Questions[mac](ubuntu)

I have an Ubuntu server (12.04 LTS) running remotely on a cloud hosting service. I have installed ubuntu-desktop via apt-get:

$ sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop

It appears to have installed no problem.

I have confirmed that /etc/ssh/ssh_config on the server contains the lines

ForwardAgent yes
ForwardX11 yes
ForwardX11Trusted yes

and that /etc/ssh/sshd_config on the server contains the line:

X11Forwarding yes

I then rebooted the server. It came back up no problem.

Now, starting X11.app on my Mac I am presented with an Xterm.

I connect to my server from this terminal using:

$ ssh -X <myhost>

and I connect to the server, no problem.

At this point I don't know what to do. I have tried

$ sudo startx

but I get a "no screens found" error.

I don't have screens because its a headless cloud server, but I just want to acces it from my Mac through X.

What now?

In VirtualBox, what is the best way to share a directory between an OS X host and Ubuntu guest?

• Host: Mac OS X 10.7.3
• Guest: Ubuntu 12.04
• Guest has a shared directory mounted via VirtualBox settings with Access=Full and Auto-Mount=Yes.

The problem with this setup is illustrated below. In my shared directory, I can't change the permissions at all (not a permissions denied error, but they just don't take effect).

Ubuntu 12.04 (guest):

% ls -l
total 0
-rwxrwx--- 1 root vboxsf 0 Apr 17 21:56 1
-rwxrwx--- 1 root vboxsf 0 Apr 17 21:56 10
-rwxrwx--- 1 root vboxsf 0 Apr 17 21:56 2
-rwxrwx--- 1 root vboxsf 0 Apr 17 21:56 3
-rwxrwx--- 1 root vboxsf 0 Apr 17 21:56 4
-rwxrwx--- 1 root vboxsf 0 Apr 17 21:56 5
-rwxrwx--- 1 root vboxsf 0 Apr 17 21:56 6
-rwxrwx--- 1 root vboxsf 0 Apr 17 21:56 7
-rwxrwx--- 1 root vboxsf 0 Apr 17 21:56 8
-rwxrwx--- 1 root vboxsf 0 Apr 17 21:56 9

Mac OS X 10.7.3 (host):

$ ls -l
total 0
-rw-r--r--  1 <my-mac-user>  staff  0 Apr 17 21:56 1
-rw-r--r--  1 <my-mac-user>  staff  0 Apr 17 21:56 10
-rw-r--r--  1 <my-mac-user>  staff  0 Apr 17 21:56 2
-rw-r--r--  1 <my-mac-user>  staff  0 Apr 17 21:56 3
-rw-r--r--  1 <my-mac-user>  staff  0 Apr 17 21:56 4
-rw-r--r--  1 <my-mac-user>  staff  0 Apr 17 21:56 5
-rw-r--r--  1 <my-mac-user>  staff  0 Apr 17 21:56 6
-rw-r--r--  1 <my-mac-user>  staff  0 Apr 17 21:56 7
-rw-r--r--  1 <my-mac-user>  staff  0 Apr 17 21:56 8
-rw-r--r--  1 <my-mac-user>  staff  0 Apr 17 21:56 9

If I chmod on the guest, nothing changes:

% chmod +x 1 | ls -l 1 # guest
-rwxrwx--- 1 root vboxsf 0 Apr 17 21:56 1

If I chmod on the host, it changes on the host but not on the guest:

$ chmod +x 1 | ls -l 1 # host
-rwxrwx--x  1 <my-mac-user>  staff  0 Apr 17 21:56 1

% ls -l 1 # guest
-rwxrwx--- 1 root vboxsf 0 Apr 17 21:56 1

I wonder why there isn't any equivalent of Wine for running Mac software on Ubuntu. Thoughts?

I want a native Ubuntu installation, not an VM. Do I have options on my Mac (that don't involve destroying the 'Mac' portion of it) or should I just switch to a standard PC? If I do have options, it would be nice to know what they are :-p

I'd like to create an Ubuntu live USB stick on a Mac to use to install Ubuntu on another machine. How do I accomplish this?