Anyone manage to get VMWare Workstation (5.0 or even 4.5 is fine) on their Knoppmyth box? VMWare is only "supported" on RedHat and Suse, but I loves me Knoppmyth and don't want to start from scratch. Any hints and tips? I tried using Alien on the rpm to do an install, and I've tried using Alien to build a deb which I used dpkg to install, but no luck. It really wants to insist on rpm. So… if someone that's done all the hard work manually tweaking things doesn't mind sharing, it'd be really appreciated!

I'd like to bump this thread - I am very interested in running a virtual machine under my Knoppmyth installation. Has anyone successfully achieved this, and would they consider giving pointers, or better yet, producing a wiki page on it?

Since I have a 24/7 machine running for Knoppmyth, I'd also like to save power/space/money and have it be my light-duty web and mail server, so it would be nice to be able to install a virtual server for that.

Alternatively, if anyone knows it won't work, or thinks it's a really bad idea, then please also let me know.

Thanks...

KM is based on Debian. Here is a howto on getting VMware server installed on Debian. Would be a good starting point. Post your results I would be interested to see how it turns out.

http://www.howtoforge.com/debian_sarge_ ... rver_howto

I got the Now free vmware server working on my Ubuntu box without a hitch. I could not get workstation 4.5 to work so you may want to try it.

Craig

Try this first. Using VMPlayer to create virutal PCs.
http://www.hackaday.com/2005/10/24/how-to-vmware-player-modification/

To install VMWare Server (FREE VERSION) on KnoppMyth follow this
http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-10879_11-6076874.html?part=rss&tag=feed&subj=tr

Works great for me R5C7. No overhead against myth with PVR500. Not the highest performance VM though. Maybe improved if allocated more cpu time. VM workstation may install and perform better.

Cool - glad to hear it actually works, thanks for the info. I just have to find the time...

Unfortunately, the reason I wanted to do it is my light-duty mail/web server's disk died, and making a new virtual server on the 24/7 myth box seemed a good idea.

Now my knoppmyth box keeps dying, or at least its net connection does . It keeps going "off the grid". Nothing in the logs... Bah! Computers are great, when they work.

Excellent - it works just fine. I installed VMWare Server, and used an Ubuntu Server Virtual Appliance to get started. I've now got my mail server transferred, and will shortly move the web over too. With the console app, it's easy to add extra disks, real or virtual, to the VM.

This is very cool indeed - in particular the virtual appliances available for download. It seems like the right way to add unrelated functionality to a Knoppmyth box. I can have my web/mail server VM, and another VM for local subnet applications, for all the things I normallly spend a few hours tweaking a new Knoppmyth install for (Slimserver, Samba shares...). Then the only single thing I'll need to install after each Knoppmyth upgrade is VMware Server. Oh, and when I run bittorrent, it can live in its own safe little sandbox VM too.

I fancy a go at Ruby on Rails some time, and that sounds painless if I just download the Rails Appliance...

Hmmm, perhaps I really need a newer dual core proc and more memory... .

So can someone point me in the direction of configuring the kernel headers for knoppmyth???

Thanks

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Knoppmyth R5F27

In theory, I think it should be as simple as running 'apt-get install linux-kernel-headers', but that assumes the apt repository is right with your installation. It isn't with R5C7. Give it a go anyway. It should get installed in /usr/src.

A manual way, would be to find out the kernel version with 'uname -r', and then look for the kernel source, say at ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/ . Typically it's put in /usr/src, and /usr/src/linux is a link to it.

e.g., I have R5C7, and uname -r gives "2.6.15-chw-2" - I don't know where I got the source, because I can't find it out there now, but given the tarball, you have to do something like this:




For background, the purpose is to install the headers that match the source the kernel was built in, so apps like VMWare can know how to communicate and interface with the kernel. If you get the wrong headers, but close, you might be ok - depends how lucky you feel . It could work fine, or it could make the machine crash, or it could make it intermittently behave strangely...

I thought I'd bump with a note here, for anyone using/interested in VMWare. There's one factor which I think is crucial: process priority.

VMWare runs its machine with a niceness of -10, which is the same as video capture etc.. It's well worth doing a renice on all VMs to discourage them from interfering with key Knoppmyth activity.

I've documented a way to do this and other steps for VMWare Server installation in the Wiki.

I want to create test KM installtions using VMWare, running in Windows. Today, I downloaded the free VMWare Server for Windows XP and created a KnoppMyth R5E50 virtual machine.

My main question is, which is better for this virtual machine building - VMWare Player or VMWare Server. From the descriptions of both, they appear to do the same thing?! Does it matter which you use?

During my KM install today, there was no Debian Linux choice under the Linux heading, so I chose "Linux 2.6.xx installation". It seemed to be installing ok, but upon reboot of the virtual machine, the screen filled with some kind of hard drive error message regarding lilo, over and over and over. I'm not sure what is wrong or how to fix it.

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KnoppMyth R5.5, Asus A8N-VM CSM (nvidia 6150 onboard video), AMD Athlon 64 dual-core 4200+, two 1GB sticks DDR 400, HD-3000 HDTV card, PVR-150 card, Iguanaworks RS-232 IR receiver/transmitter, Pioneer DVR-110 DVD burner

I don't think you can create VMs with VMWare Player, so it's primary use is for running appliance VMs you download, or VMs you created in Server etc.. e.g. I moved the VM I ran on KnoppMyth onto VMWare Player on my desktop machine while I upgraded Knoppmyth.

Sorry, don't know about your KM installation within a VM - others have done it, I've read about it in the forums here, and I think on the Wiki.

Well, you'd think you might find the necessary details to get a KM install going in VMWare Server - wrong.

This wiki article:
http://knoppmythwiki.org/index.php?page=VMWareServer
is about loading VMWare Server into Linux, not Windows and it also lacks any caviats regarding special settings needed to get a virtual KM machine loaded and running.

This wiki article:
http://knoppmythwiki.org/index.php?page ... eKnoppmyth
is about VMWare Player, not VMWare Server, so I don't think it applies to my situation with VMWare Server in Windows.

One thing I did note is that in the 2nd article, they mention selecting the same Linux setting that I chose - "Other Linux 2.6.x kernel" - so I think I got that part correct.

In Windows VMWare Server, the only choice for hard drive types is SCSI - no IDE hard drive options. Perhaps that is the problem??

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KnoppMyth R5.5, Asus A8N-VM CSM (nvidia 6150 onboard video), AMD Athlon 64 dual-core 4200+, two 1GB sticks DDR 400, HD-3000 HDTV card, PVR-150 card, Iguanaworks RS-232 IR receiver/transmitter, Pioneer DVR-110 DVD burner

I think the only insight I can offer here is that a VM that you play in VMWare Player or in VMWare Server are identical, so if you download the virtual machine config mentioned in the Wiki you can load that into the VMWare Server. It sounds very much like it offers IDE disks. It doesn't care what 'host' OS you use, so hosting under Windows or Linux should work just the same.

I made a VM in VMWare server under linux (KM), and then later ran it in VMWare player in Windows.

Keep in mind, I'm trying to create a virtual machine - not play an existing one.
This is using the most recent version of the free VMWare Server (downloaded 1-26-07).
The hard drive defaults to a SCSI drive - see in the Hardware \ Hard Disk window:

I don't get IDE drives as a choice under the Advanced window either:

Every choice in this menu are for SCSI discs. There is no option for IDE.
See, what I mean?

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KnoppMyth R5.5, Asus A8N-VM CSM (nvidia 6150 onboard video), AMD Athlon 64 dual-core 4200+, two 1GB sticks DDR 400, HD-3000 HDTV card, PVR-150 card, Iguanaworks RS-232 IR receiver/transmitter, Pioneer DVR-110 DVD burner