[NFBCS] deploying a virtual machine

Tue Feb 9 00:31:03 UTC 2021

It might have been a good sign when you lost the ability to type with 
your keyboard. The keys were probably being intercepted by VirtualBox 
and being sent to the virtual machine.

I don't know how to do this in Windows but in Linux, what I do is to run 
the VirtualBox command to take a screen shot and then run an OCR program 
on the image. I've attached the Linux bash script I use to do this. You 
can get the VirtualBox commands out of it at least.

I can't say for certain that VirtualBox doesn't have a way to interact 
with the guest operating system. But what you want to do is to enable 
ssh on the guest Linux operating system. Then you can ssh into the 
virtual machine. Your instructor should actually give you extra credit 
for that.

On 2/5/21 11:55 AM, Amelia Pellicciotti via NFBCS wrote:
> Once I configured the initial settings for the virtual environment,
> such as disk size and ram usage, I launched it and lost the ability to
> type with my keyboard or revert back to the host, but that could
> intirely be just because I don't know what I am doing. Also, during
> setup I could guess what field I am in by context, and because of a
> help video from our professor, but quite a number of the eddit fields,
> list boxes, and other buttons with virtual box on windows are
> unlabeled. Additionally, I found a help article regarding how to set
> up the vm for virtualbox using cmd, but I do not believe I can
> interact with the guest OS from the host command line? Is this true?
>
> On 2/5/21, Amelia Pellicciotti <ameliapelli95 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hello all, I was not clear, but I have a windows 10 professional host.
>> Additionally, the instructor for this course would like us to use Kali
>> Linux because it includes lots of penetration testing tools built in?
>> Do you know if orca is included in this specific distro. I see
>> available for download a package manager for orca available created by
>> the debien accessibility team which is compatible with Kali. I am
>> unsure if Orca is already built in? Or if I need to run separately the
>> package manager. Also, which provides a more user friendly experience?
>> Vm ware, or oracle virtual box with a windows host?
>> Regards, Amelia
>>
>> On 2/5/21, Chris Nestrud via NFBCS <nfbcs at nfbnet.org> wrote:
>>> I've done this to be able to use Linux guest VMs. As far as I could
>>> tell, hyperV doesn't pass audio from the VM, so I needed some way of
>>> setting them up that didn't require a screen reader on the Linux side. I
>>> ended up using Vagrant to initially set up the VM, then I could control
>>> it from within the hyperV manager. A friend who did not rely on Linux
>>> audio mentioned that he did not
>>> have a good experience trying to use Linux GUI from within hyperV. CLI
>>> worked well enough.
>>>
>>> Chris
>>>
>>> On Fri, Feb 05, 2021 at 07:42:34AM -0800, Jim Barbour via NFBCS wrote:
>>>> Has anyone used the windows hyperV to deploy VMs in wondows?
>>>>
>>>> I know that you need to search for "turn features on and off" and then
>>>> find the hyper V feature and turn it on. I'm not sure how you then
>>>> control
>>>> the hyper V or point it at a linux installation ISO.
>>>>
>>>> I'd love to hear from folks who have done this.
>>>>
>>>> Jim
>>>>
>>>> On Fri, Feb 05, 2021 at 07:18:34AM -0600, Amelia Pellicciotti via NFBCS
>>>> wrote:
>>>>> Thank you Tod, I did not clarify. I am presently running a windows 10
>>>>> professional host. However, I believe that it would also be useful for
>>>>> me too learn how to use virtual box from a command line on Linux.
>>>>>
>>>>> Sent from my iPhone
>>>>>
>>>>>> On Feb 4, 2021, at 7:40 PM, Tod Fassl <fassl.tod at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> ???About the Linux distrobution to use. I believe the most easily
>>>>>> accessible disto is Ubuntu. Once you boot the installation image ISO
>>>>>> file, press Alt+Super+s to start the screen reader. The super key is
>>>>>> often called the Windows key in non-linux environments.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Another accessible Linux distro is Debian. To get speech, boot the
>>>>>> installation imageand press the s key. Just keep pressing the s key
>>>>>> until it starts talking. This is going to give you a character user
>>>>>> interface during the installation. But you can install a graphical
>>>>>> user interface to use when the installation is done.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On 2/4/21 7:01 PM, Amelia Pellicciotti via NFBCS wrote:
>>>>>>> Good evening everyone,
>>>>>>> I am a cyber security student pursuing the 501 cert, and I am a
>>>>>>> full-time screen reader user, no magnification. For a lab in my
>>>>>>> course, I need to mount a virtual machine from a linux
>>>>>>> distribution,
>>>>>>> and take a screenshot of its desktop once it is loaded to confirm
>>>>>>> completion of the assignment. We were encouraged to do this using
>>>>>>> oracle virtual box, but it has several issues with jaws and NVDA. I
>>>>>>> have heard that VM ware is accessible. Then there is the matter of
>>>>>>> selecting a variant  with speech capability once the drive is
>>>>>>> mounted.
>>>>>>> Is that correct? Which versions have orca already included? the
>>>>>>> instructor gave us a link to the Kali Linux distribution.
>>>>>>> Thank you very much for your feedback, I hope all of you have a
>>>>>>> nice
>>>>>>> safe, healthy and enjoyable weekend.
>>>>>>>
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-------------- next part --------------
#!/bin/bash

test ! -z "$1" && VMNAME=$1
if [ -z "$VMNAME" ]; then
	echo -n "Virtual machine name: "
	read VMNAME
fi
test -z "$VMNAME" && exit

PNGFILE=/tmp/${VMNAME}.png
rm -f "$PNGFILE"
test ! -z "$VERBOSE" && echo -n "Doing screen cap of $VMNAME ... "
vboxmanage controlvm $VMNAME screenshotpng $PNGFILE

if [ -f $PNGFILE ]; then
	test ! -z "$VERBOSE" && echo "Doing OCR on $PNGFILE ... "
	if [ "$OCR" == "tess" ]; then
		tesseract $PNGFILE stdout 2>/dev/null
	else
		gocr $PNGFILE
	fi
fi
# EOF