SharkD wrote:
> What OS can the software run in? You might make use of virtualization 
> (VMWare, VirtualPC, etc.) to solve your problem.

Yeah, I've been thinking about that.

I have a laptop with a USB to serial adaptor, but the software 
stubbornly *refuses* to use it. If I were to set up a virtual machine, 
then the software would be unable to tell it's accessing a USB device; 
it would look like a native serial port.

OTOH, last time I tried to set up a virtual machine, it took two days 
just to install Windows XP and update to service pack 3. That's quite 
absurdly slow...

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On Thu, 13 Aug 2009 09:17:10 +0100, Invisible wrote:

> OTOH, last time I tried to set up a virtual machine, it took two days
> just to install Windows XP and update to service pack 3. That's quite
> absurdly slow...

You need better hardware.  It should never take that much time to install 
an OS - in my VMs, it never took that long....

What specs on the machine (including host OS)?

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Invisible wrote:
> OTOH, last time I tried to set up a virtual machine, it took two days
> just to install Windows XP and update to service pack 3. That's quite
> absurdly slow...

Was it VirtualBox 3.0 with multi-core (SMP) enabled?

When I tried that, it took several hours for Windows XP to install, on an
AMD 4200+ CPU. VBox SMP support still sucks.

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>> OTOH, last time I tried to set up a virtual machine, it took two days
>> just to install Windows XP and update to service pack 3. That's quite
>> absurdly slow...
> 
> You need better hardware.  It should never take that much time to install 
> an OS - in my VMs, it never took that long....
> 
> What specs on the machine (including host OS)?

 From memory, it was a 4 GHz Pentium IV with 512 MB RAM, running QEMU.

(The laptops I'm looking at using are this spec or worse.)

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On Fri, 14 Aug 2009 11:19:06 +0100, Invisible wrote:

>>> OTOH, last time I tried to set up a virtual machine, it took two days
>>> just to install Windows XP and update to service pack 3. That's quite
>>> absurdly slow...
>> 
>> You need better hardware.  It should never take that much time to
>> install an OS - in my VMs, it never took that long....
>> 
>> What specs on the machine (including host OS)?
> 
>  From memory, it was a 4 GHz Pentium IV with 512 MB RAM, running QEMU.
> 
> (The laptops I'm looking at using are this spec or worse.)

Memory would be the issue here, no wonder it took forever to install, it 
was probably swapping fiercely.

For good virtualization, you really need to have at least 1 or 2 GB of 
memory.  Insufficient host memory can lead to serious performance 
problems.

Jim

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>>>> OTOH, last time I tried to set up a virtual machine, it took two days
>>>> just to install Windows XP and update to service pack 3. That's quite
>>>> absurdly slow...
>>> You need better hardware.  It should never take that much time to
>>> install an OS - in my VMs, it never took that long....
>>>
>>> What specs on the machine (including host OS)?
>>  From memory, it was a 4 GHz Pentium IV with 512 MB RAM, running QEMU.
>>
>> (The laptops I'm looking at using are this spec or worse.)
> 
> Memory would be the issue here, no wonder it took forever to install, it 
> was probably swapping fiercely.
> 
> For good virtualization, you really need to have at least 1 or 2 GB of 
> memory.  Insufficient host memory can lead to serious performance 
> problems.

It didn't seem to be swapping *at all*. Hardly any HD activity. Just 
100% CPU, constantly.

I've heard people claim that the problem is QEMU - which is a user-mode 
hardware emulator rather than a virtualisation program that runs most 
code natively... but having never seen any other VM product, I don't 
know if it makes much difference.

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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On Sat, 15 Aug 2009 07:13:56 +0100, Orchid XP v8 wrote:

>>>>> OTOH, last time I tried to set up a virtual machine, it took two
>>>>> days just to install Windows XP and update to service pack 3. That's
>>>>> quite absurdly slow...
>>>> You need better hardware.  It should never take that much time to
>>>> install an OS - in my VMs, it never took that long....
>>>>
>>>> What specs on the machine (including host OS)?
>>>  From memory, it was a 4 GHz Pentium IV with 512 MB RAM, running QEMU.
>>>
>>> (The laptops I'm looking at using are this spec or worse.)
>> 
>> Memory would be the issue here, no wonder it took forever to install,
>> it was probably swapping fiercely.
>> 
>> For good virtualization, you really need to have at least 1 or 2 GB of
>> memory.  Insufficient host memory can lead to serious performance
>> problems.
> 
> It didn't seem to be swapping *at all*. Hardly any HD activity. Just
> 100% CPU, constantly.

If for some reason the guest OS isn't relinquishing control to the host 
(which can happen), that also would explain it.  But if your host OS 
requires 256 MB to run and the guest requires 256 MB to run, there's no 
memory left for the actual virtualization software, so it has to get 
memory from somewhere.

512 MB is a fairly low spec for any system doing virtualization, 
regardless of the software.  My bet is still on memory.

> I've heard people claim that the problem is QEMU - which is a user-mode
> hardware emulator rather than a virtualisation program that runs most
> code natively... but having never seen any other VM product, I don't
> know if it makes much difference.

Grab VMware Server from http://www.vmware.com - it's free.  Not quite as 
easy to use as VMware Workstation, but WS is a pay-for product.

Jim

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> We have some equipment in our lab. It needs a computer to control it. 
> Unfortunately, the control software requires somebody to be logged in. As 
> soon as you log out, it quits the control program, halting the machine.

Can't you just lock the machine instead of logging off?

> Except that the control software stubbornly, repeatedly *refuses* to 
> believe me that the USB serial port actually exists. Every other piece of 
> software I've tried can access it without issue. But not the one piece of 
> software that we *need* to access it. No sir. Not interested. It can "see" 
> the port, but it refuses to *select* that port. And nothing I've done so 
> far seems to convince it to work.

OOC what COM port number is assigned to the USB COM port?  If it's higher 
than 4 then you might try changing it to 4 or below (you can usually do it 
from device manager under the properties of the USB-COM adapter).  Some 
older programs don't like working with things like COM7 which those USB 
converters typically come up as.

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>> We have some equipment in our lab. It needs a computer to control it. 
>> Unfortunately, the control software requires somebody to be logged in. 
>> As soon as you log out, it quits the control program, halting the 
>> machine.
> 
> Can't you just lock the machine instead of logging off?

The issue being that it is then impossible for anyone except the person 
logged on to discover if the machine is still running OK, how far it's 
got, etc.

If we used the other software, this problem would be 100% solved. The 
other software runs as a service, multiple people can access it, you can 
set up access controls and auditing... the whole nine yards. But the 
people at the top can't be bothered to put in the effort to test it, so 
we can't use it.

>> Except that the control software stubbornly, repeatedly *refuses* to 
>> believe me that the USB serial port actually exists. Every other piece 
>> of software I've tried can access it without issue. But not the one 
>> piece of software that we *need* to access it. No sir. Not interested. 
>> It can "see" the port, but it refuses to *select* that port. And 
>> nothing I've done so far seems to convince it to work.
> 
> OOC what COM port number is assigned to the USB COM port?  If it's 
> higher than 4 then you might try changing it to 4 or below (you can 
> usually do it from device manager under the properties of the USB-COM 
> adapter).  Some older programs don't like working with things like COM7 
> which those USB converters typically come up as.

Defaults to COM3. I've tried changing it to COM2 also. (COM1 is the 
built-in modem.)

However, today I obtained the latest version of the control software, 
and it now works perfectly with the USB adaptor. Go figure...

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>>> We have some equipment in our lab. It needs a computer to control it. 
>>> Unfortunately, the control software requires somebody to be logged in. 
>>> As soon as you log out, it quits the control program, halting the 
>>> machine.
>>
>> Can't you just lock the machine instead of logging off?
>
> The issue being that it is then impossible for anyone except the person 
> logged on to discover if the machine is still running OK, how far it's 
> got, etc.

Set up a "lab" user or some such that everyone knows the login for, we have 
that here to solve exactly that problem with our temperature logging 
software.  OOC, are normal applications required to carry on running if the 
user who started them logs off?  I have no idea.

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