You will need to set up a large-ish Ubuntu system. This will be home to the Oracle VirtualBox virtual machines (VM's). You can use any Ubuntu system, but you get points for using a NUC. This system will also be the Ansible controller for this lab.

See Tutorial: Install Ubuntu Desktop

It's a good idea to use a “minimal installation” of Ubuntu for this Lab.

Once installation is complete, follow best practice to upgrade software packages on the system. Open Terminal and enter the commands below.

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade -y

Enable ssh so you can SSH to this system. Open Terminal and enter the commands below.

sudo apt update
sudo apt install openssh-server -y

See Tutorial: Enable SSH

Install Ansible Add repository for Ansible sudo apt-add-repository ppa:ansible/ansible Install required packages sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y sudo apt install vim p7zip xorriso ansible python3-passlib -y Create the user ansible and switch to the user (learn more at this link) sudo useradd -m -s /bin/bash ansible sudo passwd ansible su - ansible

Give user ansible sudo permissions

From your regular login account all the ansible user to the sudo group.

sudo usermod -aG sudo ansible

You can new test sudo access for the user ansible:

• su - ansible
• sudo apt update

For the remainder of the Lab you will be using the ansible user. You may conveniently ssh to your server as user ansible.

Create ssh key used to connect to the VMs

Create the ssh key ansible will use to connect to your VMs

ssh-keygen -o

accept default settings and do not enter a passphrase

Use cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub to get your public key

Looks like

ssh-rsa 
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 ansible@labbox

Save this key - you will use it when you create the custom Ubuntu ISO

install oracle virtualbox using ansible

Follow steps here: Install Oracle VirtualBox using Ansible

Note: There are many references out there if you don't want to use Ansible to install VirtualBox (e.g., https://linuxconfig.org/install-virtualbox-on-ubuntu-22-04-jammy-jellyfish-linux)