Virtual PC and Linux

[DarkTXKnight]

IVe got a machine here that I run VPC2004 on for several Windows based Demos. I would like to run maybe FC4 on this as well instead of devoting another machine to it . Has anyone done this?? Can anyone post any links as to how they are using Linux with the MS VM products??

thanks.

 

[nweaver]

I have run Gentoo, Debian, and Redhat 9 on VPC2k4 without major problems. Note that I was not running X (never really tried, don't know if it works)

 

[Smilin]

It works like a champ (I used to support VPC)

Be sure to set 16bit color when installing.

 

[spherrod]

Suse and Ubuntu worked fine when I ran them a few months ago

 

[JeffreyLebowski]

I just tried ubuntu and the display is all fubared.

 

[spyordie007]

I wonder if the new Linux VM additions for virtual server will work under VPC
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsservers...luation/linuxguestsupport/default.mspx

 

[drag]

The easiest way to demo linux right now that I know of is to download Vmware Player and use one of the many "community supplied" VM images.

If you google around for them you can find them easily. Also Vmware manages a list of some here

Of course they are like Adobe with it's PDF stuff. The viewer is no-cost, but the ability to make images requires a commercial product.

Vmware has a 'server' product aviable for no cost. It's beta.. You may be able to create your images with that, but I am not sure. But it's not like their real server stuff like ESX were you have the vmware stuff act like a hypervisor to manage operating systems.

The Vmware player works flawlessly in my experiance. Also it's nice that you don't have to have a 2003 server product or XP SP2 Pro to run it. It'll run on any Linux or Windows system.

I've run Ubuntu, Redhat enterprise linux 4, and Suse on it. Works fine.

 

[scottws]

Originally posted by: DarkTXKnight
IVe got a machine here that I run VPC2004 on for several Windows based Demos. I would like to run maybe FC4 on this as well instead of devoting another machine to it . Has anyone done this?? Can anyone post any links as to how they are using Linux with the MS VM products??

thanks.

I've run FC2, 3, 4, and Ubuntu in VPC2004 SP1. But I had to mess with the color settings or else the kernel would panic.

 

[Brazen]

Running the VMWare Server Beta on Linux (CentOS). Since it's come out I've used it extensively for testing, evaluating and demo'ing products to others in the department for implementation consideration. I've tried running it on Windows, but there is a huge performance difference between using a Windows Host and using a Linux Host. I've used Windows and Linux as guest OSes with no problems. Just FYI.

 

[scottws]

I assume you are saying that it performs better on Linux than Windows? You didn't really make that clear.

What kind of system are you using it VMWare Server Beta on? I'm considering trying it out on an older HP desktop with Debian on it, but I'm concerned that the performance will be terrible in the virtualized OS.

 

[drag]

I think the most important aspect is going to be the amount of memory you have and then the next important would be disk I/O speed, then the last would be CPU speed.

You'd probably want to have at least 256 megs of RAM for each OS you want to run simultaniously. Maybe if you can find a second disk to run the vmware image from and put that as a master ide device on a different controller that should take care of it. (although for playing around on it my 80gig 7200 rpm disk on my 2ghz amd althon/1gig ram system does a good job)

I probably wouldn't try it on a machine with less then 1ghz of cpu though.

That's basicly my educated guesses on the subject.

edit:
For debian the vmware player installer wanted to make a kernel driver. It has pre-compiled kernels for most systems though.
To prepare the system to build a kernel the easiest way is to install the module-assistant package and then go:
m-a update
m-a prepare
and it should get you most everything you 'd need to build a kernel driver. The vmware player's perl installer does most of the work though. I don't know about the Vmware server beta stuff.... but I expect it to be similar)

 

[scottws]

LOL, I guess I won't bother then. This thing is a PIII 733Mhz with 640MB of SDRAM and a 60GB, 5400rpm hard drive.

 

[drag]

That's close enough I'd try it. It should be fast enough to get everything working and playing around with it. But I wouldn't expect it to be very usefull outside that. (like I wouldn't use it for development or as a server)

Like I said the amount of RAM is the most important part and you got that covered.

 

[Brazen]

Originally posted by: scottws
LOL, I guess I won't bother then. This thing is a PIII 733Mhz with 640MB of SDRAM and a 60GB, 5400rpm hard drive.

Yes, I would say it performs MUCH better on Linux than Windows. Sorry, when I wrote that previous post, I was about to be late for picking my son up from daycare so I rushed it.

I've used it on PIII 800mhz boxen with 512 meg of RAM. As far as I can tell, when installed on linux, I can't tell a difference between installing the system inside VMWare or installing it on top of bare metal. On Windows though, it does not run nearly as fast. Of course on linux I use a minimal install with all the services disabled except what is necessary. The base system with VMWare does use up about 80-100 meg of RAM, so you'll want to expect your guest OS (the OS inside VMWare) to be unable to use that much of your RAM.

On the VMWare Server I have running right now, I have 512 meg of ram with 128meg allocated to each of 3 virtual machines with minimal installs of linux running on them - one for Nagios, one for Request Tracker, and one for OneOrZero (just some apps I'm checking out, not important). Accessing the virtual linux machines, I can't tell a difference than if they were on there own box. Oh, by the way, though, this is on a P4 1.8Ghz box. And keep in mind I'm using MINIMAL installs of linux with a few unnecessary things disabled even from the minimal install.

My linux OS of choice is CentOS. This happens to be good for me because WMWare has excellent support for RedHat Linux. Installing it on CentOS 4 is a snap. First you have to "yum install compat-db" to get a needed library. Then, copy the VMWare-serverXXX.rpm to the machine (I use ssh file transfer) and run "yum localinstall VMWare-serverXXX.rpm". Then do "vmware-setup.pl" and answer the questions. I answer the default to every single question except on a minimal install it reports it cannot find gcc (not needed unless you want to do some perl scripting) and asks if I want to locate it manually, but I say "no". Then you have to open up port 902 on the firewall (I use "system-config-security") and open port 8333.

Then copy the VMWare-muiXXX.tar.gz to the machine and untar it "tar-xzf VMWare-muiXXX.tar.gz" then cd into the directory and do "./vmware-install.pl" or something like that (whatever the .pl file is in that directory). Again answer all the questions as default. When it's done, you are ready to connect into the console from a workstation and go to town.

 

[Smilin]

Originally posted by: scottws
LOL, I guess I won't bother then. This thing is a PIII 733Mhz with 640MB of SDRAM and a 60GB, 5400rpm hard drive.

That will work.

You could run a pair of VMs with 192mb and be fine.

 

[Smilin]

Oh and btw. MS Virtual SERVER is now free

 

[nweaver]

Originally posted by: Smilin

Oh and btw. MS Virtual SERVER is now free

except for the host OS, which is not free

 

[Brazen]

Originally posted by: nweaver

Originally posted by: Smilin

Oh and btw. MS Virtual SERVER is now free

except for the host OS, which is not free

Yes, and (obviously therefore) no choice to use linux as a host, which as I mentioned above, has more advantages than just being free (as in beer).

 

[stash]

So if you can't afford Windows for the host, how are you going to swing it for the guests?

Virtual Server runs on XP Pro also.

 

[scottws]

Originally posted by: Brazen
I've used it on PIII 800mhz boxen with 512 meg of RAM. As far as I can tell, when installed on linux, I can't tell a difference between installing the system inside VMWare or installing it on top of bare metal. On Windows though, it does not run nearly as fast. Of course on linux I use a minimal install with all the services disabled except what is necessary. The base system with VMWare does use up about 80-100 meg of RAM, so you'll want to expect your guest OS (the OS inside VMWare) to be unable to use that much of your RAM.

What I'd like to do is sort of two-fold. I don't know how practical it really is, but it won't hurt anything to try.

I want to set up the aforementioned HP box as a Debian VMWare server. Right now, I just want a single virtualized Samba file server. I'll probably go Debian there as well.

I like Debian because apt-get is my favorite package manager. I don't like Red Hat stuff because I had real bad experiences with RPM and dependency issues when I played around with Red Hat 9 and FC2. I might do SuSE as well, but I don't really know what YAST is like at all.

In any case, obviously you might want to ask, "Why don't use just use the real box as the Samba file server?" The answer is that I'm basically playing around with virtualized servers and a file server at the same time, and therefore why not?

The thing here is that I'm not a Linux guru. At all. I've played around with it in the past, but I've never really had what I would consider a "successful experience" with it. But that's because of my ATi videocard and Broadcom-based wireless card. The HP has neither of these.

Now, what sort of services are necessary on the real machine to allow the VMWare-ed Samba file server to work on the network? What can I choose to not install?

 

[Brazen]

Originally posted by: stash
So if you can't afford Windows for the host, how are you going to swing it for the guests?

Virtual Server runs on XP Pro also.

1. I'm not sure how licensing works for virtual machines, but if you must have a license for the host and a licesnce for the guest, that would cut your costs in half.

2. You may want to try out beta or evaluation versions of Windows for testing or learning, etc.

3. You may want to try out one of the many freely available, increasingly popular, pre-built virtual appliances.

4. You may want to run your guest OS as LINUX! GASP!

 

[Brazen]

Originally posted by: scottws

Originally posted by: Brazen
I've used it on PIII 800mhz boxen with 512 meg of RAM. As far as I can tell, when installed on linux, I can't tell a difference between installing the system inside VMWare or installing it on top of bare metal. On Windows though, it does not run nearly as fast. Of course on linux I use a minimal install with all the services disabled except what is necessary. The base system with VMWare does use up about 80-100 meg of RAM, so you'll want to expect your guest OS (the OS inside VMWare) to be unable to use that much of your RAM.

What I'd like to do is sort of two-fold. I don't know how practical it really is, but it won't hurt anything to try.

I want to set up the aforementioned HP box as a Debian VMWare server. Right now, I just want a single virtualized Samba file server. I'll probably go Debian there as well.

I like Debian because apt-get is my favorite package manager. I don't like Red Hat stuff because I had real bad experiences with RPM and dependency issues when I played around with Red Hat 9 and FC2. I might do SuSE as well, but I don't really know what YAST is like at all.

In any case, obviously you might want to ask, "Why don't use just use the real box as the Samba file server?" The answer is that I'm basically playing around with virtualized servers and a file server at the same time, and therefore why not?

The thing here is that I'm not a Linux guru. At all. I've played around with it in the past, but I've never really had what I would consider a "successful experience" with it. But that's because of my ATi videocard and Broadcom-based wireless card. The HP has neither of these.

Now, what sort of services are necessary on the real machine to allow the VMWare-ed Samba file server to work on the network? What can I choose to not install?

Yeah, as you said, try it and see. Whatever distro you like should be fine, but (I'm just re-iterating) you should not have any hangups if you followed my instructions above on CentOS. And once you get VMWare server running, you shouldn't ever have to touch the host OS ever again (well, except maybe to upgrade VMWare, which is just redoing the install right on top of the old). But if you like Debian, by all means, try it first and see how it goes.

I would also like to say, that I would NOT ask why not run SAMBA on the bare-metal host. There are other advantages besides being able to run different OSes concurrently, such as: creating point-in-time snapshots of your system, making copies of your virtual machine to test on, easily upgrade to better hardware, I could probably go on and on. Personally, I don't a SINGLE THING on the bare-metal OS except harden it, start automic updates, and install VMWare Server. Everything I do, all testing, all new servers I'm setting up (though none will go into production until VMWare Server is out of beta), everything, I do inside virtual machines.

 

[stash]

You may want to run your guest OS as LINUX! GASP!

The OP specifically stated he needed to do Windows demos, but good point about using eval copies...forgot about that.

 

[JohnBernstein]

Or you could use use QEMU.

It is similar to VMWare and runs Windows 95, 98, 2000, XP (in little windows to impress your friends).

See: http://fabrice.bellard.free.fr/qemu/

BTW having 4 copies of windows (guests) as well as linux (host) running, slows my system right down (1GB RAM).

 

[drag]

Originally posted by: JohnBernstein
Or you could use use QEMU.

It is similar to VMWare and runs Windows 95, 98, 2000, XP (in little windows to impress your friends).

See: http://fabrice.bellard.free.fr/qemu/

BTW having 4 copies of windows (guests) as well as linux (host) running, slows my system right down (1GB RAM).

Ya to bad for Qemu that they released that accelerator thingy as a closed source, propriatory add-on. Otherwise with that it should be about as fast as vmware's stuff is if they did it correctly.

Personally I am strongly tempted to buy a Pentium-D 920 and Asus P5DL2-VM motherboard!!

Those 900 series Pentium-D proccessors support the VT extensions as well as that paticular Asus motherboard. You need support in both the CPU and the BIOS on the motherboard and Asus is the only company that I know of that currently supports these extensions and they only do it on a few boards.

But people report that that motherboard does support it on the Xen mailing lists.

Vmware and Xen should already support it to a certain extent. With Xen you may have to use 'unstable' and I don't know about Vmware. But I am not sure. Can't be sure until I try it out for myself.

But with Xen you can now run unmodified operating systems with damn-near-native speeds and with Vmware you should see a substantial performance boost.

But it's very difficult for me to justify spending money on a new computer when the one I have now is still realy fast. (2.0ghz AMD Althon with 1gig of ram) Oh, well. With the new computer I'd have to buy a new video card and new ram to support it. Otherwise it would just of been a 300 dollar upgrade.