Installation Instructions

If you want to use your own computer for following the material and doing the assignments in some of the courses (listed below) of the Computer Engineering Department of the Istanbul Technical University, you will need to set up an environment that contains the needed software packages. This document outlines your options.

The currently supported courses are:

• BLG101: Introduction to Information Systems
• BLG102: Introduction to Scientific and Engineering Computation (C)
• BLG312: Computer Operating Systems
• BLG413: System Programming
• BLG458: Functional Programming
• BLG460: Secure Programming

To carry out the instructions below, you will need a "terminal emulator" program (also called a "command prompt"). All platforms provide such a program. On the Linux system described below, it's called "Xfce Terminal". On Windows, you can use the programs "cmd" or "PowerShell"; or you can install the Git version control system and use "Git Bash" (recommended).

Using VirtualBox and Vagrant

This is the simplest and recommended method. It will work on all major operating systems and prepare a virtual Linux installation that contains all the necessary software for all of these courses.:

Warning for Windows users: There is a possibility that Windows
virtualization environment may clash with virtualbox. Therefore;
it is recommended to disable the following Windows features from
Control Panel -> Programs and Features -> Turn Windows features on or off

- Containers
- Hyper-V
- Virtual Machine Platform
- Windows Hypervisor Platform
- Windows Sandbox
- Windows Subsystem for Linux

You might need to restart your computer, then continue as follows:

1. Install VirtualBox for your operating system.

2. Install VM VirtualBox Extension Pack. It is hosted on: https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads

3. Install Vagrant for your operating system. Be careful to choose a version that is compatible with your VirtualBox version.

4. Download and unzip the file: https://github.com/itublg/itucs-vmimage/archive/master.zip

5. Change into the directory: itucs-vmimage-master Note that, you may use this directory as a shared folder. So, choose an appropriate location that you don't need to delete afterwards.

6. For Windows OS, run the command:

   vagrant up --provision & vagrant halt
   

   For Unix-like OS, run the command:

   vagrant up --provision ; vagrant halt
   

   Careful: The first time you run this command, it will download a very large amount of data from the Internet. It will take a considerable amount of time. Be patient.

   Remark: You may see a virtual box window that reflects a login screen. Normally, you don't need to login till the progress finishes. This window will disappear after successful installation.

7. If you get no errors, you will see "Successfully installed!" message on the terminal

As a result, you will obtain a virtual machine named "ItuCompeng" under VirtualBox. To use it, either start it from the VirtualBox window or browse into this installation directory and run the command:

vagrant up

In the VirtualBox window, if the machine is listed as running but its window is not visible, click the "Show" button.

Using an Ubuntu-based distribution

You can also choose to install any Ubuntu-based Linux distribution and install the necessary packages on top of it. It is still recommended that you install the distribution under VirtualBox unless you're absolutely certain that you know what you're doing. Another safe option would be to install to a memory stick.

After the installation, follow these steps:

1. Download and unzip the file: https://github.com/itublg/itucs-vmimage/archive/master.zip

2. From your command prompt (see the note about command prompts in the "Installation Instructions" section above), change into the directory that you just created when you unzipped the file: itucs-vmimage-master

3. Run the command:

   sudo sh install_base.sh
   

4. Run the command:

   sudo sh install_blgNNN.sh
   

   where NNN is numeric part of the course code.

Using other systems

Install the following packages for your system (for Ubuntu, the names of the packages are given in parentheses):

All courses

• Git (git)

BLG101

• Geany (geany)
• madedit-mod (not available on Ubuntu repositories)
• LibreOffice (libreoffice)
• Gimp (gimp)
• Inkscape (inkscape)
• Python (python3)
• Bottle (python3-bottle)

BLG102

• GCC C++ compiler (g++)
• GNU make (make)
• cppcheck (cppcheck)
• ClangFormat (clang-format)

BLG312

This course doesn't need any special software other than the standard tools installed for BLG102.

BLG413

In addition to the packages listed under BLG102, you also need:

• nasm (nasm)
• libfuse (libfuse-dev)

BLG458

• Glasgow Haskell Compiler (haskell-platform)

BLG460

In addition to BLG102, you need the following and some of their auxiallary packages

• Splint (splint)
• Terminator (terminator)

Tips

• After a successful installation there exist only one user vagrant and the password for this user is also vagrant.
• The keyboard layout is set to Turkish-Q by default. To have other non-default keyboard layout under Debian, right click on the bottom panel and choose "Panel -> Add New Items... -> Keyboard Layouts". Right click on the added item (a flag) and choose "Keyboard settings". In the "Layout" tab, untick the "Use system defaults" box and under "Keyboard layout", add the desired language (the main item, not any of the subitems).
• To connect to the wi-fi network on campus using Debian, open up the network settings tool, choose the "eduroam" network, and under "wi-fi security", choose "Protected EAP (PEAP)" as the authentication option. Enter your ITU e-mail address as your username, and enter your password. Also make sure that the box labeled "No CA certificate is required" is checked.
• Check out the Using the ITU cloud storage service document for accessing your files from various devices. You will need this especially if you are using the memory stick installation.