupy this much disk space. The system will dynamically allocate space based on usage. Therefore, you can reserve a larger capacity as needed.
8. Adjust memory size.
To run the JetPack installation tool SDK Manager, adjust the virtual machine's memory to at least 8GB to ensure the installation process runs smoothly without interruptions due to insufficient memory. (The example below uses 8 CPU cores, 8 GB RAM.)
9. Install Ubuntu Operating System
After pressing Finish, the system installation will automatically begin. Once the installation is complete, it's recommended to perform a system update to ensure you have the latest drivers and packages.
10. Install open-vm-tools
If, after system installation, adjusting the virtual machine window size doesn't scale the display accordingly, you need to install open-vm-tools:
sudo apt update
sudo apt install open-vm-tools
Connecting USB Devices to the Virtual Machine (USB Passthrough)
During Pandora development, it's often necessary to flash the operating system due to system upgrades, error fixes, or feature verification. This process requires switching the Pandora device to recovery mode, connecting it to the host via USB, and then using a flashing tool provided by YUAN (like xxxxx_flash.sh) to burn the system image. At this point, you'll need to connect (pass-through) the USB device into the virtual machine.
1. Go to the status bar at the bottom of the VMware interface and find the USB device you need to connect.
2. Click Connect (disconnect from host).
3. Use lsusb in the virtual machine to confirm if it has successfully connected.
If you need to flash the system on your Pandora development board, you can refer to this document's 2-2 Flashing a Clean Jetson System.
Common Issues
Q1: The virtual machine doesn't see the USB device / during flashing, it prompts that the device is not in recovery mode even though I already pressed the Recovery button to boot.
A1: Please shut down the virtual machine and then restart it to try again.
Q2: Can the executable compiled in this virtual machine run directly on Pandora?
A2: No, due to different architectures, executables compiled here cannot run directly on Pandora. You need to set up a cross-compilation environment to compile them. (You can refer to NVIDIA's SDK Manager: https://developer.nvidia.com/sdk-manager).