29 Nov
2016
29 Nov
'16
11:37 a.m.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VirtualBox
https://wiki.debian.org/VirtualBox
Has anyone used Virtualbox? What's it like?
It seems popular, osboxes.org seems to only have VMWare and Virtualbox image
files. Apparently Qemu (and presumably KVM) support both those image types,
is there any benefit of one over the other?
My main aim at the moment is to get a Fedora VM going to see if they solved a
bug I encountered in Debian/Unstable and if so copy their fix. One of the
significant benefits of free software.
--
My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/
My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/
29 Nov
29 Nov
11:41 a.m.
On 29/11/16 11:37, Russell Coker via luv-main wrote:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VirtualBox
https://wiki.debian.org/VirtualBox
Has anyone used Virtualbox? What's it like?
Yes, while I used to use VMware a few years ago I switched to VirtualBox
and have used it happily for several years now, both for DOS and Windows
XP images to run ancient software and for Debian and Ubuntu images to
test things like ansible scripts.
Cheers,
Andrew
11:46 a.m.
Virtualbox is good, but I dislike having to always recompile a kernel
module every time a new kernel is released. Yes there is DKMS, but it's not
as good as KVM. I use it to run Windows on my Ubuntu, and it is the best
I've found for emulating Windows, with hotplugging of USB, shared folders
etc.
Why don't you just convert the VMDK/VDI they provide to qcow2/RAW, and
import it into KVM, instead of using the other formats?
http://docs.openstack.org/image-guide/convert-images.html
Sean
On 29 November 2016 at 11:37, Russell Coker via luv-main <
luv-main(a)luv.asn.au> wrote:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VirtualBox
https://wiki.debian.org/VirtualBox
Has anyone used Virtualbox? What's it like?
It seems popular, osboxes.org seems to only have VMWare and Virtualbox
image
files. Apparently Qemu (and presumably KVM) support both those image
types,
is there any benefit of one over the other?
My main aim at the moment is to get a Fedora VM going to see if they
solved a
bug I encountered in Debian/Unstable and if so copy their fix. One of the
significant benefits of free software.
--
My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/
My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/
_______________________________________________
luv-main mailing list
luv-main(a)luv.asn.au
https://lists.luv.asn.au/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/luv-main
12:09 p.m.
On Tuesday, 29 November 2016 11:46:40 AM AEDT Sean Crosby via luv-main wrote:
Why don't you just convert the VMDK/VDI they
provide to qcow2/RAW, and
import it into KVM, instead of using the other formats?
http://docs.openstack.org/image-guide/convert-images.html
Thanks for that reference. I had googled converting images but the results
all seemed to say "attach it to a virtual machine" as the first step.
--
My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/
My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/
2:32 p.m.
On 29/11/16 11:37, Russell Coker via luv-main wrote:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VirtualBox
https://wiki.debian.org/VirtualBox
Has anyone used Virtualbox? What's it like?
hi
I use VB extensively and usually have at least one client open
being an Ubuntu instance on a Fedora-23 system.
It does have requirement to reinstall VB after a kernel upgrade, but on
Fedora that is one command "dnf reinstall Virt...rpm" so it is not an
impediment. I do use the rpms from the VirtualBox site and not those
built by third parties "RPMFusion" which automates even this one extra
command.
It works well and great for running archaic systems, it will support
back to MS-DOS-6.22 and MS-WIN-3.10. Fedora-17 (25 being the current
release) is the oldest of my current instances.
Otherwise do not run out or RAM, as swapping will stop a system.
Steve
9:29 p.m.
On 29/11/16 14:32, Steve Roylance via luv-main wrote:
On 29/11/16 11:37, Russell Coker via luv-main wrote:
Not sure about this reinstalling of VB - I have dkms installed, and the
new kernel modules are built automatically as part of the kernel
install. That's all I need to do.
It can take a little extra time added to the kernel install, but that
only happens once every three weeks or so :-)
More of a pain is updating VirtualBox itself - you really do need the
extension pack, but it needs to be explicitly installed.
And then you need to boot up each of the VM's to run this update on
their inside.
I've turned off auto-updating for VBox just so it happens at _my_
convenience.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VirtualBox
https://wiki.debian.org/VirtualBox
Has anyone used Virtualbox? What's it like?
hi
I use VB extensively and usually have at least one client open
being an Ubuntu instance on a Fedora-23 system.
It does have requirement to reinstall VB after a kernel upgrade, but on
Fedora that is one command "dnf reinstall Virt...rpm" so it is not an
impediment. I do use the rpms from the VirtualBox site and not those
built by third parties "RPMFusion" which automates even this one extra
command.
30 Nov
30 Nov
3:35 p.m.
On Tuesday, 29 November 2016 2:32:08 PM AEDT Steve Roylance via luv-main
wrote:
On 29/11/16 11:37, Russell Coker via luv-main wrote:
As Allan noted DKMS is the ideal solution to that problem. But it's still a
reason for me to avoid it. I currently have DKMS in place for zfsonlinux on
some of my systems and don't want the added pain of multiple DKMS
installations. I sometimes have a sudden and unexpected need to run a VM on a
client's system and really want to avoid having to compile new kernel modules
for that. NB this is more of an issue of personal preference and being
conservative as a sysadmin than anything else, it is quite likely to just work
well in practice.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VirtualBox
https://wiki.debian.org/VirtualBox
Has anyone used Virtualbox? What's it like?
I use VB extensively and usually have at least one client open
being an Ubuntu instance on a Fedora-23 system.
It does have requirement to reinstall VB after a kernel upgrade, but on
Fedora that is one command "dnf reinstall Virt...rpm" so it is not an
impediment. I do use the rpms from the VirtualBox site and not those
built by third parties "RPMFusion" which automates even this one extra
command. It works well and great for running archaic systems,
it will support
back to MS-DOS-6.22 and MS-WIN-3.10. Fedora-17 (25 being the current
release) is the oldest of my current instances.
Doesn't KVM/Qemu work with MS-DOS and MS-Win?
Otherwise do not run out or RAM, as swapping will stop
a system.
Yes, one of the benefits of Xen in some situations is that RAM is reserved and
outside the scope of the Dom0 OS.
--
My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/
My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/
8:17 p.m.
On Wed, Nov 30, 2016 at 03:35:24PM +1100, russell(a)coker.com.au wrote:
As Allan noted DKMS is the ideal solution to that
problem. But it's
still a reason for me to avoid it. I currently have DKMS in place
for zfsonlinux on some of my systems and don't want the added pain of
multiple DKMS installations.
FYI, 'dkms mkbmdeb' now actually works to create a binary-only package.
It didn't do anything that was actually useful for years, but that was
fixed earlier this year.
Unfortunately, it doesn't add a Provides: line, so you'll need to use
equivs to satisfy dependencies.
[ ... 5 mins later ... ]
actually, it does now. the bug report I submitted about this has been
closed, somebody submitted a patch back in October. I didn't get an
email telling me though (BTS has always been a bit unreliable about
email notifications in my experience)
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=830670
Doesn't KVM/Qemu work with MS-DOS and MS-Win?
yep, it does.
Virtualbox has better graphics support for the VM without messing around
with PCI passthrough and installing a second GPU card, which generally
only matters for games and other things that really need good, fast
graphics rendering.
I've used KVM with a few Win XP & Win 7 VMs. Works well enough. If I
wanted to play windows games with KVM, I'd probably install another GPU.
craig
--
craig sanders <cas(a)taz.net.au>
29 Nov
29 Nov
9:34 p.m.
On 29/11/16 11:37, Russell Coker via luv-main wrote:
Has anyone used Virtualbox? What's it like?
I've used it mostly for Windows guests (2000, XP, 7, 10), for one or two
programs I still need, and it has worked reasonably well. I started
using it because the Linux machines I had back then didn't have VT
extension support, which limited which virtualisation platforms could
handle a non-Linux guest.
I found the VirtualBox management GUI intuitive, but I only have a few
VMs, I'm not sure how well it would scale for managing a bunch of
guests. It also has a command line tool.
They have a dual licensing system, where VirtualBox itself is GPL, but
the extensions are under a closed licence. The extensions including
things like USB support for the guest.
It needs kernel modules built for it, but this process is all handled by
the packaging system these days (at least in Debian), which has made it
a lot less painful than it used to be.
I did have issues running very old OSes (eg Win95), but that was more a
problem with the guest kernels having a busy idle and there were
workarounds.
I've also had some instability with enabling the 2D graphics
acceleration support (guest machines just exiting suddenly when running
eg a game that used the acceleration support).
Glenn
--
pgp: 833A 67F6 1966 EF5F 7AF1 DFF6 75B7 5621 6D65 6D65
30 Nov
30 Nov
6:35 a.m.
Quoting Glenn McIntosh (neonsignal(a)meme.net.au):
They have a dual licensing system, where VirtualBox
itself is GPL, but
the extensions are under a closed licence. The extensions including
things like USB support for the guest.
USB 2.0 support. (USB 1.1 is built into the GPLed core code.)
--
Cheers, "It's easier to act your way into a new way of thinking
Rick Moen than think your way into a new way of acting."
rick(a)linuxmafia.com -- Jerry Sternin
McQ! (4x80)
2306
days inactive
2307
days old
9 comments
8 participants
participants (8)
-
Allan Duncan -
Andrew Pam -
Craig Sanders -
Glenn McIntosh -
Rick Moen -
Russell Coker -
Sean Crosby -
Steve Roylance