MCE Remote on a Mac – Step 1: installing Finnix as a Parallels VM

MCE Remote on a MacThis is part 1 in a series on using an MCE Remote Control with a Mac. See the:
- Main article
- Step 2: installing LIRC in the Finnix VM
- Step 3: configuring LIRC in OS X

Installation instructions

This part is about installing the Finnix Linux distribution so that it runs in a virtual machine (VM) on your Mac. This instruction assumes you have a copy of Parallels Desktop for Mac 4.0 installed (it should work fine with their 14 day evaluation version). Potentially a similar procedure can also be applied with VMware Fusion, or (if you want a free solution) with VirtualBox, but I have not tried it. Let me know if you succeed!

Now here are the instructions. Install Finnix in Parallels Desktop using the following 12 steps:

  1. Open the “File” menu for Parallels Desktop and choose the “New Virtual Machine…” option. A wizard will appear. Click “Continue” in the first screen.
  2. Select the .iso image file you downloaded from the Finnix site.
  3. Parallels cannot auto-detect the operating system type. Finnix is a Debian derivative, so let’s enter that.
  4. Choose a “Custom” virtual machine type.
  5. Leave the number of CPU’s to 1. Set the memory requirement to 512 MB, if it’s not already set to that value. Later on we’ll decrease this value much further (48 MB is enough), but for lirc installation a big ramdisk is needed.
  6. We’ll need a new image for the hard disk.
  7. A mere 1 gigabyte should be enough. Using the “Expanding disk” option saves even more space.
  8. Use “Share Networking”. Later on networking can be confined to “Host-Only Networking”, but for now we need the connectivity to install software.
  9. We do not want the VM to drain too much resources, so we optimize the performance for the Mac
  10. Use any name you like. I use “Finnix IR”.
  11. Click “Start” to boot the Finnix Live CD.
  12. Choose the first line (x86) instead of the default (AMD64). You could boot in AMD64 mode just fine, but there are some problems with the lirc kernel modules in 64 bit mode.

After a little while you’ll be presented with a booted up Finnix. Congratulations!

Read on for the screenshots and for installation on the virtual hard disk.

Installing on the virtual hard disk

First, let’s create a partition the disk and format the partition with the linux (ext2) filesystem.
# sfdisk /dev/hda << EOF
> 0,,L
> EOF
# mke2fs /dev/hda1
This instructs Finnix to create one big partition on the 1GB disk of the ‘L’ (=Linux) type and then create an Ext2 filesystem on it.

Next step: mount the disk and copy the files from the virtual cd to the hard drive.
# mount /dev/hda1
# cp -R /cdrom/* /mnt/hda1

Finally we need to install a grub boot menu so that it can actually boot into Linux:
# mkdir -o /mnt/hda1/boot/grub
# cat > /mnt/hda1/boot/grub/menu.lst << EOF
> timeout 5
> title Finnix
> root (hd0,0)
> kernel /isolinux/linux root=/dev/hda1 quiet
> initrd /isolinux/minirt
> EOF
# /usr/sbin/grub-install --root-directory=/mnt/hda1 /dev/hda

Now that’s all done, you could reboot from the local hard disk.

Screenshots

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 8th, 2009 at 18:01 and is filed under Tutorials. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

  1. Siem Korteweg says:
    August 12, 2009 at 16:36

    Used this with VirtualBox on WinXP. In the last code section:

    mkdir -o

    should be:

    mkdir -p

    and

    /usr/sbin/grub-install –root-directory=/mnt/hda1 /dev/hda

    should be:

    /usr/sbin/grub-install –-root-directory=/mnt/hda1 /dev/hda

    regards,

    Siem

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