| Author | Message | ||
     Hootowl |
VMWare Converter, which is free, will convert your physical Windows installation to a VM which will run in VMWare Player, which is also free, and is available in both 32 and 64 bit version of Linux. You will not be able to edit the VM, so no hardware changes. You may be able to use other virtualization software to run the VM after it has been created, or you may be able to create the VM in an open format. I'm not sure about that part. It's a free solution to your problem. | ||
| J2blue |
The VM Box from Oracle does run vmdk files. I installed Windows 8 from the binary to get familiar with it. Let us know what your results are on converting your running partition with VMware Converter. I've not used it yet but do have an upcoming project where we will try to use it to create a fallback solution when we upgrade a key server to a newer OS. (Message edited by j2blue on October 14, 2012) | ||
| Jaimec |
Interesting information. Thanks! I might wait for my new machine to arrive before I give this a try but it all looks very promising. | ||
| Hootowl |
VMware converter works nicely. When converting server class hardware (with hardware agents running as services in the OS) make sure you tell Converter to disable those services. If you do not, the OS will take FOR EVER to boot while those services try to figure out why the hardware isn't responding. If you're converting a consumer grade desktop, you won't have an issue., | ||
| Jaimec |
Yeah, I don't think I'll have a problem. Nearly everything I own are refurbed consumer desktop systems. It's a hobby, not a business.  | ||
| J2blue |
Thanks for the tip, Hoot! | ||
| Mr_grumpy |
As we're talking Linux here, what can anyone tell me about Raspberry Pi ? I've tried to read a bit about it, & basically get the idea behind it, but my brain fades too quickly to understand the tech' side of it. | ||
| Reepicheep |
Its just a very cheap and somewhat limited self contained computer system that can boot Linux off of solid state memory. Nothing magic, except that it has a decent collection of "just good enough" hardware already sorted, an OS that is already sorted, and is dirt cheap. It is small and will probably run fairly cool as well. The cost would make it practical to solve a lot of problems like little TV set boxes or other things you would not want to pony up to buy a "real" computer for. They specifically set up the Pi for HD video. I've gone the other direction... Instead of $40 computers, Ive been playing with $2 computers. Little PIC microcontrollers that can do simple things. I can basically give them about 2000 different instructions to follow, and they can execute them tens of thousands at a time per second. It lets me make very complicated little controllers with very low cost hardware. | ||
| Mr_grumpy |
Thank you, I'm a wiser person & will now be able to bull-shit with confidence.  | ||
| J2blue |
As long as you can BS in binary your fine... | ||
| Mr_grumpy |
yes no | ||
| Jaimec |
Well, the machine arrived in today's mail. Maybe I'll start setting it up tonight. Wonder how long it takes to format a terabyte hard drive for ext4fs and a swap partition? I'm thinking that since it has 8Gb of RAM and such a big drive, I can easily "spend" 2Gb RAM and 100Gb drive space on an XP Virtual machine... That leaves over 900GB left, and I don't own THAT much pr0n... | ||
| Hootowl |
With 8 gigs of RAM, you may find that you never hit your swap file, and it's just taking up space. | ||
| Jaimec |
True... but right now it's a big enough "playground" that I'm not terribly concerned. I haven't run the install yet... don't know if it'll ask me, or if it'll just take defaults. I'll probably start "playing" later tonight or tomorrow after work. | ||
| Jaimec |
Later: Oh wow... Command line only? This is going to be interesting... been a LOOOOONG time since I've worked exclusively from the command line! Printed off the 400 page Ubuntu Server manual. Guess I'm going to be busier than I thought. | ||
| Reepicheep |
Why are you running Ubuntu server? The desktop version makes a great server as well, and has a nice GUI for when you want it. The "server" version really is for servers... i.e. a blade in a chassis next to 100 other blades with no keyboard or monitor, just a lan port. | ||
| Cataract2 |
For my fun with classes I am now having to learn VHDL programing. Command line is just another way to practice for me. Maybe I should download Xilinx student pack for home practice. hmmm... They have a Linux ver. | ||
| Jaimec |
Bill: Mostly for the experience. I want to set up Samba and a domain for my little home network. Also want to move over my website and FTP server to the new box as well as set up a VM to run XP in. Just printed off the 390 page manual and need to find a binder big enough to hold at least three women. That ought to do it.  | ||
| Reepicheep |
Samba can get hairy. I documented my setup at home, remind me and I'll post my necessary customizations here. I started with server then realized the desktop makes a better server than the server does.... | ||
| Cataract2 |
Why is that Reep? | ||
| Hootowl |
Jamie, If you want to run all those servers, you should consider ESXi5. It is free. You can run all those servers independently on the same hardware, including your XP box. The only caveat is that there is no access to the server consoles from the ESXi host. You need another PC to do management. I run a Windows domain at home on ESXi. DC, Exchange server, SSLVPN server, iTunes server, web content gateway, and spam filter all run on separate virtual machines on the same hardware. ESXi rocks. | ||
| Jaimec |
I gave up on the server version of Ubuntu and installed the desktop version. For some odd reason, the server version didn't have the necessary driver for the wireless card in the PC. It prompted for it, so I put it on a USB stick and told it to copy it from there. After several seconds of access the stick, it prompted me again. It never "found" it. When I installed the desktop version, it already had it as part of the distro. WTF?? So I'll stick with the desktop version and figure out how to configure the FTP daemon and Apache servers as well as Samba on that. | ||
| D_adams |
http://www.howtoforge.com/ubuntu_lamp_for_newbies Gentoo is considerably more complicated. Everything gets compiled to the settings you want though. | ||
| Reepicheep |
I think Samba is a better windows server than windows, but the whole protocol is kind of a mess. Lots of voodoo, probably because it ends up running as a sort of peer to peer network with mutual discovery. You see the same thing with pure windows networks. You mount a remote printer, and it works most of the time, then sometimes doesn't, for reasons no one can explain or fix. Then you come back a few days later and suddenly it just works again. Its also one of those things where several things can be wrong at once, so it's hard to "fix something" and see it's fixed. It's all or nothing, and all three things have to be fixed before you see any change. It'll work though, it can just get annoying sometimes to muddle through it. And windows does seem to be getting better with every generation... for win95 you were lucky to keep the network running right for a day. Now with windows 7 things "work right" more often than not. | ||
| Jaimec |
I've had an XP peer-to-peer network running at home just fine for years. Never really had any "glitches" with it. In the beginning I even had a couple of OS/2 (eComStation) nodes on it. | ||
| Jaimec |
Well, in the end, I just decided to install VirtualBox and build the XP VM from scratch. Only one thing complicated matters and that was my CDs were "upgrades" so I couldn't use them to install XP right away. I installed Windows 2000 first, and then I was able to "upgrade" to XP. After installing Service Pack 3 and nearly 200 fixes since that was released I'm up to snuff. I tested and found out I can easily access the office VPN via the Virtual XP system so I'm good. Now I'll just check to see which programs I have that will work just fine under WINE, and which ones I HAVE to install in the VM. Next up... configuring httpd and ftpd. I think I'll leave samba for last. | ||
| Jaimec |
Okay, I got s little side-tracked. Discovered "DOSBox" and a box with all my old DOS FPS games. I've been playing "Doom2," "Hexen" and "Descent." Man I forgot how much I LOVED those old games! Back to figuring out configuring Apache this weekend. Got it up, but struggling through the configuration. Doesn't help that I never upgraded Apache1 to Apache2 on my Windows machine so I'm not familiar with all of the new configuration options. | ||
| Jaimec |
Okay, Apache is up and running and my personal website is working (but not yet publicly accessible). FTP is next. | ||
| Cataract2 |
So, getting my nerd even more on. Decided to take a stab at installing Virtualbox and Windows 7 on my host Linux Mint system. Worked like a charm and now I don't need to reboot into Windows for one thing. It's so nice. | ||
| Jaimec |
Yep! Best thing is that I can use the VirtualBox XP to access my office VPN, and leave it running on one "desktop" while I switch to other desktops to continue mucking around. Website is now up and running. Still haven't configured my FTP server... I was having fun switching from wireless to wired connectivity. Discovered (the hard way) that support for my wired NIC was NOT built into the kernel. I had to find the pre-release driver for the kernel and compile it in myself. Fortunately the instructions I found via Google were quite precise and worked like a charm and in the process learned a lot more about Linux networking than I ever intended. |
