On Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 7:51 AM, Richard Freeman <[email protected]> wrote: > Wil Reichert wrote: >> >> On Fri, Jan 30, 2009 at 10:37 AM, Mark Knecht <[email protected]> >> wrote: >>> >>> So that's a couple of votes for Virtual-Box. (That's from Sun >>> correct?) emerge virtualbox-bin? It seems to want me to fetch >>> something first. I'll have to check into that. >>> >>> There's also Xen, right? Is it too early for an Open Source alternative? >> >> Theres also the kvm option as well. Its got tight kernel support so >> theres no extranious modules to add & it runs Windows XP for me just >> fine. >> > > Some things to consider before choosing: > > 1. Does your hardware support hardware-level virtualization. VMWare works > on anything (as does virtualbox I believe). Some of the other options > require newer CPUs (last few years). > > 2. I think Xen requires a modified OS to run (at least it used to). Things > might be different today. > > 3. Do you need to run your virtual machines detached from a console or > outside of X11? That is what turned me off of just about all the options > other than VMWare-server - they only work if the console is running in a > window. With VMWare I can start up a virtual machine from a command line > (even on a server without X11), and then ssh or remote desktop into the > underlying server. I can attach a console at any time, and I can detach a > console at any time. > > 4. Do you care about licensing issues? Some of these options are open > source, and some are not. Some require proprietary kernel modules to run. > VMWare even requires you to register to get a license key (free for the > server edition). > > 5. Look at the larger feature set in terms of snapshotting and all that > stuff. If you just want to run windows on your gentoo box any of the > options will do. If you want to do more look at the larger feature list. > One thing I love is that if I have some untrusted executable I want to try > out on Windows I can just snapshot the VM and run away. If I don't like the > end result I can just hit revert and poof everything is back to how > everything started. (Just make sure that you're not running on an account > that has access to networked resources outside the sandbox and that you > don't have roaming profiles or anything that could cause the changes to > escape the snapshot.)
Really great info Richard. Thanks for sharing the ideas. I would add: 6) Check out what's available in terms of a community for support. There will be problems. Where will I ask questions? 7) If planning on running Windows then consider how you'll handle virus protection. (1/machine? 1/VM?) Cost? CPU usage? I thought that I'd have some good news to report back but this morning the system has thrown me for a loop. a) Yesterday I got my system rebuilt at the emerge -e world level. I installed a new rt-sources kernel and then built vmware-server from portage. b) Yesterday the only way I could run vmware was as root. I didn't really like this but as an experiment I was willing to play along and accepted it. Figured I'd do something with sudo if required. (Is it?) c) I started up a new virtual machine and managed after a while to get Windows XP installed. I did all updates through SP3. Everything was fine. I even installed Kaspersky virus protection, did its updates and scanned my virtual machine for viruses. Everything was clean. Started and stopped the machine and I think vmware a number of times. Everything worked great. d) Came back this morning, su'ed to root like yesterday, started vmware and connected locally, and attempted to start the VM. Died immediately with the message: Unable to change virtual machine power state: The process exited with an error: End of error message. I'm now officially into #6 above and I don't have a clue where to go. ;-) (Of course, anyone here who has good info I'm up for receiving it. Drop me a note privately or post back on this list as long as folks subscribed here have an interest in watching me struggle a bit!) ;-) Thanks, Mark
