Me want one of these. Oh Santa? Can you please get me a extra special present if I’m really a good boy? I want one all tricked out with more memory and stuff. This thing looks plenty cool. I think I will add six and n to my mini 9. This thing will run Ubuntu too and it comes with Dell’s kinda weird ubuntu 8.10 which can be safely removed and refactored into the netbook remix.
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At work, I have a few choices about doing email. I can use Thunderbird and just do IMAP with our exchange server. I don’t get the calendar stuff that way. I can do OWA which is okay but it requires me to have a browser open. I can do Outlook Anywhere (or RPC over HTTPs). This means I run Outlook natively or in a emulation environment. There are choices for this:
Codeweavers Pro – Codeweavers has released version 8.0 which may work with Outlook. It has IE 7 integrated so it may work. In the past, it never worked and I tried for hours/days to get it working. It would mean that Outlook would show up in a true seamless mode on the desktop (Ubuntu desktop).
VMware – Player, Workstation only here. I want the unity mode which allows the windows applications to show in their own window and not have the desktop showing through. The desktop means I lose the window really and there is this coolness factor.
VirtualBox – My choice for a few reasons for this task. The seamless mode of VMware seems to mess up and it wants some heavy duty system to run it on. My T43 Thinkpad will not handle Unity mode. Moreover I don’t think its well worked out. Virtualbox OTOH, is quite suited for light weight systems and its seamless mode seems more developed.
Now down to what the ideal underlying OS is for all this. I approach this at a tool user level so it could be Windows Server 2008 or 2003. It could be Ubuntu AMD64 Jaunty. What works the best for me given my needs to run a single application? Windows seems to be a lot of OS to just run stuff. I would probably not use much of the underlying Windows goodness since I tend to veer away from Windows stuff in favor of Linux. So I think either Debian or Ubuntu make the best underlying OS. Perhaps that underlying OS is never really seen and you run the emulation full-screen. I just trust Linux more as a real system and Windows more as a virtual one. Whatever I run on top, be it VMWare, Codeweavers, or Virtualbox will thrive with Linux under there. If it misbehaves, I have the command line and SSH and “PS ax” to resort to. What do I use on Windows? There is no real command-line mode to shell into.
So, my selection is to run Windows virtually and Linux on the hardware. Its a “duh” factor type of thing. I just don’t trust Windows on real hardware. Not enough command and control. Windows does just fine when it can be killed by process controllers in Linux and rebooted safely. I can snapshot it, roll it back, make it sane again.
Lets face it. Windows 7 is a nicer cousin even undone. Still, I’ll choose to run it in a virtual space in a seamless mode with Linux underneath.
You all need to decide if Virtualization can work for you. If the answer is yes; ask yourself what you need from the guest at a tool level. One tool or ten? It may form what choice you make for the host OS. If its games you are after, this analysis does not really apply. I don’t do games. For me, its a dash of word, excel, and powerpoint on occasion; but mostly talking to our exchange 2007 server. Seems the best tool for that is outlook 2007. But it does not equate that I need to run it in real space…
I’ve read a thousand forum threads for how to do this so I wanted a way which I could replicate for some Windows guests and make it so easy even I could do it. Here is my step by step process. You will need two tools first. One is Clonezilla and the other is the freeware partitioning tool called EASEUS Home. I did this with XP only so your mileage may vary with Vista.
Here are the steps to taking a small guest image and blowing it up:
- Create a new virtual disk using the media manager in Virtualbox. I create a dynamically expanding one because its quicker. Add it as a primary slave using the disk media manager. Don’t worry about formatting it or anything.
- Now download the two tools and mount the clonezilla ISO image in virtualbox so it boots when you power up the guest. Clonezilla will run and you will take the disk to disk copy and make a copy from the first disk to the second disk. The first disk was my 10g smallish XP partition. The second disk was the nicely larger 60g slave partition I had just created.
- It will take about 15 minutes or at least it did for me. When done, power down the clonezilla ISO image. Now using the media mangler in Virtualbox remove the measly partition and add the new one as the primary image.
- Boot the new image and its still only 10g or whatever in size. You need to run the easeus disk partitioning tool, resize the partition all the way, and the tool will want a reboot. It will reboot to its system console, run the ntfs resize and then reboot again. When it reboots, it will check things again and pronounce success!
- Boot into the XP installation and I had to redo the OS validation with Microsoft HQ. That’s okay for me since I own it from Technet. Now if you check the disk size in Windows XP, it says that I have a 60G disk drive. Yay!
All done folks! BTW, this worked for me 4 times without an error so I can say that its replicable and works without an issue on XP. Don’t know about the Vista beast. I’m staying away from Vista. Next MS OS I play with will be in October when 7 rears up.
That would be it.
I started a Ubuntu Desktop install this evening. The install part took about 20 minutes on a AMD64 Shuttle system. First stop was updating almost 300 packages. Then adding medibuntu and virtualbox’s sources to my /etc/apt/sources.list.
Then I started customizing and adding stuff like OpenOffice 3, additional packages I want, the printer, some nifty tools and utilities like SSHfs. I added VirtualBox 2.1.4 and some other stuff. I scp’ed a whole bunch of images for my desktop background. I brought up a Windows 7 beta VDI I have.
I think all this took me about 2.5 hours and I have an updated 8.10 system which can do company mail using outlook 2007 and do my GTD stuff as well. I’m set and just about productive.
Whoops I forgot to add ubuntu-restricted-extras it appears and build-essential so I can build essential things.
Now its getting done. I need to touch and shine. More on it later 
Random strivings here and there these days… I’ve been playing with VirtualBox and enlarging vdi images. Been doing a platform product for work around demo environments using Ubuntu and VMware Server 1.x. I don’t much care for VMware Server 2.x because its some bastardized web thing and some things which made it easy don’t work any longer like the Console Monitor in VMware 1.x.
I’m now building an automation tool which will copy and bring up VMware guest images, use some VMware automation like the “vmrun” command that allows one to do a variety of operations. I’ve built a basic web page, written some PHP scripts which call shell scripts, and created some status monitoring which will allow us to generically create new platforms pretty easily. I really enjoy this kind of work and it really demonstrates the power and flexibility of my chosen platform for the host which is Ubuntu 8.10 Server. I also am building out a ESXi based VMware server to run clients for a new QA environment at work which will take a different twist to things.
All of these things are rather randomly tied to my continuing goals to not boot a real windows system when I can help it these days. Seems that Vista is really nice when its virtual only and I have a Windows 7 beta running which is decent. Its really nice when it gets unhappy and cycling its power does not mean losing everything. I can just take it my own way with a “kill -9″ on that process and get it all back. As I blogged before, the greatest prodcutivity enhancement for me is the seamless mode for Windows applications where I get the best of both worlds. Now if I could have truly embedded applications which would have the OS behind each one but not show the desktop or taskbar at all. That would be cool; but I have as much as I need now. I can taste the windows world but not be subjected to its random disconnects.
I could say more; but the zone is claiming me today. Wanted to tell Ian thanks for the work at the Big T and teaching me more plus writing one of the best weblogs out there! Hope your tomorrows all come along the way you want. Take care.
Having a weblog means I need to post something to it. Often I feel driven to post something; less often I feel content to not post anything. Even less often I wonder “why”. What’s the driving force behind this force? I’ve had the weblog for some years at a few places. Its been on drupal, wordpress.com, and now on my domain hosted by Ubuntu and my stellar ISP.
Today I don’t have any earth shattering revelations. I’ve been working on learning how to enlarge VMware guests and trying it also on VirtualBox in a slightly different form factor. I’ve managed to enlarge a VMware Server 2003 image from 10 to 40gb using a combination of command-line ninja and ntfsresize. I have not been so successful resizing a VirtualBox Vista guest. I’ll probably try it again this evening though.
Work seems okay enough these days. I’m plenty busy and have been living through that ancient Chinese curse of living in interesting times. I’m moving on past the Linux products as a primary management concern though and on to other company level things which need attention. I’m excited about that because I feel stretched and viable and able to do a lot more. I’ve also made the decision to just run Linux in a Windows shop for the most part. I still have an uneasy truce with Vista on my new Thinkpad T500. The latest foray is suddenly the ThinkVantage System Update tool just won’t. I tried for a day to make it work and it seems generally unwilling to do much of anything. Its a piece of crap tool.
So, after messing with it I just decided to get myself back to Ubuntu and run my GTD applications (OneNote 2007 and Outlook 2007) in VirtualBox seamless mode. I’ve been running Linux, working around open source, dealing with this stuff for almost 11 years now. When I first started there were just a few choices for sound and network cards. Seemed the rule was that you had to wait for at least 2 years to get Linux recognizing the things. Then I started working with this small Texas based OEM. People tend to think that the whole Dell and Linux thing is new; but back in 2000/2001, Dell was preloading 4 different versions of Linux on their Precision and Optiplex lines and even on a laptop line. I ended up managing the hardware certification arm at Linuxcare which helped Dell get this stuff working. The site above is an archive of the site that used to be but you get the general idea about what we were doing around open source adoption in the enterprise even back then. We also did a bunch of other stuff with IBM, APC, and even with Macmillan Books. I was involved then with all these deals and actually represented Linuxcare with Dell and got Dell to certify over 54 product lines on Linux. Very cool! So when you look at advances, its interesting to see things like the Dell Mini 9 but its also fun to call up those ancient memories of working with the good folks at Round Rock that were the “early adopters”.
After reading over this last paragraph, its dawned on me that this whole blog thing promotes radical representation. I can start with the best intentions of discussing Y but end up on X and may even dip my paddle in Z. And that’s okay. Blogs are great vehicles for this kind of rampant pontification
Ubuntu does not know what it wants to be when it grows up… The seamless mode of VirtualBox makes Outlook 2007 into a “worthy windowed” application and saves me a bunch of time running various Operating Systems needed for work and play.
Since I still use Outlook 2007 for a fair bit of planning and execution of my projects, the use of Virtualbox 2.1 in Ubuntu 8.10 makes all the difference to having a working tool user environment. Its all about tools folks.
I timed myself after getting a new company laptop which is a fancy Thinkpad T500. It took me 4 weeks to get completely frustrated and irritated with Vista business ultimate personal complete. What is it about Vista that is so frustrating. Here’s my list:
- slow – like the pancake syrup on my cakes in the morning
- process heavy – things just seem to run at their own need and the hard disk light is forever flashing. Why?
- does not promote productivitiy – by the time one runs all the safety net applications and helpers, actually getting stuff done is sublimely interesting
- I missed Linux – yes. I missed it terribly and wanted its joys back.
So I spent a day or so ubuntu’ing the laptop and I’m at the point now of having a functional laptop that seems bursting at the seams with productivity and stability. The hard disk light stays off a reasonable amount of time. I have VirtualBox running to give me a little XP world with Outlook 2007. I’m still doing GTD in Outlook.
I still have the Vista disk drive that came with the system in case i need it. I just opted for a cheapo SATA laptop drive and did a Ubuntu on it. Had some issues which I overcame. But that’s the thing with Linux I guess. We can still overcome install issues and solve them. On Windows we are silent victims.
Welcome me back dear friends! I’m very glad to be doing this thing again. I missed it terribly but did not have the time until recently to attend to it.
I’ll be heading down to Los Angeles and the wonderful Westin LAX Hotel for a few days of SCALE. Its Hammer Time! I’m going to meet some old friends from Linuxcare and beyond there like Ed, DavidM, DK, Pat. Gonna be good to catch up, hear a few papers, and relax in the beautiful hotel surroundings. I like going there to just be there. Perhaps listen to some papers; but mostly be at the Westin for a weekend.
I fly out from SFO this Friday at about noon. Have just a bit of work to do when I get in. Then I’ll be hunting up someone for dinner, beers, and some talk. There is news like Debian announcing its 5th. Its always fun to talk Debian. We always talk Ubuntu too since many of the people that started out me on Debian some years ago have now moved on. In fact, many friends of mine happen to work at Canonical on Ubuntu. So its fun to discuss the cosmic convergence of Debian and Ubuntu and what it all means (if there is such a thing as an overarching reality). Edward Abbey says there is none and I’m inclined to agree.
Anyways, see you guys in a few days down at the Westin! Travel well and wisely everyone.
My ongoing project has been a learning experience for me. One of the areas I’ve played in more than a few times is building installers for Linux but this time I wanted to create a way to clone systems from a master image at 5 to 10 at a time. The image I need to clone is Linux and I wanted to only use open source tools. I ended up over at Clonezilla reading about DRBL and clonezilla server there. Here is the basics of it on Linux:
- Setup a linux system to act as a server and install the clonezilla packages. I chose to use Ubuntu 8.04 since its very stable for me. I used a Intel Core Duo with an Intel motherboard and 8g of memory in a micro-ATX form factor.
- Install the relevant bits and bytes for clonezilla. Be sure to follow all the howto information. Run the scripts called drblsrv and drblpush to set things up.
- Capture an image you wish to use from a system. This saves it on disk.
- Now decide how you want to serve up the image. You can use multicast, broadcast, and unicast. I chose multicast and then had to get a switch that was a bit better. I settled on a Layer 2 dlink switch. Remember to add in support for UDP Multicast on port 2232 I believe it is in /etc/services. If you don’t do this, multicast will just fail. This one got me for a few days.
- Now set a machine to PXE boot after its all configured. Whammo! I get 5 systems cloning at the same time and they’re done in 15 minutes.
Next step for me is on a second ubuntu box I setup to do some intensive rsync’ing using no SSH, no compression, etc. But the basic clone is done and you have a working linux box. I’m cloning an rPath Linux distribution from Ubuntu AMD64 and it works a treat! I also do some post install configurations and error checking to ensure I’ve got the correct bits.
If you want a working cloning solution, give Clonezilla a try. You can get things up pretty quickly. Its free too!
