So mein laptop ist kaput. It fell about 16" to the carpet and never worked again. The disk drive seems ok – I’ve pulled all the data from it already. I also had a backup from the night prior to this accident stored on another server here.
I purchased a new laptop using a huge disc...
Continued from Virtual Machine Trials – p1
Xen
Xen has a host, Dom0, and a client, DomU. I’ve been using Xen on my Linux hosts for about 8 months. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t load WinXP without a fairly recent x86 CPU – something within the last 2 years. At the time, I was u...
Back to Part 2
So why would you want to run your desktop in a VM?
There are many reasons. Most of them have to do with the way that Virtual Machines aren’t connected directly with the hardware they run on.
Virtual Hardware: By virtualizing the actual hardware away, gone are the days of search...
Vista is slow even when you get a new machine. I bought a new Dell Studio 1535 laptop last week with this config:
Core 2 Duo T8100
4GB DDR2 RAM
Intel x3100 Graphics 1280×800-eh
320GB disk
Vista Home Premium 64-but
Out of the box, this config should be FAST, VERY FAST. It isn’t. It&#...
Steps to clone/backup a VirtualBox domain
that can be restored to the same or a different machine. Start by shutting down the VM to be backed up/cloned. Then …
$ VBoxManage clonevdi Master.vdi Clone.vdi
and the (undocumented) function
$ cp Master.vdi Clone.vdi
$ VBoxManage internalcommands se...
I’ve been running Xen and VirtualBox VMs here. We’ve been experiencing VM performance issues on 2 VMs under Xen on a fairly powerful box. Basically, the DomUs get really slow – slow.
Here’s what I know.
while connected via ssh to a DomU, sometimes my shell becomes non-respon...
I read yesterday that AVG on Vista had been causing network issues for some people. I’ve had some of those issues with my WiFi connectivity – disconnects as often as every 15 minutes. Usually, it stays connected about 45 minutes then disconnects unless I force the connection to stay acti...
VirtualBox has a way to share host file directories with client VMs. Under Windows, it is fairly intuitive. Under Linux client OSs, the steps are less than clear. I don’t know whether they are documented in the users guide or not. I don’t recall it however.
Load the Client OS Extensio...
Everything is fine. No news. Both of them are just working.
VirtualBox 2.0.6 was released this week. I haven’t updated.
Xen on Ubuntu 8 LTS is working better and better. Performance is fine. Networking is fine. I have 6 VMs running on a single box. Most are 64-bit images. The list:
Zimbra
A...
So, I should have kept my mouth shut. After writing that last story, my laptop gets stuck during boot. Of course, it waited until I was on vacation. Leading up to that point, it had been fixable with a full, detailed , 3 hour scandisk. Now, it won’t get that far in the boot sequence. “...
Solved – no help needed.
Since purchasing a new laptop loaded with Vista, I’ve had a small issue. Every time I try to read a CDRom, a helpful window is desplayed, Prepare this blank disc and it provides options for a live file system. The Burn a Disc window title is unnerving too.
This ...
Recently, I’ve been running IT for a small business. Backups and Disaster Recovery are critical for us AND our customers. With our background in enterprise solutions, we were limited in knowledge for low-end solutions that didn’t cost an arm AND a leg to implement. High end solutions fro...
I’ve been running Vista on a laptop since Sept. Generally, I don’t really use Vista for anything other than a platform to run virtual machines. What I need from Vista is
a stable host platform
Disk access and storage for VMs
Network access and bandwidth for VMs
Video access for VMs
...
As I ponder how to build a redundant file server that serves Linux, Solaris, VMware, Xen, VirtualBox, FreeBSD, FreeNAS, TiVo and Windows systems, a few interesting articles have come to light.
A home file server using ZFS
Snapshots into the cloud
Backups with versioning
10 Reasons You need to Co...
I’m curious about my blog readers.
How often do you read an article here? Daily? Weekly? Monthly?
Do you use an RSS reader to read this blog? I do, BTW.
I’m planning a migration to a new blog system. Any feature or content requests? More virtualbox or more cooking?
Please either lea...
A few months ago, I purchased a Hauppauge 950Q ATSC/ClearQAM USB HiDef recording dohicky. The play was to create a TiVo replacement.
Plans don’t always work out.
Hardware
The Hauppauge 950Q is a TV tuner for over the air HD broadcast TV and a ClearQAM digital cable recorder. It is like a big U...
I need your help deciding how to use the free Windows7 Ultimate license Microsoft gave away yesterday. I want to use it on my laptop but need some considered feedback on how would be best?
Current Laptop Config
4GB of RAM – may put 8GB in later
320GB disk
Main OS is Vista-64bit Home Premium...
32-bit DVD – ouch.
So I opened the Windows7 Ultimate DVD and uncovered that it only contains the 32-bit version. After swapping the old/Vista drive with the new/Empty drive in the laptop, I elected to install Win7 even though I’d end up unable to use about 0.5GB of RAM. I wanted to give ...
Fantastic is the only word I can use. Windows7 x86 memory use is FANTASTIC (meaning low). I’ve done a little optimization using Vista System Optimizer after installing Win7 on my laptop – here are the results:
Win7 = Host OS
Ubuntu = Client VM – 1224MB allocated
The total system ...
Last week, I setup and configured a special desktop for the accounting system for the company. Basically, it is a Windows7 Pro desktop running under ESXi 4 that the folks responsible for accounting remote (RDP) into after connecting via VPN to the special network for it. We’re small and only a ...
I attended the Atlanta area OpenSolaris Meetup last night even though we were getting some major rain in the area which made the 30 minute drive challenging. Why would I bother? Swag? Scott D presenting? Being around other nerds that like Solaris? No, although those are all valid reasons too.
Even...
Sadly, the answer to which virtualization is best for Linux isn’t an easy one to answer. There are many different factors that go into the answer. While I cannot answer the question, since your needs and mine are different, I can provide a little background on what I chose and why. We wonR...
I saw a headline about stolen laptops here and thought I’d mention my methods before reading the other article.
Before Stolen Laptop
The most important stuff happens before your laptop is stolen, but you need to do it. It isn’t automatic....
How to solve this
There are many ways to solve this issue. This is just the one I used based on my experience and expertise. I didn’t use this complex solution initially, it was only after all other solutions attempted failed, badly. My Windows Vista and Win7 computers were losing 2 minutes a ...
I follow a few email lists. Whenever they list is not related to Linux, there are always MS-Windows questions. With the release of Windows7, more and more of those questions are about specific software working under Windows7, especially when there were issues under Vista. Most of this article was ta...
Last evening, I noticed that my Dell 1535 Laptop wasn’t responsive. It was recording a TV show with the Hauppauge 950Q USB QAM tuner at the time, among other things that it always does.
Below I’ll discuss symptoms, trouble shooting methods and my resolution...
Today I migrated a RAID5 external array from 1 server to my newly built Core i5 server. I specifically chose to use software RAID when I installed it in 2007 just so this migration would be possible and easy.
Basically, everything went as planned with only one small issue....
Last week, my main laptop died taking my main xUbuntu installation with it. Ok, it really didn’t take it, since I have backups and the hard disk was fine. Further, because I run it in a VirtualBox VM, picking it up and moving it to a different physical machine was fairly simple, once I had a ma...
Over the years, I’ve been using this blog to help myself remember how to do things and to share some great tools and techniques with you. I figure it is time to recap some of those articles whether they are computer, financial/retirement, or just interesting things....
The last few days, I’ve been playing with Ubuntu Server 9.10. It hasn’t been perfect. There have been problems along the way. So everyone else knows the issues, I’ll list a few here with a little detail.
It all started during the Server 9.10 x64 installation.
Be certain to check o...
