1.7 VM tips

I'd need an idea how to best setup a VM for cygwin-1.7
testing.
I thought of:
   Get a vmware license,
   use my xp home sp2 installation cd
   and do a blank windows install.

Aren't there cheaper and equally easy options? I only have
coLinux, and 
I'm pretty happy with it because its actually faster than
Windows.
But a vmware xp inside xp seems pretty slow and expensive to
me.

Now I read that VMware Server is free. So it looks pretty
good.
But are there better options?
MS VirtualPC, Bochs, Xen, QEMU, or such?

VMX-Builder also sounds nice.
-- 
Reini Urban
http://phpwiki.org/  http://murbreak.at/

On Thu, May 08, 2008 at 08:03:56PM +0200, Reini Urban
wrote:
> I'd need an idea how to best setup a VM for cygwin-1.7
testing.
> I thought of:
>   Get a vmware license,
>   use my xp home sp2 installation cd
>   and do a blank windows install.
>
> Aren't there cheaper and equally easy options? I only
have coLinux, and I'm 
> pretty happy with it because its actually faster than
Windows.
> But a vmware xp inside xp seems pretty slow and
expensive to me.
>
> Now I read that VMware Server is free. So it looks
pretty good.
> But are there better options?
> MS VirtualPC, Bochs, Xen, QEMU, or such?
>
> VMX-Builder also sounds nice.

I've been meaning to try out http://virtualbox.org/ . 
It seems to be free even though
Sun bought the company.

cgf

Reini Urban wrote:

> I'd need an idea how to best setup a VM for cygwin-1.7
testing.

You don't need virtualization for that, just put it in a
separate tree. 
Virtualization is of course handy for other reasons but by
no means
required.

> I thought of:
>    Get a vmware license,
>    use my xp home sp2 installation cd
>    and do a blank windows install.

VMware player is free.  It was intended for use with
pre-made
"appliances" but there's no reason you can't use
it with your own images
just like the full VMware product.  In other words, the only
part that's
actually lacking in the player is the ability to create and
edit your
own image, but the config file is simply a plain text file
and the disk
images can be created with free tools, so there's nothing
stopping you
from doing it yourself.  See
<http://www.ffnn.nl/pages/articles/li
nux/vmware-player-image-creation.php>
or <http://www.li
nux.com/articles/54411> or
<http://johnbo
kma.com/vmware-player/> or google.

Brian

Reini Urban wrote:
> 
> Now I read that VMware Server is free. 

True.  We rely heavily on it here.  Most of our VMs are
various Linux 
flavors, but we do have a Windows box or two in there as
well.

It has a really neat feature in that you can run the server
on a 
different box than the client, but see the VM's display just
as if it 
were local.  This avoids the need for VNC, X, or RDP.  Linux
being 
Linux, you only need this while setting up the VM, before
its networking 
setup is complete.  For Windows, you might find yourself
using it for 
everything.

It behaves just like a "workstation" type VM
product (Parallels, VMWare 
Workstation, Virtual PC...) in that you get a PC in a
window.  There's 
not much slowdown working remotely this way, no doubt
because VMWare 
Tools installs a special VGA driver that gives it low-level
access to 
the screen updates.

You don't even have to physically stick a CD or DVD into the
server's 
drive most of the time: VMWare Server will boot from an ISO
image.  This 
has the secondary advantage that reading an ISO from the
local hard disk 
is faster than using a real optical disk.

A few days ago I did try using VMWare Server on my Windows
XP machine, 
and it worked fine for the most part, but it broke network
multicasting. 
  (All other networking functions were fine.)  But, because
of the 
beauty of virtualization, I just freeze dried the VM image,
scp'd it 
over to the Linux server, and started the VM right back up
over there. 
After I uninstalled VMWare Server here, I was back in
business.  Being 
able to just pause a machine and put it away until you need
it again is 
very easy to get addicted to. 

I also noticed that VMWare Server installs much faster on
Linux.  I 
heard a different horror story about someone using VMWare
Server on 
Windows the other day, and I suspect his troubles were due
to cancelling 
out of the installer halfway through, because he thought it
was hung.  I 
doubt it; it's just slow... :(  It runs fine once installed,
but it's 
clearly not quite at home on a Windows box.

I've also used Virtual PC on this machine.  It works fine
for running 
Windows, but I only used it because it comes with MSDN. 
(Also useful 
for the OS disk ISOs.)  I think I tried a Linux install on
it and found 
it quirky.  VMWare is just more mature in that way.

On May  8 19:36, Warren Young wrote:
> Reini Urban wrote:
>> Now I read that VMware Server is free. 
>
> True.  We rely heavily on it here.  Most of our VMs are
various Linux 
> flavors, but we do have a Windows box or two in there
as well.

All my Windows boxes are virtual, running in VMware Server
under Linux
and I'm quite happy with it.

> It has a really neat feature in that you can run the
server on a different 
> box than the client, but see the VM's display just as
if it were local.  
> This avoids the need for VNC, X, or RDP.  Linux being
Linux, you only need 
> this while setting up the VM, before its networking
setup is complete.  For 
> Windows, you might find yourself using it for
everything.

I'm rather using the (XP and later) built-in terminal
service and
rdesktop to connect.  Stuff like copy/paste from the Linux
desktop to
the VM and vice versa works better with rdesktop.


Corinna

On 8-May-2008 20:03, Reini Urban wrote:
> I'd need an idea how to best setup a VM for cygwin-1.7
testing.
> I thought of:
> Get a vmware license,
> use my xp home sp2 installation cd
> and do a blank windows install.
>
> Aren't there cheaper and equally easy options? 
An easy way might be to use one of the IE testing VPC images
from 
<http
://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=70868>, on Virtual
PC from 
<http://www.microsoft.com/windows/
products/winfamily/virtualpc/default.mspx>.

– Michael