03 Run a RACK Box VM - ge-high-assurance/RACK GitHub Wiki

If you have a Window 10 computer, there is a chance your computer may be running under Microsoft's Hyper-V hypervisor. Installing Docker Desktop on Windows 10, for example, will enable the Hyper-V hypervisor automatically. If Hyper-V is running already and you are using a version of VirtualBox that is 6.1.16 or newer, you should have no problem running both Docker Desktop and VirtualBox together under the Hyper-V hypervisor. However, if your version of VirtualBox is older than 6.1.16, you will get an error message when you try to start your RACK box:

Failed to open a session for the virtual machine rack-box-v14.0.
VMMR0_DO_NEM_INIT_VM failed: VERR_NEM_MISSING_KERNEL_API (VERR_NEM_MISSING_KERNEL_API).
VT-x is not available (VERR_VMX_NO_VMX).

If you can't or don't want to update your VirtualBox to the latest version, you can run a Windows PowerShell command with Administrator privilege which will turn off the Hyper-V hypervisor at the next reboot. Once you run that command and reboot your computer, you'll be able to start your RACK box without getting the VT-x error. I'll also give you another Windows Powershell command to run as Administrator when you want to switch back to Docker. After another reboot, Docker will start working again although VirtualBox will have a VT-x error again.

1. Open the Start Menu, expand the Windows PowerShell menu, right click on the Windows Powershell command, and select Run as Administrator.
2. If you aren't sure whether the Hyper-V hypervisor is enabled, type bcdedit in the PowerShell window and look at the last line of its output which will say hypervisorlaunchtype Auto or hypervisorlaunchtype off or display some CPU virtualization technology information if Hyper-V isn't even installed.
3. If you see hypervisorlaunchtype Auto in the output, type bcdedit /set hypervisorlaunchtype off to disable the Hyper-V hypervisor so it won't launch at the next reboot.
4. VirtualBox will start working after you reboot your system.
5. When you want to switch back, type bcdedit /set hypervisorlaunchtype auto to re-enable the hypervisor so it will launch at the next reboot.
6. Docker will start working after you reboot your system. You can toggle the hypervisor auto launch setting and reboot your system without harming either Docker or VirtualBox; one will stop working and the other will start working.

On Linux computers, you may need to add the unzip program since some distributions don't include them by default. On Debian and Ubuntu distributions, type sudo apt install zip unzip. On other Linux distributions, the commands you type may differ slightly but will nearly always be one-liners.

On Mac computers, you can add the unzip program using Homebew. Type homebrew install zip and homebrew install unzip.

On Windows computers, you can install Cygwin, Git Bash for Windows, or a Linux distribution in Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). I like to install WSL myself because Microsoft supports WSL well and provides easy to follow instructions for installing WSL on Windows 10.

Follow the instructions for installing WSL. Type the PowerShell command given in the instructions, restart your computer, follow or skip the “Update to WSL 2” instructions (note only recent versions of Windows 10 support WSL 2), and jump to “Install your Linux distribution of choice”. Click the “Ubuntu 20.04 LTS” link, visit the Microsoft Store page, and click the Get button to install Ubuntu 20.04. Read the “Set up a new distribution” instructions and follow its link to read more detailed instructions how to create a user account and password and install additional packages. You can enter your Windows username and password if you prefer to use the same username and password as Windows or you can pick a Unix-specific username; it’s up to you.

When the install is done, you’ll have Ubuntu 20.04 in your Start Menu and clicking it will open a new window with a shell prompt. If you type "zip" right after installing Ubuntu, you will be advised to type "sudo apt install zip" since WSL's Ubuntu doesn't include zip and unzip by default. Type sudo apt update and sudo apt install zip unzip to add these programs. By the way, your C drive will be mounted in /mnt/c so that’s where you will cd to find your downloaded split zip files.