[AIAB-00] Setup your Linux box

This section describes how to build a fresh Ubuntu 20.04 VM on your workstation with few commands using Multipass.

Notice: another option to install Akamas is using a VM running a freshly installed Ubuntu 20.04 or RHEL / CentOS 8 on your workstation or cloud service provider of choice. If this is the case you can skip this section.

Notice that, as of the date of this document, Multipass is not yet supported on macOS for Apple M1-based computers.

Multipass Overview

The following picture represents the high-level architecture of how Akamas operates in this scenario. As this picture illustrates, the Akamas commands in this guide need to be executed from an Akamas shell in the VM while those related to Multipass need to be executed from a shell on your workstation (the host running the VM).

Install Multipass

First of all, get Multipass installed by following the instructions on the multipass website. Multipass is a lightweight VM manager that provides the fastest way to create an Ubuntu VM on Linux, Windows, or macOS.

If you already use VMware or VirtualBox, it is better to create a new VM starting from the Ubuntu ISO, since Multipass may conflict with your current virtualization setup. If you are not currently using any other virtual machine, then you should be fine.

Create your VM with Multipass

Duration: 01:00

Once Multipass is installed, you can create an Ubuntu 20.04 instance with the resources required by Akamas by executing the following command:

multipass launch -c 2 -m 8G -d30G -n akamas

Once this step is complete, you can check the instance IP (note this down, it will be required later)

multipass list

Now you can launch a shell logged into this instance:

multipass shell akamas