On Sat, 12 Dec 2009 15:11:33 +0000, 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...
>> 
>> 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. ;-)

It also has to know the hardware supports it. ;-)

Jim

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On Sat, 12 Dec 2009 15:20:27 +0000, Orchid XP v8 wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
> 
>> Can i say "I told you so"? ;-)
> 
> Can you say how to make the VMware Tools for Linux actually install? :-P

What guest OS?

> 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...

I'm guessing Linux.  OK - so if you install knoppix on a VMware hard 
drive, go to the menu to install the VMware tools, and then look at 
what's mounted in the VM; you'll see a mounted ISO has shown up and has a 
tools installation script on it.

> 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.

Well, that's what happens when you use a distro that's not officially 
supported - if you try the openSUSE 11.1 or 11.2 LiveCDs or installers, 
you should see the installation is much simpler.

Jim

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>>>> 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. ;-)
> 
> It also has to know the hardware supports it. ;-)

No, the way I understand it, paravirtualisation doesn't require any 
special hardware. (While full virtualisation does - unless you want to 
do software emulation...)

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Jim Henderson wrote:

> What guest OS?
> 
>> VMware doesn't recognise the KNOPPIX ISO image as a Linux install disk.
> 
> I'm guessing Linux.

Specifically, a Debian Linux live CD containing about 4.5GB of data on a 
cloop-compressed ISO-9660 filesystem squeezed onto a single live CD. (It 
also features a crapload of automatic hardware detection.) However, 
there is an opion to install to HD, uncompressed. Once you do that, it 
behaves more or less like a typical Debian installation.

> OK - so if you install knoppix on a VMware hard 
> drive, go to the menu to install the VMware tools, and then look at 
> what's mounted in the VM; you'll see a mounted ISO has shown up and has a 
> tools installation script on it.

Got that far.

>> Where are the kernel headers? Um, no idea.
> 
> Well, that's what happens when you use a distro that's not officially 
> supported - if you try the openSUSE 11.1 or 11.2 LiveCDs or installers, 
> you should see the installation is much simpler.

OK, I'll probably try that then.

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> 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.

Apparently "shrink disk" only works if the VM has no snapshots. *sigh*

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Oh *sweet*. If you have VMtools installed, you can just drag and drop 
files from the VM to the real machine. How easy is that?!

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Mike Raiford wrote:

> 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.

Thanks for the tip. :-)

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Mike Raiford wrote:

> Andrew, you should check out Virtual Box, too:
> 
> http://www.virtualbox.org/

I am a sick, sick individual. I'm trying out Virtual Box by running it 
INSIDE A VIRTUAL MACHINE! :-D

I created a VMware virtual machine, installed Windows, installed Virtual 
Box for Windows, and then created a Windows VM inside that.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, this doesn't actually *work*. (Presumably the 
CPU hardware doesn't support nested virtualisation...) But the program 
gets far enough for me to see what the user interface is like and what 
options are available, etc.

(I wonder... Is there some option I can flip inside VMware to make 
nested VMs work? Perhaps if I turn off hardware virtualisation or 
something...)

> 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.

If you get the Open Source version, you have to somehow compile it 
yourself. (!!) I'll have to set up a Linux VM before I can try that...

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>> 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?

Well, I used both Word and Excel at school, long before any version of 
Windows higher than 3 existed...

As to VBA... I'm fairly sure it was still Windows 3.1 I was using when I 
did that. (If only because I remember seeing Windows 95 for the first 
time and thinking how totally different it was...)

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Invisible wrote:

> I am a sick, sick individual. I'm trying out Virtual Box by running it 
> INSIDE A VIRTUAL MACHINE! :-D
> 
> I created a VMware virtual machine, installed Windows, installed Virtual 
> Box for Windows, and then created a Windows VM inside that.
> 
> Perhaps unsurprisingly, this doesn't actually *work*. (Presumably the 
> CPU hardware doesn't support nested virtualisation...)
> 
> (I wonder... Is there some option I can flip inside VMware to make 
> nested VMs work? Perhaps if I turn off hardware virtualisation or 
> something...)

Yep, there is: Disable binary acceleration. Now Virtual Box quite 
happily runs the Windows XP install CD. (I probably shouldn't let it 
complete though... VMware runs dramatically slower in this 
configuration. Curiously, not as slow as QEMU - or maybe it's because I 
have a faster PC now?)

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So, I fiddled with some settings in my PC's BIOS, and now I'm running a 
64-bit installation of Debian inside VMware.

In spite of VMware being run under a 32-bit edition of Windows XP. :-D

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On Mon, 14 Dec 2009 09:12:14 +0000, Invisible wrote:

>> It also has to know the hardware supports it. ;-)
> 
> No, the way I understand it, paravirtualisation doesn't require any
> special hardware. (While full virtualisation does - unless you want to
> do software emulation...)

Paravirtualized operating systems have to be built specifically for the 
platform - I always get those mixed up; you're right, no special 
hardware, special OS instead.

Jim

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On Mon, 14 Dec 2009 10:10:23 +0000, Invisible wrote:

>> 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.
> 
> Apparently "shrink disk" only works if the VM has no snapshots. *sigh*

Yes, this is true.

Jim

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On Mon, 14 Dec 2009 11:49:26 +0000, Invisible wrote:

> I created a VMware virtual machine, installed Windows, installed Virtual
> Box for Windows, and then created a Windows VM inside that.
> 
> Perhaps unsurprisingly, this doesn't actually *work*. (Presumably the
> CPU hardware doesn't support nested virtualisation...) But the program
> gets far enough for me to see what the user interface is like and what
> options are available, etc.

I've heard of people running XEN virtual machines under VMware, but it's 
not terribly stable - and completely unsupported, of course.

Jim

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>> I created a VMware virtual machine, installed Windows, installed Virtual
>> Box for Windows, and then created a Windows VM inside that.
>>
>> Perhaps unsurprisingly, this doesn't actually *work*. (Presumably the
>> CPU hardware doesn't support nested virtualisation...) But the program
>> gets far enough for me to see what the user interface is like and what
>> options are available, etc.
> 
> I've heard of people running XEN virtual machines under VMware, but it's 
> not terribly stable - and completely unsupported, of course.

Like I said, turn off hardware acceleration and it seems to work just 
fine. Oh, and *really* slowly... But hey, I only wanted to see what VB 
looks like. ;-)

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>> 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

By contrast, Windows 7.

As far as I can tell, it's *exactly* like Vista. I can find only the 
tiniest differences.

Interesting...

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

So what's the best practice with snapshots?

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And, by opposing, end them. To die, to sleep

Erm, wait...

If you want to test several things, is it better to take several 
snapshots, or to clone the VM into several seperate VMs?

I notice that you can't run several snapshots of the same VM at once, 
whereas if they were seperate VMs you could. And also you can only 
reclaim freespace for a VM with no snapshots.

On the other hand, you'll never have a VM with *no* snapshots at all, 
because then it would be impossible to go back in time...

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Invisible wrote:
>> - I like the "snapshot manager" thingy. That's really nice.
> 
> So what's the best practice with snapshots?
> 
> If you want to test several things, is it better to take several
> snapshots, or to clone the VM into several seperate VMs?
> 
> I notice that you can't run several snapshots of the same VM at once,
> whereas if they were seperate VMs you could. And also you can only
> reclaim freespace for a VM with no snapshots.
> 
> On the other hand, you'll never have a VM with *no* snapshots at all,
> because then it would be impossible to go back in time...

I personally take snapshots as often as I commit on a version control 
system.

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> I personally take snapshots as often as I commit on a version control 
> system.

Likewise. Only trouble is, it tends to eat disk space.

Maybe all I really need to do is go out and buy a cheap external drive...

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