Virtual PC and Linux

[doornail]

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).

Funny you should mention Qemu. The latest issue of Linux Journal has a bunch of articles on virtualization, including a pretty good introduction to Qemu. I spent Saturday playing around with it and built a very minimal Windows 98 image (700mb so it would fit on a CDR). I'm building a web site at work under Python and wanted some way to double check how things look under IE on my Fedora Core workstation.

Win98 is old, but it runs IE60 and I don't need to pass it much memory under Qemu. Using 32M but 16MB ran about the same. I'm not using the closed-source binary module, just running it as a user app, so Qemu isn't a speed demon but it works pretty well and was *way* easier than I expected.

 

[Smilin]

Originally posted by: 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).

The poster already has a Windows host bought and paid for that will run Virtual Server.

 

[JohnBernstein]

"Ya to bad for Qemu that they released that accelerator thingy (kqemu) as a closed source."

There is an open source version. Search for qvm86.

"so Qemu isn't a speed demon but it works pretty well and was *way* easier than I expected."

Qemu is excellent and easy to set up.

There is a new kernel module out,... I have not tried it yet.

 

[JohnBernstein]

Anyone ever tried qvm86?

 

[doornail]

Originally posted by: JohnBernstein
Anyone ever tried qvm86?

I downloaded it, but the patch choked on QEMU 8.0 source. I think it hasn't been updated since 7.2.

 

[scottws]

Ok, I currently have my old HP installed with Debian, and I have VMWare Server and the MUI up and running. I tried connecting to the IP of the PC on port 902 from Firefox on another PC in the LAN, but just get:

220 VMware Authentication Daemon Version 1.10: SSL Required, MKSDisplayProtocol:VNC

I see VNC mentioned there. I need a VNC client? I thought that there was supposed to be some sort of web management interface.

Now what? I have no idea what to do. I don't know how to start a VM and install an OS there. I don't know how to get to the management interface. The VMWare Server and MUI installations seemed to create some desktop icons, but I don't even have X or any window manager installed.

Also, I seem to have to SSH to the Debian VMWare server box via its IP. Is there some way I could use the hostname? Note: this is a home LAN. There's no DNS server or anything.

Edit: Ok, I got to the man page for vmware, and found you can just type "vmware" to start a virtual machine. When I do that, it just says "Gtk: cannot open display:" and brings me back to the prompt.

Does this mean that I have to install X and Gnome? If so, how do I go about that. I went into dselect and looked through a list of packages but didn't find X.org or Gnome or anything like that, and I don't know the package names off-hand.

 

[scottws]

Well I installed x-window-system, and that didn't work. Same error. If I try startx, it says it can't find my mouse (which I configured on /dev/input/mice) and craps out. Of course, I don't have a window manager or desktop installed, so I don't know what good it would do to startx.

I can't seem to find anything anywhere that tells me what I need installed to get VMWare Server to run. I don't want to have to restort to reinstalling the OS and selecting the packages for a desktop environment and a file server environment if I don't need that stuff.

 

[drag]

That beta Vmware server thing runs right on your desktop, just like any other application.

So you need to have X Windows running and installed. You don't have to worry about the GTK libraries. Looks like the vmware stuff provides their own if you don't have any installed.

by default X Windows provides a ancient window manager called TWM. It's pretty crappy, but it will work if you get startx to work.

For the mouse stuff, I am not sure. Try to install hotplug and udev stuff if your running Debian stable.

If you don't want to muck around with installing this or that then just use tasksel command and check mark off 'desktop environment' or whatnot to install everything you need.

Its only realy a problem if your hard up for disk space. If you don't mind giving up a few hundred megs of disk space then it shouldn't have much of a impact otherwise. If you install the full gnome desktop environment you can always turn it off by going "/etc/init.d/gdm stop" and it isn't going to consume any resources or have anything extra running after doing that. If you don't want it to start up automaticly just chmod -x /etc/init.d/gdm and you can manually start it up and shut it down by specifing the shell interpreter by going 'bash /etc/init.d/gdm start' and whatnot.

 

[scottws]

Originally posted by: drag
That beta Vmware server thing runs right on your desktop, just like any other application.

So you need to have X Windows running and installed. You don't have to worry about the GTK libraries. Looks like the vmware stuff provides their own if you don't have any installed.

That sucks. I was hoping to just run like SSH and the VMWare Server and that's it. Oh well, at least I know now. Thanks.

For the mouse stuff, I am not sure. Try to install hotplug and udev stuff if your running Debian stable.

Yeah, Debian stable (Sarge). Thanks for the tip.

If you don't want to muck around with installing this or that then just use tasksel command and check mark off 'desktop environment' or whatnot to install everything you need.

Its only realy a problem if your hard up for disk space. If you don't mind giving up a few hundred megs of disk space then it shouldn't have much of a impact otherwise. If you install the full gnome desktop environment you can always turn it off by going "/etc/init.d/gdm stop" and it isn't going to consume any resources or have anything extra running after doing that. If you don't want it to start up automaticly just chmod -x /etc/init.d/gdm and you can manually start it up and shut it down by specifing the shell interpreter by going 'bash /etc/init.d/gdm start' and whatnot.

Do you think that VMWare Server could work with XFCE? Maybe I'll give that a shot. Anything else you think I'll need to get this to work from the base install?

I appreciate the comments and tips, drag.

 

[drag]

Your welcome.

XFCE should work fine. Might as well install the entire desktop stuff though and just select XFCE instead of default gnome at the graphical login screen.

Later on you can probably get VNC setup and use that if you desktop is Windows to start up vmware server and such. In Linux it's a multipuser environment so the normal vnc stuff use it's own X session seperate from what you have (or have not) running on your remote computer. (takes a little bit of effort and configuration editing to get your window manager and stuff running how you'd like it though)

Otherwise if your using Linux for the desktop then it's simple to setup X to forward over ssh so that you can display applications on remote computers localy. And if you have to go over a slow link or over the internet then something like FreeNX or whatnot can provide very good compression.. even enough you can run stuff over dialup, supposadly.

 

[scottws]

My main desktop is Windows, but there is a Windows VMWare Server Client Console you can install. And there is the web management interface.

I don't anticipate having to get the graphical interface remotely. I was planning on using SSH and/or the Client Console as much as I could to manage both the VMWare Server and the virtual machines.

 

[scottws]

Originally posted by: drag
If you install the full gnome desktop environment you can always turn it off by going "/etc/init.d/gdm stop" and it isn't going to consume any resources or have anything extra running after doing that. If you don't want it to start up automaticly just chmod -x /etc/init.d/gdm and you can manually start it up and shut it down by specifing the shell interpreter by going 'bash /etc/init.d/gdm start' and whatnot.

chmod? Doesn't that change the permissions for the script?

I think what I'll do instead is try to get runlevels set up like a Red Hat system, since I learned that with Debian, everything is the same for runlevel 2-5. Then what I'll do is boot into runlevel 3, which will be multiuser console+networking. If I want to go into my desktop (XFCE), I'll init 5.

Feasible for a Linux n00b?

 

[drag]

Ya. That chmod command will make the file non-executable. So during bootup when your system tries to run it it will fail and not start up gdm. Later on if you want to run it you can just specify the interpretor (in this case bash) to run it manually like such.

That's the lazy way to do it. If you want to do it properly and customize the runlevels then that's pretty easy to do. There are various rc.* directories in your /etc/ directory. These coorispond to your various runlevels. In those directories are symbolic links to various scripts that are stored in /etc/init.d directory. The symbolic links have a extra number and letter tacked on to the end of the filename. That way when the system boots up it can then just go to that directory and execute those scripts in order.

So you need to remove or add those symbolic links to what runlevel directory you want to configure weither or not you want this or that script to run.

Debian provides various small tools to help automate this sort of thing, although it's perfectly fine to do things manually. If it works, it works. What does it matter?

For details on this you can look at the Debian NewbieDoc wiki. http://newbiedoc.berlios.de/wiki/Articles

They have a article specificly for runlevels.

 

[scottws]

Yeah, I've seen that Debian has "update-rc.d," but I haven't actually checked out the utility for myself yet.

I still have to reformat and reinstall the Debian distro so that I can set it up properly. I hopelessly screwed-up the current install.

Thanks for the link to the website. I think that will be quite helpful.

One more question. What do you think of xfs? I've heard more than once that, while ext3 is robust, it's also quite slow. I've heard that xfs, as a journaling file system as well, is robust and fast. But I've also heard that xfs isn't that mature on Linux like it is with UNIX. What do you think? I was thinking of running an xfs file system instead of ext3.

 

[Brazen]

Originally posted by: scottws

Originally posted by: drag
If you install the full gnome desktop environment you can always turn it off by going "/etc/init.d/gdm stop" and it isn't going to consume any resources or have anything extra running after doing that. If you don't want it to start up automaticly just chmod -x /etc/init.d/gdm and you can manually start it up and shut it down by specifing the shell interpreter by going 'bash /etc/init.d/gdm start' and whatnot.

chmod? Doesn't that change the permissions for the script?

I think what I'll do instead is try to get runlevels set up like a Red Hat system, since I learned that with Debian, everything is the same for runlevel 2-5. Then what I'll do is boot into runlevel 3, which will be multiuser console+networking. If I want to go into my desktop (XFCE), I'll init 5.

Feasible for a Linux n00b?

*groan* It sounds like you've been getting some bad information. You don't need X on the box running VMWare Server. From this post:

Originally posted by: scottws
Ok, I currently have my old HP installed with Debian, and I have VMWare Server and the MUI up and running. I tried connecting to the IP of the PC on port 902 from Firefox on another PC in the LAN, but just get:

220 VMware Authentication Daemon Version 1.10: SSL Required, MKSDisplayProtocol:VNC

I see VNC mentioned there. I need a VNC client? I thought that there was supposed to be some sort of web management interface.

Now what? I have no idea what to do. I don't know how to start a VM and install an OS there. I don't know how to get to the management interface. The VMWare Server and MUI installations seemed to create some desktop icons, but I don't even have X or any window manager installed.

Also, I seem to have to SSH to the Debian VMWare server box via its IP. Is there some way I could use the hostname? Note: this is a home LAN. There's no DNS server or anything.

Edit: Ok, I got to the man page for vmware, and found you can just type "vmware" to start a virtual machine. When I do that, it just says "Gtk: cannot open display:" and brings me back to the prompt.

Does this mean that I have to install X and Gnome? If so, how do I go about that. I went into dselect and looked through a list of packages but didn't find X.org or Gnome or anything like that, and I don't know the package names off-hand.

It looks like you had it set up exactly right; you just don't connect through port 902 from firefox, you connect to port 8333 (if SSL enabled, or port 8222 if no SSL). Port 902 is for the VMWare console. Once you connect to the mui on port 8333 from a Windows box, it will have a link to download and install the console. Download it and install it, run it, and tell it the server name that VMWare is running on, and it will connect through port 902.

 

[Brazen]

Originally posted by: scottws
My main desktop is Windows, but there is a Windows VMWare Server Client Console you can install. And there is the web management interface.

I don't anticipate having to get the graphical interface remotely. I was planning on using SSH and/or the Client Console as much as I could to manage both the VMWare Server and the virtual machines.

This absolutely can be done. If you haven't fubared it yet from messing with X, then it should be already to go. You just need to connect into the server using the VMWare Client Console on Windows. Just so you know, too, the web mui doesn't really let you view the virtual machines, but it does let you check their status and resource usage.

 

[scottws]

Originally posted by: Brazen

Originally posted by: scottws

Originally posted by: drag
If you install the full gnome desktop environment you can always turn it off by going "/etc/init.d/gdm stop" and it isn't going to consume any resources or have anything extra running after doing that. If you don't want it to start up automaticly just chmod -x /etc/init.d/gdm and you can manually start it up and shut it down by specifing the shell interpreter by going 'bash /etc/init.d/gdm start' and whatnot.

chmod? Doesn't that change the permissions for the script?

I think what I'll do instead is try to get runlevels set up like a Red Hat system, since I learned that with Debian, everything is the same for runlevel 2-5. Then what I'll do is boot into runlevel 3, which will be multiuser console+networking. If I want to go into my desktop (XFCE), I'll init 5.

Feasible for a Linux n00b?

*groan* It sounds like you've been getting some bad information. You don't need X on the box running VMWare Server. From this post:

Originally posted by: scottws
Ok, I currently have my old HP installed with Debian, and I have VMWare Server and the MUI up and running. I tried connecting to the IP of the PC on port 902 from Firefox on another PC in the LAN, but just get:

220 VMware Authentication Daemon Version 1.10: SSL Required, MKSDisplayProtocol:VNC

I see VNC mentioned there. I need a VNC client? I thought that there was supposed to be some sort of web management interface.

Now what? I have no idea what to do. I don't know how to start a VM and install an OS there. I don't know how to get to the management interface. The VMWare Server and MUI installations seemed to create some desktop icons, but I don't even have X or any window manager installed.

Also, I seem to have to SSH to the Debian VMWare server box via its IP. Is there some way I could use the hostname? Note: this is a home LAN. There's no DNS server or anything.

Edit: Ok, I got to the man page for vmware, and found you can just type "vmware" to start a virtual machine. When I do that, it just says "Gtk: cannot open display:" and brings me back to the prompt.

Does this mean that I have to install X and Gnome? If so, how do I go about that. I went into dselect and looked through a list of packages but didn't find X.org or Gnome or anything like that, and I don't know the package names off-hand.

It looks like you had it set up exactly right; you just don't connect through port 902 from firefox, you connect to port 8333 (if SSL enabled, or port 8222 if no SSL). Port 902 is for the VMWare console. Once you connect to the mui on port 8333 from a Windows box, it will have a link to download and install the console. Download it and install it, run it, and tell it the server name that VMWare is running on, and it will connect through port 902.

Thanks for the info (especially for the web interface), but how do I create clients with no X server? I tried the "vmware" command, but you can see that in my quoted post that Gtk was encountering an error trying to initialize the display.

 

[Brazen]

Originally posted by: Smilin

Originally posted by: 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).

The poster already has a Windows host bought and paid for that will run Virtual Server.

Sometimes, more than just the OP reads these threads.

 

[Brazen]

Originally posted by: scottws
...
Thanks for the info (especially for the web interface), but how do I create clients with no X server? I tried the "vmware" command, but you can see that in my quoted post that Gtk was encountering an error trying to initialize the display.

You don't create clients. You create virtual machines. You don't need to create anything in order to connect from the client console. Forget about the "vmware" command on the linux box.

Assuming you just answered all the defaults to the vmware-config.pl and the vmware-install.pl (or whatever those exact commands were), the server is already running as a daemon and ready to be connected to. I assume you've already opened up firewall ports 902 and 8333, then all you need to do is fire up the client console from your Windows workstation, give it the IP address and use your linux box's root account for the username and password, and you are ready to go. Once connected with the client console you should have an option for creating a new virtual machine.

 

[scottws]

Originally posted by: Brazen
You don't create clients. You create virtual machines.

Of course. I don't know why I posted "clients." Oops!

You don't need to create anything in order to connect from the client console. Forget about the "vmware" command on the linux box.

Assuming you just answered all the defaults to the vmware-config.pl and the vmware-install.pl (or whatever those exact commands were), the server is already running as a daemon and ready to be connected to. I assume you've already opened up firewall ports 902 and 8333, then all you need to do is fire up the client console from your Windows workstation, give it the IP address and use your linux box's root account for the username and password, and you are ready to go. Once connected with the client console you should have an option for creating a new virtual machine.

Sweet. Thanks. I didn't know where to go before. Looks like I'll have this thing up and runnning by late tomorrow morning then.

Then it's off to figuring out Samba...

 

[drag]

hrm. I figured it was like the vmware player stuff since the error with the missing $DISPLAY stuff.

Oh well.

I knew that installing X wouldn't mess anything up, though. It just wastes disk space if your not using it.

 

[Brazen]

We all make mistakes. And by "we" I mean "you."

 

[scottws]

Sweet. I got Debian base reinstalled, installed ssh-krb5, and installed the vmware-server and mui. As Brazen said, the management console is key here. Works like a champ. I'm currently installing Debian on the virtual machine which will become the fileserver.

Edit: Man, this HP machine is barely cutting it. So drag was definately right there. CPU seems to be most important. I've only got 640MB of memory, but the VMWare server is only using 120MB of it. However, I'm utilizing like 90% of the CPU at times, and usually 40% or above.

Edit 2: Any tips on hardening both the host system and the virtual guest? Both on Debian.

For instance on the host, I'd like to close all ports except 22, 902, and 8333. But I don't think a firewall is installed. I also don't know if I did that if it would affect the guest.

 

[scottws]

Well... success!

I have a running Samba file server inside a virtual machine. I can access the shared directories and create/delete files there from my Windows box. I haven't tried it from any other log-ins, but I suspect they won't work since I only have one user (other than root) set up on the Samba "box." I'll play with that later.

The only other things I'd like to do now is figure out how to secure these two machines to figure out how to get swat tunneled through SSL so I could manage my Samba shares through a web interface. Right now swat is disabled for security reasons. I've tried to run it over SSL through stunnel, but I must be doing something wrong. I've seen some configuration guides for syslog and for swat (but not on a Debian system), but they don't seem to work for me. I must be doing something wrong.

 

[Brazen]

as far as setting up the firewall, install Webmin, on both the host and the guest. It is super easy to administer the firewall from Webmin. You can probably apt-get webmin onto the machine and then login from a web browser to port 10000 with your root account.