Create a Ubuntu VM for PiHole

This is a work in process and not finished yet, Just mostly pic's and some may be out of order i'm still working on it.

 

 

Over the years I have created several Virtual machines using VMware Workstation, Currently I am using Workstation version 14.1.1

Download ISO

This is a link to the version of Ubuntu that I use, There are probably lighter versions but I find this one ends up being about 1.7 gig which is acceptable to me.

Ubuntu web site

http://releases.ubuntu.com/16.04/

  

I typically download the torrent version, My internet connection is not the best in the world and when  my network goes down torrents will resume downloading without the need of me being there to start the download process again when it gets back online.

http://releases.ubuntu.com/16.04/ubuntu-16.04.3-server-i386.iso

http://releases.ubuntu.com/16.04/ubuntu-16.04.3-server-i386.iso.torrent

 

Open VMware Workstation then go to File > New Virtual Machine and select Custom.

 

Choose your hardware compatibility

Select I will install the operating system later

Select Linux
In the drop-down list I selected Ubuntu, In my case I used a 32 bit ISO if I used the 64 bit version I would have selected Ubuntu 64

Give your VM a name and a location to store it

Tip:
Have a separate drive to store it on, Do not store it on the same drive as the host.

Select English

Before pressing enter key

Press the F4 key

Select Install a minimal virtual machine

Press the Enter key

Don't bother detecting the keyboard

Enable the SSH server

Don't forget to find your IP before trying to SSH into your sever

ifconfig | grep inet

Setup Putty

I usually try to give my VM's a physical Lan card

Remove all Check boxes except the VMware one in the Lan cards properties

Set the time

There are several way's to set the time to your timezone, Take your pick.

sudo timedatectl set-timezone EST

timedatectl list-timezones
sudo timedatectl set-timezone America/Toronto

sudo dpkg-reconfigure tzdata

I use 7zip to compress the VM as a backup before installing software just encase something screws up, It gives me a quick way to start over.

Installing Pihole using SSH

 

Installing PiHole goes way to fast to take pic's of each step so I made a video 

curl -sSL https://install.pi-hole.net | bash

Set the password at the end

pihole -a -p set_password

If the video above does not work for some reason try one of these links:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sichPLv8vLg&feature=youtu.be
https://youtu.be/sichPLv8vLg