Karoshi and Virtual PC Server

[GrumbleDook]

Hi folks ... just starting to get a few things into action, one of which is an install of Karoshi.

 

I don't have a spare machine and I am also trying to get others used to the ide of virtualisation for testing ... but I have come a cropper already.

 

I am using VPC Server 2005 R2 and after mounting the image I get the usual boot but then the graphocs get mangled ... any ideas of the best thing to do or shall I just ditch VPC for VMWare?

[webman]

Do you get any options for "safe" VGA mode if you press F2/F3 at the boot: prompt?

[CyberNerd]

any ideas of the best thing to do or shall I just ditch VPC for VMWare?

 

Not sure it would make any difference, but whats the attraction to VPC - IMO its an MS catchup effort and VMWare is still eons ahead.

[webman]

MS bought the excellent Connectix VirtualPC app, made it their own, and now it sucks.

 

Get yourself the free VMWare Server, you'll never look back

[ajbritton]

What is your beef with Virtual PC Webman? I use it (and even the Connectix version) on a daily basis and it has never let me down!

[webman]

Never manged to get the free MS version to work on several PCs, I prefered the straight-forward Connectix 2004 version or the latest free edition of VMWare Server.

[Geoff]

Yep VMWare server here too. MS VPC regularly causes my Linux images to segfault for no apparent reason.

[ajbritton]

Fair point Geoff. I've never had much joy trying to get Linux running on VPC. Tell me; does VMWare server emulate a sound card? MS Virtual Server 2005 R2 does not have this functionality sadly.

[CyberNerd]

does VMWare server emulate a sound card?

 

yep, since about version 3 !

Honestly, vmware is way better (more features/faster/cheaper) than VPC. MS are a long way behind on this.

[kingswood]

Actually that's a great idea Tony. I have been wanting to try Karoshi and a VMWare machine with it on would be cool. Virtual PC Server 2005- I don't think it's all that bad, but it did run slow on my test machine and it doesn't seem as good as VMWare. Give MS a year or so and they might steal- I mean- get some idea of how to improve it...

[mac_shinobi]

karoshi on paralells ( cant spell it worth a dang LOL )

[webman]

VMware Server is free though, Parallels costs

[GrumbleDook]

VMWare it is then ...

 

Must dig out the code for it again. Off to download it

[mac_shinobi]

You get what you pay for at the end of the day

[bishopsgarthstockton]

im using it here with the kids. Our year 10 kids have started the OCR nationals and we needed them to be able to do stuff that they cant normally do i.e. make shortcuts to .exe, search, use outlook etc etc.

 

if they hack it up it takes litterally max 4 min to put right. My self and the ICT coordinator have just done a test today by running through what the kids have to do and it went well.

 

Im taking alook at Karoshi tomorrow as i think it will help out alot with some of the issues i can see we may have as we go along

[kingswood]

I just installed Karoshi using the ISO in Parallels on OS X. It works a charm. Now I'm in Management User mode having installed Karoshi as a PDC (Xen). I like the look of this.

 

Is there any documentation lying around about karoshi- management, configuration etc?

 

FWIW, I gave the Parallels VM 512MB RAM and the system flies! The resolution settings are funky, but setting it to 1024x768 works very well. The cursor can be sporadic too when logging in, but apart from that it's great.

 

Paul

[webman]

There's the wiki but don't know how complete it is.

[SimpleSi]

I wanted to try this out and installed it on VMServer last month but came up against the problem that it's IP range is hardcoded using the class B 172.xxx range whereas my home network uses 192.168 and my schools use 10.xxx.

 

I went off trying it after this but if you clever ones can tell me how to configure around this I'll try it out again.

 

regards

 

Simon

[budgester]

What's happening to us ?

 

I'm looking at replacing our novell based admin network with a karoshi setup as well.

 

Has the time come for karoshi ? What I would really like to do is have a really beefy machine with all the karoshi servers setup as vm's.

 

Been using bytemark for a while for personal web services, and there VM setup is really quite impressive.

 

So what would be my ideal server for this ?

 

Answer on a £10 note.

[CyberNerd]

So what would be my ideal server for this ?

 

you could probably virtualise your entire serverroom with a couple of these.

60 day free trial

http://www.sun.com/servers/coolthreads/t2000/specs.xml

[Ric_]

So what would be my ideal server for this ?

 

you could probably virtualise your entire serverroom with a couple of these.

60 day free trial

http://www.sun.com/servers/coolthreads/t2000/specs.xml

 

 

mmmm... shiny Sun servers (wish mine were shiny - dull grey V20z for me)

[CyberNerd]

hehe., 8 core processors - they have a 16 core out next year - imagine a quad processor 16 core !!

[budgester]

To be honest I was thinking sun servers, I just wanted to see if there was anyone as sad as me.

 

Mmmmm, Sun kit.

 

Can I have a nice Sun Branded Rack with that as well.

 

Or how about a nice IBM iSeries.

 

To be honest I think I worked in to many insurance companies in the 90's

[linuxgirlie]

Thanks everyone for trying the system out,

 

IP's: We hardcoded (well in one file) the IP's just to make it easier for helping out and problem solving, if you have a firewall with NAT this should sort out any problems, as you can have your system on the 172. range whilst the county is on the 10 range. Also for home/work testing we have know setup a section where if you do need to connect to the Internet, you can 'add an internet connection' and type in your current details and it will act as if it has two network cards on two different networks. So you can have the servers on 172, but still access your internet on 192 etc etc

 

budgester: We do have a single server setup now if this is any help, it allows you to have all of the servers running on one server, but I would suggest something beefy

 

Virtualistation: We test ours on a mixture of real machines and VMware, glad it works on Paraells (sp?) Not sure of the other one, I had never even heard of it!! You could try though when booting the cd, choosing on the boot screen, 'more options' it takes you to the next screen and on there gives a list of different resolutions, these boot up in a kind of 'safe-mode'.

 

At the moment we are just getting Thin Client finished, after that I am just adding the finishing touches to eGroupware, and then will be working on something called LAMS.

 

If anyone has any features that we are missing out, let us know, we are always adding, and the holidays allow this to happen much quicker!!

 

Thanks again!!

 

Jo

[webman]

Have you had any more thoughts on custom web or curses-based management interfaces to save resources on X and/or if VNC isn't available?