My only experience of VM technology so far has been with a freeware 
program called QEMU. (I also briefly touched BOCHS, but never really 
used it much.)

QEMU has the nice feature that it's, like, 1.5 MB or something, and it 
doesn't need to be "installed"; you just run it. That means you can put 
a VM image and a copy of QEMU onto a USB stick, and take it anywhere and 
run it on any PC. And when you're gone, there will be no evidence that 
you were ever there. You can run Windows, Linux, MS-DOS, whatever.

Only trouble is, it runs slower than treacle. But hey, you're running a 
PC emulator ON A PC! What do you expect?

So anyway, it turns out we have a license for me to install VMware 
Workstation on my PC. I have now done so. Observations:

- OK, wow. This sucker is a 0.5GB download?! o_O

- Oh man, this is some serious product. It's installing custom device 
drivers all over the place. Custom network driver (presumably for 
connecting the VM to the Real World?), custom USB driver (so, what, you 
can use physical USB devices from inside the virtual machine?), custom 
video driver (uh, why...?) This is gonna be good...

- OK, this thing has some pretty sweet management capabilities. With 
QEMU, you run the image tool to create an empty HD image, and then you 
run QEMU.EXE with half a billion switches to tell it where the disk 
images are and what hardware to emulate. (If you're sensible, you will 
put this in a batch file!) Once you've got a few VMs and several 
snapshots, good luck keeping track of all your files! o_O VMware seems 
to make all this way, way easier.

- My God, installing Windows on a VM is *faster* than installing it on a 
physical PC?! How is this possible?? O_O (OK, actually, installing from 
the Windows CD is about the same speed. But installing from an ISO image 
of the CD is much faster. I guess my fileserver's RAID array can serve 
data faster than a cheap optical drive, eh?)

- Heh, interesting. It askes for a bunch of settings to autoconfigure 
Windows, and then doesn't use them anyway. That's cute.

- I can't believe how fast the VM runs, or how little system resources 
it requires. I've allowed 0.5GB of RAM to it, and yet it seems to be 
using less RAM than Outlook. (Outlook eats 30MB, VMware takes only 
27MB.) While the VM isn't doing anything, it takes no CPU power. In 
fact, most of the time it seemingly takes no CPU power. The only thing 
it really does hammar is the HD, which makes the rest of the computer 
seem kinda sluggish at times...

- Nice how it shows you CD, HD and network activity on the side on the 
window. If only there was a CPU indicator...

- I like the "snapshot manager" thingy. That's really nice.

- Pity the VMware window insists on constantly resizing itself, even 
when I tell it not to. Ooo, but in fullscreen mode, Windows changes its 
resolution to match my screen. (Presumably due to the VMware Tools that 
automatically installed itself.) I wonder if there's some way to make 
the activity indicators still appear in fullscreen mode?

OK, time to go check out the thing I actually came to test... ;-)

Post a reply to this message

Invisible wrote:

> So anyway, it turns out we have a license for me to install VMware 
> Workstation on my PC. I have now done so.
> 
> OK, time to go check out the thing I actually came to test... ;-)

Wow... OK, Word 2007? Nothing like any other version of Word, ever. 
Like, the UI is COMPLETELY DIFFERENT now. Wow. o_O

Post a reply to this message

Invisible wrote:
> 
> Wow... OK, Word 2007? Nothing like any other version of Word, ever.
> Like, the UI is COMPLETELY DIFFERENT now. Wow. o_O

Yes. You don't read the news? Office 2007 is over 2 years old already...

-Aero

Post a reply to this message

>> Wow... OK, Word 2007? Nothing like any other version of Word, ever.
>> Like, the UI is COMPLETELY DIFFERENT now. Wow. o_O
> 
> Yes. You don't read the news? Office 2007 is over 2 years old already...

There's a place where a new version of Office is considered newsworthy?

Post a reply to this message

Invisible wrote:
> 
> There's a place where a new version of Office is considered newsworthy?

No, but the new UI is *krhm* was.

-Aero

Post a reply to this message

>> There's a place where a new version of Office is considered newsworthy?
> 
> No, but the new UI is *krhm* was.

Oh well, today is the first time I've ever had a chance to see Office 
2007. I guess now I understand why we're still not deploying it yet. ;-)

Presumably the idea is that it looks nice with Vista?

I wonder... Is 2007 still the latest version? What's the next release 
planned to be?

Post a reply to this message

> Wow... OK, Word 2007? Nothing like any other version of Word, ever. 
> Like, the UI is COMPLETELY DIFFERENT now. Wow. o_O

Dude, it's almost 2010!

Post a reply to this message

scott wrote:

> Dude, it's almost 2010!

...and?

Where I work, nobody is using 2007 yet. We're still using 2003.

(And it's not like I'm going to *pay money* to get a product I don't 
even use for my home PC.)

Post a reply to this message

Invisible wrote:

> Wow... OK, Word 2007? Nothing like any other version of Word, ever. 
> Like, the UI is COMPLETELY DIFFERENT now. Wow. o_O

Thing #1: OK, the default Word styles are *a lot* more fancy now.

Thing #2: Oh my ****ing God, changing styles ACTUALLY WORKS NOW!!! 8-O

Literally. Like, I wrote some stuff, flipped through a few of the "style 
sets", and the whole document instantly changed. AND IT ACTUALLY WORKED 
PROPERLY!

Possibly even more surprising is that the default style sets are... 
well, nice. As in, you might conceivably *use* them. (Usually the 
default styles are something you have to spent four weeks getting rid of 
and replacing with something worth having.)

An M$ product that actually gets better? Now there's something you don't 
very often see...

Post a reply to this message

Invisible wrote:
> - I like the "snapshot manager" thingy. That's really nice.

Be careful you don't turn on the snapshot and leave it for a long time. 
("long time" being "more than a day".)  It's writing all the changes to a 
new file, and when it's time to integrate that back into the main disk (if 
you want to), it takes a loooooong time if the snapshot is big.  Just don't 
leave it on by accident and work on stuff for a week, or you'll spend five 
hours putting the changes back in the disk.


This is also good info:

http://www.luisrocha.net/2008/11/splitting-your-vmware-virtual-disk-into.html

Helpful when it comes time to start backing up this sucker.

If you're running Linux (or any other OS that's easy to zero unused 
sectors), you can make disk backups really small by zeroing unused sectors, 
then copying the files into a compressed directory on Windows. (I suppose 
gzipping them under Linux would work just as well, for that matter.)


-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Human nature dictates that toothpaste tubes spend
   much longer being almost empty than almost full.

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:
> Invisible wrote:
>> - I like the "snapshot manager" thingy. That's really nice.
> 
> Be careful you don't turn on the snapshot and leave it for a long time. 
> ("long time" being "more than a day".)  It's writing all the changes to 
> a new file, and when it's time to integrate that back into the main disk 
> (if you want to), it takes a loooooong time if the snapshot is big.  
> Just don't leave it on by accident and work on stuff for a week, or 
> you'll spend five hours putting the changes back in the disk.

Mmm, OK. I'll try to remember to not do that. ;-)

What I tend to do is install an OS or install an application, 
immediately take a snapshot, and then whenever I want to use the VM, 
start from that snapshot. So, like, if I'm going to play around with 
Office for a few hours, I'll go play. But if I then decide I want to do 
something specific and make a new snapshot, I'll restore the snapshot 
from just after when I installed Office, and go from there...

> This is also good info:
> 
> http://www.luisrocha.net/2008/11/splitting-your-vmware-virtual-disk-into.html 

Apparently there's an opion when creating the VM that asks if you want a 
single disk image or multiple such.

One thing I've noticed is that VMs take a surprisingly small amount of 
disk space. I mean, I give each VM an 8GB virtual disk, but I'm using 
nowhere near 8GB per VM. More like 2GB. Which is still a lot, but it's 
an 80GB disk that's 79% free...

> If you're running Linux (or any other OS that's easy to zero unused 
> sectors), you can make disk backups really small by zeroing unused 
> sectors, then copying the files into a compressed directory on Windows. 
> (I suppose gzipping them under Linux would work just as well, for that 
> matter.)

I was wondering if the VMtools it installs would provide a way to do 
this... but if it does, I don't see one. As for compression... does 
VMware not do that itself anyway? The snapshots look a *hell* of a lot 
smaller than the main disk image... (Like, less than 1GB each.)


Also... apparently VMware Player can do more than, um, play VMs now? (I 
just looked at what it would cost to buy myself a copy of VMware 
Workstation, but it's like £150 or something!)

Post a reply to this message

Invisible wrote:
> What I tend to do is install an OS or install an application, 

There's a disk mode for that, but sure, that works. If you're going to 
discard the snapshot, it's not a problem.

The other thing people use snapshots for is so they can either try someth
ing 
that might break things, or to make the vdisk back-up-able while it's run
ning.

> Apparently there's an opion when creating the VM that asks if you want 
a 
> single disk image or multiple such.

That's it.

> One thing I've noticed is that VMs take a surprisingly small amount of 

> disk space. I mean, I give each VM an 8GB virtual disk, but I'm using 
> nowhere near 8GB per VM. More like 2GB. Which is still a lot, but it's 

> an 80GB disk that's 79% free...

Right. The problem comes when you run out of host disk space while the VM
 
thinks there's still a bunch left.  If the VM is for playing around, then
 
you can worry much less about such.

You're aware that Vista and later comes with a free (but incompatible wit
h 
VMWare) VM system, right?  See if you have a program called "virtual PC" 
around.

> I was wondering if the VMtools it installs would provide a way to do 
> this... but if it does, I don't see one. As for compression... does 
> VMware not do that itself anyway? The snapshots look a *hell* of a lot 

> smaller than the main disk image... (Like, less than 1GB each.)

They're just not allocating the space in advance. I was talking about if 
you 
*do* allocate space in advance, then your *backups* could still be small.
 
Also helpful when you tend to unpack a 50G tarfile, do something with it,
 
then throw it away, leaving yourself a 50G empty vdisk file.

> Also... apparently VMware Player can do more than, um, play VMs now? (I
 
> just looked at what it would cost to buy myself a copy of VMware 
> Workstation, but it's like £150 or something!)

It's like any other OS. You could run things on a remote machine and cont
rol 
them from your desk, and stuff like that. I'm not really familiar with it
.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Human nature dictates that toothpaste tubes spend
   much longer being almost empty than almost full.

Post a reply to this message

Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> scott wrote:
>
> > Dude, it's almost 2010!
>
> ...and?
>
> Where I work, nobody is using 2007 yet. We're still using 2003.

Same here at work, until about a few months ago, since the change to Vista.  I`m
guessing 7 is just a matter of time, possibly just in time for an Off2010
deployment.  That's sick, as we don't have any time to adjust to the
everchanging interfaces.

> (And it's not like I'm going to *pay money* to get a product I don't
> even use for my home PC.)

what?!  How can you possibly write mail or SQL scripts without it?  Do you want
to sound dumb without a spell checker or miss that futurist word completion when
programming?

Post a reply to this message

Invisible wrote:
> 
> Oh well, today is the first time I've ever had a chance to see Office
> 2007. I guess now I understand why we're still not deploying it yet. ;-)

We have started :).

> Presumably the idea is that it looks nice with Vista?

I tend to believe Darren - O2k7 probably really *is* made for unlogical
people.

> I wonder... Is 2007 still the latest version? What's the next release
> planned to be?

AFAIK yes, 2010 should be next.

-Aero

Post a reply to this message

Eero Ahonen wrote:
> I tend to believe Darren - O2k7 probably really *is* made for unlogical
> people.

While I won't deny having said that, I certainly don't remember it. O2k7 was 
designed based on actual measurements of millions of people using Office. 
Most people aren't very logical. :-)

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Human nature dictates that toothpaste tubes spend
   much longer being almost empty than almost full.

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:

> The other thing people use snapshots for is so they can either try 
> something that might break things, or to make the vdisk back-up-able 
> while it's running.

I'm not planning to do any "work" with a VM, just testing. Stuff like:

- What happens if I open this file with Office 2007?
- I need a Linux box to quickly do some stuff.
- What happens if I install this random untrusted program I just found 
on the Internet? (But I don't want to *really* install it, or sign and 
date a legally-binding record stating that I installed it...)

>> Apparently there's an opion when creating the VM that asks if you want 
>> a single disk image or multiple such.
> 
> That's it.

Our VMware "expert" claims that pre-allowating the HD image can result 
in reduced load on the HD subsystem (obviously at the expense of more 
disk space eaten).

> You're aware that Vista and later comes with a free (but incompatible 
> with VMWare) VM system, right?  See if you have a program called 
> "virtual PC" around.

I hear that Windows 2003 Server (?) comes with a "hypervisor" which runs 
on the real metal, and then 2003 itself actually runs as a 
paravirtualised guest. Or something like that...

>> I was wondering if the VMtools it installs would provide a way to do 
>> this... but if it does, I don't see one. As for compression... does 
>> VMware not do that itself anyway? The snapshots look a *hell* of a lot 
>> smaller than the main disk image... (Like, less than 1GB each.)
> 
> They're just not allocating the space in advance. I was talking about if 
> you *do* allocate space in advance, then your *backups* could still be 
> small.

Ah, OK.

Given that the main disk image is 1.5GB but the snapshots are only 300MB 
each, I figured it was doing some sort of compression.

> Also helpful when you tend to unpack a 50G tarfile, do something 
> with it, then throw it away, leaving yourself a 50G empty vdisk file.

Oh, definitely. And that's why I was hoping that the VMware Tools might 
include a tool to zero unused sectors. But apparently not...

Ooo, hey. Crazy idea: I could set up my VM how I want, and then boot 
from the Ghost boot CD and take a Ghost image! It only copies used 
sectors, and has compression built-in.

>> Also... apparently VMware Player can do more than, um, play VMs now? 
>> (I just looked at what it would cost to buy myself a copy of VMware 
>> Workstation, but it's like £150 or something!)
> 
> It's like any other OS. You could run things on a remote machine and 
> control them from your desk, and stuff like that. I'm not really 
> familiar with it.

More annoyingly, to get VMware Player they demand that you register an 
account using a real name, etc.

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

Post a reply to this message

>> (And it's not like I'm going to *pay money* to get a product I don't
>> even use for my home PC.)
> 
> what?!  How can you possibly write mail or SQL scripts without it?  Do you want
> to sound dumb without a spell checker or miss that futurist word completion when
> programming?

I honestly can't actually determine whether he's serious or not...

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

Post a reply to this message

> O2k7 
> was designed based on actual measurements of millions of people using 
> Office.

The "ribbon" I keep hearing people muttering about?

> Most people aren't very logical. :-)

Well DUH! They're using M$ Office aren't they?

;-)

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

Post a reply to this message

Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>> O2k7 was designed based on actual measurements of millions of people 
>> using Office.
> 
> The "ribbon" I keep hearing people muttering about?

Yeah. I posted a talk about it a while back. It was interesting how they 
went about designing it, and why.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Human nature dictates that toothpaste tubes spend
   much longer being almost empty than almost full.

Post a reply to this message

Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Our VMware "expert" claims that pre-allowating the HD image can result 
> in reduced load on the HD subsystem (obviously at the expense of more 
> disk space eaten).

Probably.

> Given that the main disk image is 1.5GB but the snapshots are only 300MB 
> each, I figured it was doing some sort of compression.

No, it's just keeping a list of sectors you've ever written anything to.

> Oh, definitely. And that's why I was hoping that the VMware Tools might 
> include a tool to zero unused sectors. But apparently not...

Linux does.  I don't know of anything in vmware to deallocate sectors, even 
if they're all zeros.

> Ooo, hey. Crazy idea: I could set up my VM how I want, and then boot 
> from the Ghost boot CD and take a Ghost image! It only copies used 
> sectors, and has compression built-in.

That would probably work, yes.

> More annoyingly, to get VMware Player they demand that you register an 
> account using a real name, etc.

Why is that a problem?

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Human nature dictates that toothpaste tubes spend
   much longer being almost empty than almost full.

Post a reply to this message

>> Given that the main disk image is 1.5GB but the snapshots are only 
>> 300MB each, I figured it was doing some sort of compression.
> 
> No, it's just keeping a list of sectors you've ever written anything to.

I assumed that's what the main image file was doing also.

>> Oh, definitely. And that's why I was hoping that the VMware Tools 
>> might include a tool to zero unused sectors. But apparently not...
> 
> Linux does.  I don't know of anything in vmware to deallocate sectors, 
> even if they're all zeros.

Linux has a way to zero unused disk blocks?

(I'm not surprised that this doesn't make VMware release those blocks, 
however... Should make the file more compressible though.)

>> More annoyingly, to get VMware Player they demand that you register an 
>> account using a real name, etc.
> 
> Why is that a problem?

I dislike having to "register" to get my hands on supposedly "free" 
software.

In my mind, "free" software is software that you can use anywhere you 
want. But from the looks of this, the software has to be "activated". So 
even though it's "free", you can only have it on a single computer, and 
so on. And you have a serial number to not lose, and... it's just more 
hassel.

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

Post a reply to this message

Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>>> Given that the main disk image is 1.5GB but the snapshots are only 
>>> 300MB each, I figured it was doing some sort of compression.
>>
>> No, it's just keeping a list of sectors you've ever written anything to.
> 
> I assumed that's what the main image file was doing also.

It depends how you configure things.

> Linux has a way to zero unused disk blocks?

dd if=/dev/zero of=/xyzzy bs=1M count=... ; rm /xyzzy

> (I'm not surprised that this doesn't make VMware release those blocks, 
> however... Should make the file more compressible though.)

It does.

> I dislike having to "register" to get my hands on supposedly "free" 
> software.

There's an easy cure for that. :-)

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Human nature dictates that toothpaste tubes spend
   much longer being almost empty than almost full.

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:
> Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>> Linux has a way to zero unused disk blocks?
> 
> dd if=/dev/zero of=/xyzzy bs=1M count=... ; rm /xyzzy

There is a Windows program that uses just that technique.

Post a reply to this message

On 12/11/2009 5:02 AM, Invisible wrote:
> My only experience of VM technology so far has been with a freeware
> program called QEMU. (I also briefly touched BOCHS, but never really
> used it much.)

Andrew, you should check out Virtual Box, too:

http://www.virtualbox.org/

Sun's offering of a VM. It comes in an OpenSource and binary flavor, and 
can run on a variety of host systems. I've used it several times, and it 
works nicely, and seems to run at a decent clip.

-- 
~Mike

Post a reply to this message

On Fri, 11 Dec 2009 11:02:35 +0000, Invisible wrote:

> OK, time to go check out the thing I actually came to test... ;-)

Can i say "I told you so"? ;-)

Jim

Post a reply to this message

On Fri, 11 Dec 2009 16:27:53 +0000, Invisible wrote:

> One thing I've noticed is that VMs take a surprisingly small amount of
> disk space. I mean, I give each VM an 8GB virtual disk, but I'm using
> nowhere near 8GB per VM. More like 2GB. Which is still a lot, but it's
> an 80GB disk that's 79% free...

Disk that's not allocated in the VM takes no space - unless it previously 
held deleted files.  That's what the "shrink disk" option does - zeros 
out unused sectors in the VM's disk and removes them from the disk file.

Jim

Post a reply to this message

On Fri, 11 Dec 2009 08:45:39 -0800, Darren New wrote:

> The other thing people use snapshots for is so they can either try
> something that might break things, or to make the vdisk back-up-able
> while it's running.

I use it for having a "known good" state for my Windows VMs - that way, 
if things get hopelessly screwed up, I can go back to a state where 
things are known to be working.

I usually apply patches/updates (antivirus and the like), reboot, let it 
run for a little bit to see if there are any issues, and then merge the 
snapshot in with the base, shrink, and then take a new snap.

Jim

Post a reply to this message

On Fri, 11 Dec 2009 19:08:46 +0000, Orchid XP v8 wrote:

> Our VMware "expert" claims that pre-allowating the HD image can result
> in reduced load on the HD subsystem (obviously at the expense of more
> disk space eaten).

Yep, that's true.

>> You're aware that Vista and later comes with a free (but incompatible
>> with VMWare) VM system, right?  See if you have a program called
>> "virtual PC" around.
> 
> I hear that Windows 2003 Server (?) comes with a "hypervisor" which runs
> on the real metal, and then 2003 itself actually runs as a
> paravirtualised guest. Or something like that...

It can as long as the system hosting supports the right virtualization 
technology.

Jim

Post a reply to this message

On Fri, 11 Dec 2009 11:31:25 -0800, Darren New wrote:

>> Oh, definitely. And that's why I was hoping that the VMware Tools might
>> include a tool to zero unused sectors. But apparently not...
> 
> Linux does.  I don't know of anything in vmware to deallocate sectors,
> even if they're all zeros.

VMware tools' shrink functionality zeros the unused sectors out before 
shrinking it.  The Linux VMware tools do as well, for that matter.

Jim

Post a reply to this message

On Fri, 11 Dec 2009 19:36:42 +0000, Orchid XP v8 wrote:

>> Why is that a problem?
> 
> I dislike having to "register" to get my hands on supposedly "free"
> software.

mailinator.com - throwaway email addresses.

Jim

Post a reply to this message

Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
> There is a Windows program that uses just that technique.

You can do it by either writing a big file full of zeros yourself, or using 
the disk-defrag interface to manually put a block of zeros at each free spot 
on the disk, which is what cipher /w does.


-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Human nature dictates that toothpaste tubes spend
   much longer being almost empty than almost full.

Post a reply to this message

Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> >> (And it's not like I'm going to *pay money* to get a product I don't
> >> even use for my home PC.)
> >
> > what?!  How can you possibly write mail or SQL scripts without it?  Do you want
> > to sound dumb without a spell checker or miss that futurist word completion when
> > programming?
>
> I honestly can't actually determine whether he's serious or not...

That's called sarcasm, Betelgeuse dude.

Post a reply to this message

"nemesis" <nam### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> > >> (And it's not like I'm going to *pay money* to get a product I don't
> > >> even use for my home PC.)
> > >
> > > what?!  How can you possibly write mail or SQL scripts without it?  Do you want
> > > to sound dumb without a spell checker or miss that futurist word completion when
> > > programming?
> >
> > I honestly can't actually determine whether he's serious or not...
>
> That's called sarcasm, Betelgeuse dude.

notice however that there are some people who truly think like that.

Post a reply to this message

Semiunrelated...

OMG thank heavens for autosave.  Even when your spreadsheet is to 
corrupted for Excel to recover, it falls back to the most recent 
autosave.  Instead of, say, the last time you remembered to actually save.

More programs should have this feature.  :P

--
Tim Cook
http://empyrean.freesitespace.net

Post a reply to this message

Tim Cook wrote:
> Semiunrelated...
> 
> OMG thank heavens for autosave.  Even when your spreadsheet is to 
> corrupted for Excel to recover, it falls back to the most recent 
> autosave.  Instead of, say, the last time you remembered to actually save.
> 
> More programs should have this feature.  :P

I'm trying to remember a single instance in history when Excel has eaten 
one of my spreadsheets...

(Remember: I'm a maths nerd. I actually use Excel with some frequency.)

I think the only time was when I was running Windows 3.1 on a 286 with 
16MB of RAM, and I asked it to print out a 3D Mandelbrot graph I created 
using VBA... That choked it.

Word, on the other hand, is legendary for eating your documents. Indeed, 
the main reason I'm even trying out 2007 is to see if it can uncorrupt 
three important documents that died this week.

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

Post a reply to this message

>>> I honestly can't actually determine whether he's serious or not...
>> That's called sarcasm, Betelgeuse dude.
> 
> notice however that there are some people who truly think like that.

...which is why I thought you might be serious. ;-)

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

Post a reply to this message

>>> Oh, definitely. And that's why I was hoping that the VMware Tools might
>>> include a tool to zero unused sectors. But apparently not...
>> Linux does.  I don't know of anything in vmware to deallocate sectors,
>> even if they're all zeros.
> 
> VMware tools' shrink functionality zeros the unused sectors out before 
> shrinking it.  The Linux VMware tools do as well, for that matter.

I'll have a look when I'm back in the office...

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

Post a reply to this message

>> I hear that Windows 2003 Server (?) comes with a "hypervisor" which runs
>> on the real metal, and then 2003 itself actually runs as a
>> paravirtualised guest. Or something like that...
> 
> It can as long as the system hosting supports the right virtualization 
> technology.

Well, if it's para-virtualisation rather than "full" virtualisation, 
then yeah, the guest OS has to know it's paravirtualised. ;-)

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

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Jim Henderson wrote:

> Can i say "I told you so"? ;-)

Can you say how to make the VMware Tools for Linux actually install? :-P

VMware doesn't recognise the KNOPPIX ISO image as a Linux install disk. 
(Presumably because it's a cloop filesystem.) It also doesn't provide 
KNOPPIX or Debian as an install option (but does provide Ubuntu, 
weirdly). I think I selected "Other Linux 4.6.x". KNOPPIX installs fine, 
and then I try to install the VMware Tools...

Eventually discovered how to untar the tarball. Run the installer (Perl 
script). It runs, says it's installed, asks to run the configuration 
tool. When that runs, it tells me no precompiled binary is suitable for 
my kernel, do I want to try to build one? OK, sure... Where are the 
kernel headers? Um, no idea.

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

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Darren New wrote:
> 
> While I won't deny having said that, I certainly don't remember it. 

Well, you didn't say it in those exact words, but it evaluates to this:

> O2k7
> was designed based on actual measurements of millions of people using
> Office. Most people aren't very logical. :-)
> 

;)

-Aero

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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> 
> I think the only time was when I was running Windows 3.1 on a 286 with
> 16MB of RAM, and I asked it to print out a 3D Mandelbrot graph I created
> using VBA... That choked it.
> 

16-bit Excel (I actually didn't know one has even existed) already had VBA?

-Aero

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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> 
> I hear that Windows 2003 Server (?) comes with a "hypervisor" which runs
> on the real metal, and then 2003 itself actually runs as a
> paravirtualised guest. Or something like that...
> 

Isn't that 2008, that runs on HyperV?

-Aero

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Eero Ahonen wrote:
> Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>> I hear that Windows 2003 Server (?) comes with a "hypervisor" which runs
>> on the real metal, and then 2003 itself actually runs as a
>> paravirtualised guest. Or something like that...
>>
> 
> Isn't that 2008, that runs on HyperV?

Plausibly.

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

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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>>>> I honestly can't actually determine whether he's serious or not...
>>> That's called sarcasm, Betelgeuse dude.
>>
>> notice however that there are some people who truly think like that.
> 
> ...which is why I thought you might be serious. ;-)
> 

It's called Poe's Law.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Human nature dictates that toothpaste tubes spend
   much longer being almost empty than almost full.

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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Can you say how to make the VMware Tools for Linux actually install? :-P

Everyone at my work decided to switch distributions from debian to ubuntu on 
the VM because Ubuntu is being kept up to date. OK, so I take the VM, run 
the updates, VMware tools crashes, which means everything performs like a 
pig, not unlike X11 at 9600 baud.

I say "What's up with that?"  They say "Oh, yeah, don't install updates. It 
kills VMWare tools."

Well, good thing I spent 3 weeks switching over to the new VM.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Human nature dictates that toothpaste tubes spend
   much longer being almost empty than almost full.

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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>>>> I honestly can't actually determine whether he's serious or not...
>>> That's called sarcasm, Betelgeuse dude.
>>
>> notice however that there are some people who truly think like that.
> 
> ...which is why I thought you might be serious. ;-)

me, the anti-M$ Linux guy?

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nemesis wrote:

> me, the anti-M$ Linux guy?

I think *everybody* is against the idea of an M$ Linux. ;-)

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

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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> nemesis wrote:
> 
>> me, the anti-M$ Linux guy?
> 
> I think *everybody* is against the idea of an M$ Linux. ;-)

I think I missed a colon...

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Darren New wrote:
> 
> Well, good thing I spent 3 weeks switching over to the new VM.
> 

Luckily you did have a snapshot from before running the updates. Right?

;)

-Aero

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Eero Ahonen wrote:
> Luckily you did have a snapshot from before running the updates. Right?

Running the updates was approximately the first thing I did after 
downloading and installing the new image, so yeah.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Human nature dictates that toothpaste tubes spend
   much longer being almost empty than almost full.

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