VirtualBox

[Dodsfall]

I've been playing with virtual machines at home. I'm currently running a few flavors of Linux on top of XP. I've got Ubuntu running in seamless mode and it's pretty slick. I just wish there was drag and drop across the platforms. I can make due with mounting a Windows share as a media drive in Linux for sharing files.

I hadn't played with Linux for the last 8 or 9 years and was pretty amazed at how user-friendly it has become. I remember the days where you needed to read a 10-pound textbook to even make it work. :D

[Haglaz]

I'm a die-hard Linux user myself. Ubuntu has really done what others (Linspire, Xandros) have completely failed to do. It's very beginner friendly, but also not hard to strip down if you really like to get in there and tinker with things. I use Debian personally, which Ubuntu is based off of.

[Dodsfall]

I haven't tried Debian yet. I'll have to give it a spin. Do you know a good place to download an ISO for it?

[Haglaz]

I always download the network install ISOs. They're ISOs containing the base system and installer only, and are under 200MB. It'll install the system itself, then proceed to download packages from the internet via apt. It's actually a lot simpler than it may sound, as most of it is done automatically. It'll let you select groups of packages (desktop, development, servers, etc.) and download what you need.

http://www.debian.org/CD/netinst/

I usually go for "testing" though (Debian has some really stringent testing requirements for packages before they move to the "stable" distribution). For a desktop system, testing is probably the best.

http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/

[Dodsfall]

Thanks for the info!

I'm a novice when it comes to Linux. :D I enjoy learning and tinkering around, though. I have a couple old textbooks, probably from around 1999-2000 or so. Are these still valid in the Linux world?

[Haglaz]

The basics should still be valid... some things have changed since then. New kernel revisions, and if it goes into configuring X11, you're going to need something more up to date. Those books will cover XFree86, but nowadays it's all X.org. Mostly the same, but some of the configuration is a bit different between the two.

I'll exchange Linux knowledge for motorcycle knowledge. :biggrin:

[Dodsfall]

I'm installing Debian tonight and giving it a try. I've got an old PC in the attic, so I'll probably set up a Linux-only box eventually. I just have to decide what to use it for.

[Haglaz]

Old machines make great web and file servers, and if it's sufficiently powerful enough and with enough storage space, great media servers as well. I run a media server on my Linux machine that streams to my laptop and PS3.

[Dodsfall]

I had to learn all about visudo this morning to edit the sudoers file. There's not sudo privileges by default in Debian. :/

Well, all fixed now. :)

I'm trying to get the VBoxguestadditions working currently to make the mouse and keyboard work seamlessly with windows.

[Dodsfall]

I got the guestadditions running after a couple installs.

I put together a file server using Ubuntu this afternoon with a bunch of old parts. I had to order a NIC card though since i tossed my last one with some spring cleaning last weekend. Oh well.

[black27696]

I need to get ubuntu reinstalled on my machine. I used the last version pretty extensively but ever since the new hard drive I haven't bothered to dual boot this machine with the new distro. I have to admit, I really don't like debian. Mint is ok, but with the userbase that ubuntu has and the support that provides it's just hard to do better (in my opinion).

That being said virtual box is amazing. It's the only product sun makes that I actually really like.

[Haglaz]

By the way Dodsfall, you need to get more people in the gaming industry to start using Linux!

[Dodsfall]

I need to get ubuntu reinstalled on my machine. I used the last version pretty extensively but ever since the new hard drive I haven't bothered to dual boot this machine with the new distro. I have to admit, I really don't like debian. Mint is ok, but with the userbase that ubuntu has and the support that provides it's just hard to do better (in my opinion).

That being said virtual box is amazing. It's the only product sun makes that I actually really like.

I didn't put up the link for virtualbox earlier:

http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads

You don't have to dual boot with it or partition your drive. You set up virtual partitions that you can add and delete at will. It's great for experimenting and the price is right. (Free)

[Dodsfall]

By the way Dodsfall, you need to get more people in the gaming industry to start using Linux!

That would be great. Even gaming on the PC has taken a back seat to consoles in recent years. It's a chicken and the egg thing. :D If more people used Linux, the market would be bigger for games, but if there were more games available for Linux the market would be bigger for Linux.

[Dodsfall]

I'm thinking of using Samba for the file server. Originally I was going to use NTFS on the larger hard drive with Ubuntu running on the smaller one. I think I'll just format the second drive as ext3 as well for simplicity. There is an option to reserve an IP address by MAC address on my router, so the file server can have a static IP while the rest of the network can stay dynamic.

[toehead]

I'm running a samba share with my ubuntu desktop. Installation was painless and configuration was a breeze.. IF you look close there is a GUI interface for the samba share... After that, all you have to do is set the dhare directory and access password.


Linux (ubuntu especially) is great for breathing new life into hardware. You can run linux and get full functionality on hardware that simply would be too slow to watch videos /surf/etc in windows.

[Dodsfall]

I was looking through some of the server options and have decided to just use vanilla Ubuntu since I don't need a complex or super-secure server setup for home.

I would be interested to know if XBox 360 will interface with Samba. I stream movies to the 360 to watch them on TV at times. I use TVersity to serve movie files from Windows, since I loathe Media Player and hate Media Center.

[black27696]

One of my co-workers has had success with samba and his 360 but I don't know if he had to jump through a lot of hoops.

Along the lines of using linux with old hardware, there's some amazing things you can do. I ran a benchmark on a machine running XP, and then installed Ubuntu with a vm (using virtual box) of XP and benchmarked it. The virtual machine ran faster than a raw installation of XP, because linux handles the hardware THAT much better. The great thing about VMs is that you can tell the virtual OS that it has better hardware available, so the OS doesn't throttle itself.

For server stuff at work we've been using ESXi on the boxes here. It's made to run VMs on server hardware, so it's really nice. You could install that, then make a vm of ubuntu server to run in it. Just a suggestion. We've been using that for our imaging box.

[Dodsfall]

I spent an hour or so trying to get Ushare to work for 360, with no luck. I get an error message that eth0 is down when I start the program. (eth0 works just fine) I wonder if there is a sharing conflict since it is a virtual machine. I'll try it again on the new machine and see what happens.

[Dodsfall]

I finally got the virtual machine to communicate with the 360 and share media files.

There were a few hoops to jump through.

First of all, the default NAT connection in Virtualbox assigns an IP to the guest of 10.xx.xx.xx something, which means it's not being seen on the network. I set up a bridged connection in Virtualbox.

The next hurdle was that the windows firewall blocks access from the new "Virtualbox host-only connection". I turned off the firewall on that connection in Windows. The router could now see the guest.

Next I installed ushare, made a share directory and set up the configuration file. There is a bug in the configuration where it's supposed to add the Xbox access (yes/no) to the /etc/init.d/ushare file from the config file. That line doesn't work. I had to add a line manually.

The nest step was to assign a static IP to the ushare server at the router, so I could use the web configuration tool without having to check the IP address every time.

I placed a music file into the shared folder and fired up the 360. Sure enough, the share showed up in the list and I was able to stream!

[black27696]

Honestly, that was pretty simple for doing it through a VM, nice!

If I had been thinking I would have mentioned that NAT vs. Bridged thing. I have to switch that every time we create a different server vm on one of our boxes at work (not the esxi one)

[Dodsfall]

Well, it was simple once I figured it all out. :D I spent about 3 hours total and had several failures. Learning from mistakes is often the most effective way to do it. :)

[Dodsfall]

Here's a screen of Ubuntu running in VirtualBox.

[Dodsfall]

Every time there is a kernel update, the guest additions package gets removed for some reason. The version of guest additions that Ubuntu has in the package manager not the correct version for the latest virtual box and won't work correctly. I keep an iso image of the guest additions handy.


I've been playing around with compiz and finally got the screen effects and desktop cube working properly. I also updated AWN to the latest beta, although it's still buggy with the application icons.

[toehead]

Ya, the guest additions are a kernel module that is inserted into the kernel. It is compiled individually for each kernel and if you upgrade it must be recompiled.

[Dodsfall]

Ya, the guest additions are a kernel module that is inserted into the kernel. It is compiled individually for each kernel and if you upgrade it must be recompiled.

That makes sense. It's easy enough to re-install, just a hassle.

I learned that the advanced screen effects do not work well unless the virtualbox window is maximized or running in full screen mode.

I installed gnomenu and have been making custom icons for for shortcuts in the menu. I edited the menu panel art to better fit the desktop theme as well, although it still needs some work. I've got most of my home folders, file system, network, package manager, control panel, recent items and terminal placed as shortcuts in the panel.

[Jethrol]

Dodsfall you certainly have some cool projects going on. Where are you getting your ideas? Any particular place or just playing around?

Also what do you mean when you say, "I'm currently running a few flavors of Linux on top of XP. I've got Ubuntu running in seamless mode and it's pretty slick."?

[Dodsfall]

Dodsfall you certainly have some cool projects going on. Where are you getting your ideas? Any particular place or just playing around?

Also what do you mean when you say, "I'm currently running a few flavors of Linux on top of XP. I've got Ubuntu running in seamless mode and it's pretty slick."?

I just research around the internet.

With a virtual machine, you can run 2 (and potentially more if you have the RAM) operating systems at the same time. The picture I posted shows Ubuntu Linux running as a guest on XP. Seamless mode allows you to use your mouse and keyboard seamlessly across both operating systems without having to use a button to toggle the focus. Whichever window has focus at the time (by clicking on it) captures the mouse and keyboard control automatically, just like windows does normally.

I have been running Windows 7 as a guest for the past couple weeks. It runs slugglishly with video and doesn't have the aero effects, probably due to Virtualbox not having the directx 11 drivers yet. It does run, however.

[Jethrol]

Thanks for the info