[admin (no pm's please)]

Ubuntu Hardy Heron is due out soon, which is another opportunity to look at how things hang together in the office.

What I do find notable these days is that I think that the development environment for any one MarsJupiter project along with a Ubuntu install should fit with reasonable comfort into 16gb.

You can now get a 16gb memory stick for £40.

I could imagine a system that was running windows (XP or Vista not going to get into that argument) along with two virtual PCs.

One virtual PC would hold the development environment for a project.

The other virtual PC would basically run just web browsers, but it would be set to use the development virtual PC as a nameserver, so that it would see the test sites set up on the development PC. This virtual PC would run XP so that both major browsers would be there for testing all the time.

In such an environment upgrading would be really painless, as you can simply copy the virtual PC wholesale as it is a single file.

If things would fit neatly into 16gb, memory sticks would provide both backup and portability if needed.

[admin (no pm's please)]

the mickysoft virtual PC seems to have a big aversion, some say deliberate to Linux

So now trying vmware player which is a free download and people do see to provide free virtual images for it as well. So there may not even be a need to buy which I find surprising.

[admin (no pm's please)]

VMWare seems okay with Linux, but is breaking when I try and convert a major legacy system to a virtual system.

I have decided to spend a few days seeing if I can recreate this system from scratch, without getting into the details these systems get very little work done on them, but have always been the backbone of MarsJupiter LTDs income, without which the free forums could not have existed.

Spending a few days "dusting" is probably a good idea  

[admin (no pm's please)]

I'm working in parallel here, trying to get my legacy stuff up and running, but also seeing how this will help the forums system.

Already I have XP pro running in a VMWare player under Ubuntu. It is configured to see the Linux box as its DNS server and so it works great as a testing platform for internet explorer and the forums

[admin (no pm's please)]

I still have to actually make it all work  

But the system that pays the bills is installed and as a VMWare machine is only taking up a little over 5gb of disk space

That is so little I think I can place a lot more windows eggs in the same basket, anything up to the 16gb mark is good in my book

[CodyT07]

I have played with Ubuntu and Kubuntu on VmWare before.
I tend to have a thought that keeps coming back to me when I use it
"if your going to ditch Windows, you have to completely wipe it and go for it, no vmware, no dual boot."
Kind of a pain Vmware is, If i go for 1024 by 768 resolution on it, I have trouble with the vmware's tool bar obstructiong my view. And Untu's didnt like 800 by 600 through it.

[admin (no pm's please)]

Running on two 1280x1024 monitors does give the screen real estate for the virtual windows

[admin (no pm's please)]

16 and 32 bit code trees now compiling.

This is really a big relief, it is what pays the bills and I always worry that 16bit will go horribly wrong at some point as it is just so out of the ark  

What is notable to me though is how this code exemplifies the whole issue of bloatware. The executables created here are minute in modern terms, less than 1mb in size.

In 1994 when this all started, compiling them from scratch took 3 hours or so. Now even under vmware with a PC doing other things, it takes 1 minute!

Modern projects take far longer to compile, end up far bigger, but are they any more sophisticated? Hardly, this project is a very complex bit of code, comparable to the visual basic or php runtime system.


Any how now to double check the virtual PC under Linux and a windows notebook, and then to find some memory sticks and other backup mediums to put this all safely to bed

[admin (no pm's please)]

This is all looking really good

Having the paying work able to run on three PC's is just fantastic  

What I am puzzling about now is whether and how to reorganize the forums development  

There is a temptation to go mad on this and virtualize everything, but the virtue of virtual machines is one of encapsulating things. e.g. for my legacy work it needs:

1) Source code
2) Microsoft SourceSafe.
3) Unix emulation commands.
4) Test installation  system.
5) Specific patch of MSVC1.5.
6) Specific patch of MCCV6
7) Specific version of Installshield.
Specific version of Installshield package for the web.

On the other hand forums development needs:

1) CVS data on a physically separate drive.
2) Forums source tree.
3) DNS server set up.
4) Apache server set up.

As such to create a new setup needs little more than installing Ubuntu, copying a source free across the net, and either manually setting up a couple of servers or copying the config files.
So whilst there is virtue in a virtual machine as a mobile backup, there is probably no great advantage in trying to change over to a more partitioned approach.

e.g. whilst a CVS virtual machine could work as a network server and provide a more consistent interface, it would still be a layer of complexity that would be more work than a simple source tree on a disk could ever be.

[admin (no pm's please)]

Just blogging to myself here really  

I am about to archive off 10 years of crap from my windows PC, it will be good to get back to an uncluttered installation at last, I may even do a complete system restore, with all the work stuff now in a virtual PC I don't think at this stage there is much more than a STEAM account to be bothered about, then again if it ain't really broke, why fix it?

Have also order 2gb of memory to take that machine to 3gb. One thing about virtualisation is that it is heavy on memory.

I don't strictly need to, but I think I will be fair an pay the £90 to vmware, they deserve it for such useful software!

[CodyT07]

Do you use 64 bit Ubuntu or just 32 bit?
I am going to try 64 bit Ubuntu, hopefully dual boot, though nasty to do so.

[admin (no pm's please)]

[admin (no pm's please)]

Just musing a bit more on what I want out of all this?

I recently dumped my media center PC in favour of a cheap dvd player, why? because the clever tech don't do the job well!

Currently on my main Linux development machine, things are really very good indeed thanks in part to vmware giving me windows access for some things Linux does not do well.

So why mess with it?

common sense says to leave the bleeding edge alone and use vmware to facilitate travel and backup.

It can take 6 months to fully create the most productive environment on a new release of Linux and 6 months is also the release cycle for Ubuntu, so if you update on that cycle you may be constantly working on the work environment and not the work!

[admin (no pm's please)]

Aside from the minor detail of not actually having an 8gm memory stick yet, I now have the forums development system in a format that can be installed on any PC.

To aid this I have deleted most of the forum templates, ranks and smilies, from the office system, they are on 3 servers plus loads of backups and as such are just excess baggage from a development point of view.

Last but not least I am fixing a mistake in the office system, I made the mistake of trying to fudge the issue that the domain name in the office would be different to the main domain name, this at a time when myfreeforum.org was the only name.  This keep on causing small issues in development and it is time to spring clean that issue as well.

[admin (no pm's please)]

Spurred on by the fact all fits easily into 8gb I just wasted an hour or two seeing if things would work in a 4gb memory stick, I am sure they would with some Linuxes, but Ubuntu does not want to play easily.

I think this must be my tight streak showing    a 4gb stick is £5, 8gb more like £20.

[admin (no pm's please)]

Found what looks like a real pain in the neck in this process  


You can have two types of virtual machine.

1) The easy type, with a few files, capable of running in the free vmware player.

2) You can convert it to an ACE, with the capabilities of encryption/passwords and easy deployment to a memory stick.

But with the ACE thing there are tons of files, and no way I can see of going back to something you can deal with via file copies and the free player. As such if you only have one license and a problem with the licensed machine then you seem to be right up the creek

I reckon they are trying to avoid taking my money   at every stage I am happier with what you get for free.

[admin (no pm's please)]

I can't believe the time wasted in fighting with this. I'm still trying to create instances of Ubuntu virtual machines that will network with windows shares in a stable fashion. Once again in theory I have achieved this, but I am about to reboot and test again, and then verify things will still work when I copy the virtual machines between platforms.

It is all a bit silly, but to consider this type of machine as a good development platform networking must be working reasonably well.

[admin (no pm's please)]

Finally up and running with the myfreeforum development environment in a virtual machine.

Leaves me uncertain about the whole process though, you can pick up real hardware for under £200 pounds, it is not very environmentally sound, but in business terms time is money  

[admin (no pm's please)]

Ended up a little scuppered with the mobile environment, vodafone 3g modems seem to be made unhappy by vmware    

When mobile a reliable connection is more important that a development environment so I am calling it a day there for now.

Have done something else I find interesting though, I ran BBC Micro "Elite" in a BBC emulator, running on XP Pro which was being run as a VMWare virtual machine under Linux, one emulator running another emulator. The game itself would probably only suit someone really keen on running it, as whilst it did seem to run sort of okay, the keyboards are too different to be easily coped with.

[admin (no pm's please)]

Still seem to be getting grief with the licenced version.

With the licensed version you get to install vmware tools which adds some admittedly useful features, but it does this in Linux by tweaking the kernel, and as a result when you upgrade Ubuntu to the latest version it sends the network rather fubar.

[CodyT07]