virtual machines ?'s

tlarkin · 10-05-2006, 03:36 PM

okay

So I want to run windows xp as a virtual machine on my suse box. What is the best open source method of doing this? I see that VMware makes a virtual desktop app for linux where I could do this, but it is $200.00

Please provide links of how to and FAQ of the methods you recomend

thanks in advance for any help

pljvaldez · 10-05-2006, 03:38 PM

Funny, I downloaded and used vmware server for free. http://www.vmware.com/products/server/

tlarkin · 10-05-2006, 03:42 PM

hmm I was looking at this product

http://www.vmware.com/request_proces...-STORE-WKST-LX

whats the major difference if any?

pljvaldez · 10-05-2006, 03:44 PM

$200???

http://www.vmware.com/products/server/faqs.html -- Look at #4...

tlarkin · 10-05-2006, 03:47 PM

I was looking at the work station version, thats why, I didn't notice the server was free

It still is $200.00 and comes with advanced tools according to the website.

...and what about XEN virtualization, is that any good at all?

pljvaldez · 10-05-2006, 03:56 PM

Never used Xen. I've used Qemu for a few small things though (like FreeDos). It seems to work okay, but I'm not really stressing it or doing anything advanced.

At work, several of us use vmware server to run XP (since several applications the company uses only function on XP). My only gripe about any VM stuff is that you usually have to predefine how much RAM you're going to commit to the virtual machine when its started (i.e. if you assign 512MB to the XP VM, then you have 512MB less for your linux applications). I think VMware's you can change while the VM is running, but I haven't tinkered with it.

tlarkin · 10-05-2006, 04:03 PM

basically I want to ditch windows on my HP desktop at work, but I need to be able to run IE 6 to work with some active X applications on the web. Other than that my email client, network printers, and everything else work great on SUSE.

I would also need windows to run sometimes to better access network shares. The novell client in Linux is kind of janky and it honestly runs better on the windows side. We have many netware servers with resources I wish to access.

I got the netware shares to mount before in 10.0 and configured them to mount at boot via /etc/fstab but I ran into a problem where it would only mount IPX or IP and not both. Unfortunately we have a few IPX servers still running.

I was kind of messing with xen earlier and it also wanted me to allocate ram during the main set up. I have 1 gig of ram in this rig, but man I don't want to dedicate it to a virtual machine. I just want to allocate half the ram when the virtual machine is actually running, and when its not running it should allocate all the ram back to linux.

Thanks for your help though, I think I have some reading to do.

pljvaldez · 10-05-2006, 04:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tlarkin

I just want to allocate half the ram when the virtual machine is actually running, and when its not running it should allocate all the ram back to linux.

I think that's what xen was asking you. It was just that in the default setup, it wants to know what your VM should have when you start xen. When xen isn't running, it shouldn't take any RAM. You can always setup Xen, then do a free -lm and look at the -/+ buffers/cache: line. The used and free should add up to 1GB (roughly) for you when Xen isn't running.

I did upgrade my RAM to 2GB though because with 1GB it was a little rough running XP and linux...