Hello all. Today I want to show you how to setup a virtual machine with GNU/Linux, Simba with all the necessary includes and show you some trick to better protect yourself.
Please be aware, that this tutorial is not about running Simba natively on Linux, please look at this post for a guide on running it natively: https://villavu.com/forum/showthread...82#post1392582
Part 1
1. FAQ
What is a virtual machine (VM)?
- I could go into detail but this would need a seperate post and I want to keep it beginner friendly. Simply said, a virtual machine is a virtual computer running on your physicl computer. A virtual machine is basicly like a sandbox, everything you do in your VM is completely independet (beside the resources it needs of your physical computer to run). The core functionality of a VM is to translate/emulate the virtual hardware to the phisical hardware of your computer. Example: Your physical computer has an intel i5 CPU with a x86 instuction set, your VM now has to translate every instruction comming form your vm to your native, physical CPU with the x86 instruction set. There are many different approaches to this e.g. Hardware Emulation, Hardware Virtualization, Paravirtualization, Operating System virtualization.
Why should I use a virtual machine?
- First off, it's completely free and you can't damage your "physical" Operating System, if you configure things wrong in the VM, you only mess up your VM not your real Operating System, so you can try things out without worries about your real computer. Furthermore you have the ability to create snapshots of your system (A SNAPSHOT IS NOT A BACKUP BY ANY MEANS!), a snapshot like the name says takes a snapshot of the current running system, you can then try things out and if you see you messed things up you can easily go back to that snapshot and everything is like it was in that snapshot. With a virtual machine you can also clone whole systems and making master/golden images, this means you can setup one system exactly how you like it, configure everything and export the whole system so you can just create more copies of that exact system with only a few clicks. You can also use your computer like normal when the virtual machine is running (just remember the virtual machine also needs resources of your computer like RAM, Disk space, CPU). There are plenty more reasons to use a vm, if you're intrested I would advice you to do a qick google search on them.
Why GNU/Linux?
- It's free, has an enourmous comunity, needs dramatically less resources than windows and you will probably learn something from it.
Will we Simba run natively on GNU/Linux?
- As of the time making this post, we will not run Simba native on linux but use wine to run Simba on linux.
What is WINE?
WINE, short for Wine Is Not an Emulator, is a programm with which you can run Windows software under Linux (not every Windows software runs perfectly under WINE).
Why use a VPN?
- With a VPN you can hide your real location and IP adress, this means if your runescape account would get banned, jagex wouldn't be able to track it back to you so you can keep playing on your physical machine legitimately without a VPN and bot on your virtual machine with a VPN without the worries they would be able to see a relation between both accounts.
What is a kill-switch?
- A kill-switch is used for the case your VPN disconnects and your real IP would get exposed. To prevent this from happening we're going to setup a script which only allows connections from your VPN.
2. Requirements
- Some kind of Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) like VirtualBox https://www.virtualbox.org, VMware Workstation, Hyper-V, etc. I will use VirtualBox for this tutorial as it's beginner friendly and free.
- A copy of a Linux OS, I will use Ubuntu 18.04 https://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop as it's beginner friendly, has a huge community and is free.
- The latest Simba for Windows
- All the includes for Simba, as of the time making this tutorial these are: SRL-OSR, AeroLib, Reflection. Please visit the "Complete Guide to Setting Up Simba and SRL" from StickToTheScript.
- WINE and Java JRE 8 32-Bit NOT 64-Bit.
- VPN compatible with OpenVPN, this is not a requirement but nice to have. I'm using IPVanish for this tutorial, I'm not promoting IPVanish there are thousands of VPNs you could use, plenty of them are free (IPVanish isn't). If you are choosing a VPN please look for good encryption (AES-128/AES-256), good bandwith, simultaneous connections so you can run multiple VPN connections at the same time and in my opinion the most important the Zero-Log policy, so your traffic won't get logged.
- If you choose to use a VPN, we will use a firewall called ufw (uncomplicated firewall).
3. Tutorial
3.1 Download VirtualBox, setup a VM and install Ubuntu
- Go to https://www.virtualbox.org click on Downloads and download the package for your Operating System under "VirtualBox 5.2.16 platform packages". I used the "Windows hosts", as I'm using Windows on my physical computer.
- Go to https://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop and download the latest Ubuntu Desktop image, for me this is Ubuntu 18.04.1 LTS, if you like you can donate to the ubuntu project but this is not needed and really up to you.
- Open up VirtualBox and Click "New" to create a new Virtual Machine
- Give your VM a name and make sure the VM Type is "Linux" and the Version is "Ubuntu (64-Bit).
vm1.PNG
- On the next page set the amount of RAM your virtual machine should have, I've gave mine 4GB (4096MB) out of the 16GB my computer has in total, everything above 2GB should be ok, even though Ubuntu can run with less. In this window you see a green and red bar, just make sure you dont hit that red bar because your physical computer will then may not have enough RAM to run properly.
vm2.PNG
- Now on the Hard Disk page, select "Create a virtual hard disk now" and click next
- It doesn't really matter which type of hard disk file you choose, just stick to "VDI" and click next
- On the "Storage on physical hard disk" page, you can ether select "Dynamically allocated" this is what I do or "Fixed size". The difference is that "Fixed size" directly create a file (virtual harddisk) which is as big as you set it to, the "Dynamically allocated" type will create a virtual harddisk which will only be as big as it is and put a cap on the maximum file size. E.g. you set it to "Dynamically allocated" and 20GB, now you install Ubuntu, the file size will be about 2-6GB on your physical computer, now when you install software or create files in your VM the harddisk file will grow but will be capped at the 20GB you set. You can always extend the virtual harddrives independet of it's type.
vm3.PNG
- Finally click on create
- Now before you start up your vm, select your vm and click on settings, then go to System and under the tab "Processor" set the CPUs to 2 or higher if your system allows it (same thing with the green and red bar as in the RAM step before)
vm4.PNG
- Still in the VM settings go to "Storage" under the "Controller: IDE" click on the CD-Image, on the right side at "Optical Drive" click on the CD-Image and click "Choose Virtual Optical Disk File" and select the Ubuntu ISO which you downloaded earlier and click on "OK" until you're back on the VM Overview
vm5.png