virtualization, was: Re: an observation, and question

[Gregory Nowak]

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Igor and all,

On Thu, Apr 08, 2010 at 09:32:34PM -0400, Igor Gueths wrote:
> I am assuming that if you are
> using UML to virtualize Linux guests on Linux hosts, that as far as the
> installers go, they need to have some sort of remote installation functionality,
> SSH or otherwise?

With uml, you can't just take an iso image, and do an install like you
would with physical hardware, or in something like virtualbox. When
installing debian inside a uml machine, I used rootstrap, which could
be modified for other distros according to the rootstrap docs. I did
once install slackware inside a uml, but I think it was something like
6 years ago or so. I do remember that it took me quite a few hours,
and some hit and miss trials before I got the installer to install
into a uml machine all the way through to the end. That's all I can
recall though, given how long ago it was, and because I played with it
only one time, but did manage to get slackware installed into a uml
like I said, from what I can recall. To answer your question,
rootstrap gets input from, and writes output to your controlling
terminal, so you can use it over ssh, or in front of a physical
keyboard if you'd like. I personally like to deal with an installed
system inside of a uml machine via ssh, though there are ways to map
uml consoles to your own physical system's consoles, and not only.

> What I am basically going for is a solution where I can grab
> pretty much any distro that has a textmode installer i.e., Centos, Debian, Arch,
> etc, get it installed, and render it bootable so I could play with
> it.

I would personally use virtualbox under a windows host for such a
scenario. In case someone is wondering why I'd do it under a windows
host, there are a couple of reasons. First, the debian packages for
virtualbox require x. You could just use the self-extracting version,
provided you agree to the PUEL license, to get a headless system
without needing x, but going that route means the software isn't
installed through your distro's package management, and getting it off
later could be a pain. The final reason is that under windows, NVDA
does a good job dealing with the GUI, as I already mentioned. In fact,
whenever I want to use the GUI to do something, rather than the
command line, I shutdown my copy of wineyes, and bring up nvda. There
is no such option for now under orca as far as I know, you're limited
to using VBoxManage for everything, like it or not. 

That's just my own preference, and I do realize others may choose to
do things differently for their own probably as good reasons.

Greg


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