VirtualDebian

VirtualBox 1.6.2 vs Windows Vista

2008-07-11T09:42:00.002-03:00

Sí, hace mucho que no escribo nada por aquí, y les cuento, la principal causa es que la última versión de VirtualBox para Windows, la 1.6.2, que supuestamente es mucho mejor y tiene menos bugs, al menos en mi compu no ha sido capaz de crear una mísera máquina virtual; me tira el siguiente error:

VirtualBox - Error
Failed to open a session for the virtual machine name-of-vm
Calle RC: RPC_S_SERVER_UNAVAILABLE
(0x800706BA)

He probado instalar VirtualBox como administrador, correrlo como administrador, deshabilitar el firewall, el antivirus, crear el archivo del disco virtual en distintas particiones.... nada. Esta versión de VirtualBox simplemente no funciona en Windows Vista.

Ahora, lo raro es que no he podido encontrar ningún reporte de alguien que le esté pasando lo mismo. De tanto en tanto buscaré, pero mi plan es esperar a que salga una nueva versión; ojalá entonces funcione todo como debe ser.

Backup vs Snapshot

2008-04-06T21:59:00.002-03:00

There's been already a couple of times that some of my VMs got screwed up somehow to the point that it was no longer bootable due to some corruption or bug in the VM configuration file or the virtual disk images, so I had to start installing and updating from scratch again. This has lead me to procure an easy method to keep a current and working backup of my VMs. For that task I have setup a handy free program from Microsoft called SyncToy to do a backup of my VMs disks and configuration files upon just on click. That's the same program I use to backup the music directory from my cellphone.

Shares not mounting!

2008-04-06T21:27:00.002-03:00

Today, the Windows shares I had set up and actually used in my VMs refused to mount. I checked for some error output by mounting one of the shares from a console, copying the command line used in the script I run to mount them automatically when the Gnome session starts:

sudo mount -t vboxsf Music /mnt/Music

That produced a "Protocol error". So I researched that a bit and found the solution: in the command line the name of the shares must be spelled fully in lower case, thus:

sudo mount -t vboxsf music /mnt/Music

In the VM's shares setup window, the name of the share could be "Music" or even "mUsIc".

One Hour Less in the Guest?

2008-04-06T21:18:00.003-03:00

I found that my Linux guest was showing the time set to one hour less than my host, and no matter if I adjusted it manually, as soon as I closed the time adjustment window, the guest time was set one hour back again.

The cause of this, turns out to be that VirtualBox does not look for the host time as it was manually adjusted and currently displayed in the system tray but it monitors the time zone setting.

Linux Mint not Installing?

2008-03-27T16:55:00.002-03:00

Previously I had a problem with a copy of the current main Linux Mint distro ISO image; I could boot a VM into it and start the installation into a virtual disk, but when the installation process reached about 22%, the system returned a Input/Output error suggesting the disk or the disk drive had problems.

Well, as it was an ISO image, there was no disk drive to blame. So I burned that ISO into a CD, boot my PC from it and tried to install Linux Mint into a free partition. The same problem happened at the same time during the installation problem. So the cuase of the problem was the ISO image.

And that faulty installation was not the only problem with this faulty ISO image, here is the list:

when Gnome desktop loaded, an error poped up saying a problem prevented the clock applet from running;
the desktop did not recognize nor auto-mount a flash card inserted in the reader;
the removable drives and media preference dialog returned an error: "Volume manager not supported. The "hald" service "not currently running" enable the service"
lspci command also returned an error: "I/O error at /usr/share/misc/pci.ids, line 0"

So I decided to download the same ISO image again, but this time from one of the mirrors instead of doing it from the provided bitorrent link.

After the ISO was downloaded, I checked its MD5 signature with Nero MD5 Verifier (there are more alternative tools for checking this).

Now everything worked fine, I could install Linux Mint into a virtual disk and into a real partition without any of the problems mentioned above. Talk about a faulty download, jeez!

How To Resize a VirtualBox Virtual Disk

2008-03-27T16:18:00.002-03:00

I had installed Linux Mint into a 4GB dynamic virtual disk in VirtualBox, and I wanted to resize that disk up to 10GB. VirtualBox does not offer any tool for resizing virtual disks so far, so the only way to achieve my goal was to clone my current Linux Mint disk into a bigger virtual disk and later resize that clone to fill the whole space of the bigger disk.

There are two ways to clone the disk, the first uses the terminal program cfdisk, which comes with most live CD distros; the later uses Clonezilla live CD. The latter is easier and faster because it does not clone empty space.

The instructions for the cfdisk method are here; I will write about how to do it with Clonezilla.

Create a bigger dynamic virtual disk from VirtualBox Disk Manager
Download Clonezilla
Set up your virtual machine (VM) to mount Clonezilla ISO disk image and boot from it.
Add the new bigger virtual disk image as the VM's primary slave hard disk
Boot Clonezilla and choose the disk-to-disk cloning mode
Deselect the option "Resintall Grub bootloader" if you want to preserve Linux Mint styled bootloader.
When the cloning is done, shutdown the VM.
Set up the VM to boot from a Linux Mint ISO image (if you have it) or from Linux Mint live CD, Gparted live CD, or any ISO image or live CD which includes Gparted.
Unselect the use of the VM's primary slave hard disk and set the bigger virtual disk (which now contains the clone) as the primary master disk.
Boot the live CD you chose and start Gparted (it's called Partition tool in Linux Mint).
If Gparted shows a swap partition it must be moved all the way to the right (together with the extended partition it is on) before you are able to resize the root partition. First you have to enlarge the extended partition, then the swap, preserving their sizes. But before you can do that you must click the swap partition and click the option "swapoff". Gparted will close, that's OK, just run it again.
When you have your partitions as you like, apply the changes and shut down the VM.
Set up the VM to mount from the primary master disk and eventually remove your old primary master disk from the Virtual Disk Manager.

Voila! Wasn't that easy?

Post Kernel Update Tip

2008-01-28T15:13:00.001-02:00

Now that I have my VM in a spacier partition, I have just finished installing Debian updates, which included a kernel update, so later, after rebooting, I had to install VirtualBox's guest additions for this kernel.

Before installing the guest additions you have to install the linux-headers package for the current kernel, and if you haven't done so, install the gcc compiler too.

Then click on VirtualBox's Devices menu option, and Install Additions.

Open a terminal and cd /media/cdrom
su
sh ./VBoxLinuxAdditions.run

Finally, reboot the VM.

Virtual Disk Not Found

2008-01-28T10:26:00.000-02:00

Recently, I added a new hard disk drive to my PC and moved the partition where I have my virtual machines data and disks to a spacier partition in this disk. Later, when I opened VirtualBox, it complained about not findind the virtual disk of my virtual machine, and opens the disk manager, but there there is no option to relocate the disk, just a remove option which MUST NOT be used. Just close the disk manager, head to Preferences and update the paths to the default folders. Restart VirtualBox and everything should be right on track again.

The point here is disk manager has no option to relocate disks because all virtual disks are expected to share a single path, not scattered in various locations.

3D Unsupported

2008-01-15T22:28:00.000-02:00

I tried to run some basic 3D games in the Debian virtual machine but I was dissapointed. Linuxkart run to a crawl, using 100% CPU power, even with main memory set to 500MB and video memory set to 64MB. Pong2, on the other hand, just froze the whole VM.

I checked which CPU the VM does see with "cat /proc/cpuinfo" and reports my host CPU, so the problem is not this but that the VM has no hardware support for 3D.

Here is a thread in VirtualBox forum discussing this subjetct and what we can espect in a medium term.

Guess I'll finally have to set up a dual boot system just to test linux 3D capabilities :(

Sharing Folders with VirtualBox

2007-12-20T06:57:00.000-03:00

Here is a step by step on how to set up shared folders for accessing Windows folders in a Linux guest.

1. Assign the host folders to share through the VM settings in VirtualBox. No need to setup shares in Windows Explorer itself.

2. Create mount points for the shares in the guest (as root):
mkdir /mnt/share
mkdir /mnt/share/music
mkdir /mnt/share/videos
mkdir /mnt/share/pix
mkdir /mnt/share/dox
mkdir /mnt/share/down

3. Setup sudo (as root):
Add the following at the end of /etc/sudoers:
user ALL = NOPASSWD : ALL
Replace "user" with your username.

4. Create a script to mount your shares:
mkdir ~/scripts
nano scripts/shared-folders
#!/bin/sh
sudo mount -t vboxsf music /mnt/share/music
sudo mount -t vboxsf videos /mnt/share/videos
sudo mount -t vboxsf pix /mnt/share/pix
sudo mount -t vboxsf dox /mnt/share/dox
sudo mount -t vboxsf down /mnt/share/down
The names after "vboxsf" are the ones you set for your shared folders in step 1.
Make shared-folders script executable:
chmod +x shared-folders

5. Add the script to Gnome startup programs:
Desktop > Preferences > Sessions > Startup Programs
Now your shared folders will be ready as soon as your Gnome desktop loads.

BEWARE: currently the content at the root of shared Windows Vista folders featuring a "Location" tab in their properties window cannot be deleted or edited from the guest, neither new files or folders can be created at that level. Anyway, these limitations do not apply for their subfolders.

VirtualBox Installation Tips

2007-12-20T06:36:00.000-03:00

Installing VirtualBox is pretty easy, but there are a few steps that are now such straightforward or obvious.

First of all, you will not be able to run vboxmanage, VirtualBox's powerful command line interface, untill you append its path to Windows' System environment PATH variable. These are the steps:

Open the Windows menu and right click on "Computer"
Select "Properties"
Select "Advenced system settings"
Select "Environment variables"
Select the "Path" variable and click Edit
Append this: ";C:\Program Files\innotek VirtualBox" wighout the quotes

After you installed some Linux distro in a new VM, you better install the VirtualBox Additions, which will improve the mouse and keyboard integration between the host and the guest, among some other performance enhancements. These are the steps:

A couple packages are required to build the Additions program: linux-headers for your current kernel version (check with "uname -a") and the C compiler gcc.
Mount the Additions installation CD in your guest OS desktop: in the VM window menu select Devices > Install Additions
cd /media/cdrom
(as root run) sh ./VBoxLinuxAdditions.run
That's it, that simple!

Lastly, remember that whenever you install an updated version of VirtualBox, your VMs' settings have to be updated also, using the command line: vboxmanage updatesettings

VirtualBox vs VMware Player

2007-12-20T06:04:00.000-03:00

Hace unos días que he remplazado a VMware Player por VirtualBox y la verdad que no me arrepiento de haber probado primero el Player, porque así ahora puedo apreciar todas las ventajas que tiene el otro, las cuales detallo rápidamente continuación:

VirtualBox es más de diez veces más liviano
¡mantiene el reloj del guest sincronizado!
permite crear y modificar VMs a partir de CDs, DVDs, o imágenes de ambos formatos, mediante una intuitiva interfaz gráfica
permite guardar snapshots y agruparlos en forma jerárquica
soporta dispositivos USB como impresoras y escáneres (aunque por ahora un mouse o teclado USB sólo funcionan bien si los emula como PS/2, que es lo que hace por omisión)
no necesita modificar el host para acceder a sus carpetas
puede operar más de una VM a la vez
es grátis y la mayoría de su código es abierto

Sin duda que debe tener otras ventajas para usos más avanzados, así como ya me he topado con tres problemas de configuracion menores, pero por ahora, con estas diferencias me alcanza para adoptar a VirtualBox como mi plataforma de virtualización preferida.

Tips for Host Partitions

2007-12-15T02:15:00.000-03:00

When the time comes that VMware player tells you it can't exit because you don't have enough space in your host partition to store the virtual machine state, yo will have no other choice than shut down Debian itself and start looking what has eaten your partition space and how you can free some without resizing the partition.

StepTree is a tool I recommend to see a 3D overview of what folders and files are taking the most space in your partition. By scaning the partition I placed my VM in, I could crearly see that a lot of space was taken by the contents of a system folder named System Volume Information. I had not seen that in Windows Explorer because I had previously set in Tools/Folder Options to hide system files from view, which renders a more clean view of special locations like your user folder.

The recycle bin folder was empty because I had already disable this feature for this partition. The setting can be reached by right clicking in the recycle bin icon in the desktop and selecting Properties.

If the recycle bin is not emtpy and you disable it right away, its contents will remain in the bin and you may not be able to delete them manually any other way than clearing all partition's recycle bin data in a single click. The propper way to disable a single partition recycle bin and get rid of its content is to first set the partition recycle bin size to "0", apply the change and then finally, disable the bin and apply.

In the case of the System Volume Information (SVI) folder, it should be empty since it uses FAT32 file system, which is not compatible with Windows' system restore feature. It turns out that I could not delet it manually because the folder was created and populated with restore data back when the partition was using a NTFS file system; the fact that now the partition is FAT32 prevents that any file inside is removed because the folder properties dialog is missing the Security tab, which is where you can change ownership of the folder to be able to delete files.

So having no other choice, I created an archive of my VM folder into another partition --using no compression so as to do it faster-- and formated the hosting partition, this time as a NTFS file system. Then right click on "Computer", select Properties, than System Protection, and check that your host partition is not selected in the list of protected partitions. Restore the archived VM, test run it, delete the archive if you need the space and you are done, now you are claiming the maximum available space you could get from your partition.

KVM Premiere

2007-12-13T17:45:00.001-03:00

KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) is the newest virtualization technology implemented in recent Linux kernels. The main advantage, apart from improved virtual machine performance is that unlike VMware, it requires no modification to guest operating systems. But I repeat, KVM is a Linux host technology, so it does not apply to a Windows host - Linux guest scenario, but it is worth to know about it for the time come you have finally migrated to Linux and want to virtualize Windows.

Here are some introductory articles from Phoronix:

Virtual Desktop Linux System Requirements

2007-12-10T02:08:00.000-03:00

So, what hardware do you need in your host PC to get a smooth virtualized desktop Linux experience? In my experience, as a user of Windows Vista Ultimate, I'd suggest meeting the following specs before you try general purpose virtualization:

2 Gigabytes of RAM memory. Windows Vista and your set of regular apps will probably use 50% of that memory most of the time when not using VMware.
a 5 Gigabyte partition for your virtual machine files. That leaves about 2 Gigabytes of headroom to let the virtual disk images grow as you install new apps or update your virtual operating system.
a relatively new, low end double core processor like the AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ will do just fine.
a screen resolution of 1680x1050 is the lowest you will want to prevent your standard 1024x768 virtual machine window from bloking all your host desktop.

I still have to test some 3D app or game in my virtual Linux to see if my graphics card is supported.

No Thumbnails In Kuickshow

2007-11-28T15:27:00.000-03:00

Even if I have enabled "show thumbnails" option in Kuickshow, images just appeared as generic icon files. First I thought I had to enable the preview option in Gnome file management options but that was not the issue. It's just that Kuickshow being a KDE based program it needed some component from the KDE environment to handle thumbnails, and actually, the Debian virtual machine I am using comes with no KDE package installed. So finally I figured out that all that Kuickshow needed was Konqueror (and all that comes with it) to be installed; now I have thumbnails in Kuickshow.

No Disk Exception

2007-11-27T05:20:00.000-03:00

Ahora que porfin tenía funcionando la última versión de VMware Player, cuando mi VM de Debian comenzó a cargar saltó un mensaje de error con el título Windows - No Disk y la leyenda Exception Processing Message 0xc0000013 Parameters seguida de otra serie de tres cifras alfanuméricas.

Según pude averiguar el culpable es otro bug reciente, un conflicto al activar la disketera, porque parece que por un instante Windows la mantiene habilitada tanto para el host como para el guest y por lo tanto se genera un conglicto de exclusividad por la letra de la unidad, la A.

Hasta que el bug no se resuelva, la mejor manera de evitar el mensaje de error al abrir la VM es desactivando la disquetera en VMware Player, el cual recordará este estado durante sesiones. Eso sí, el mensaje de error, molesto aunque inocuo volvera a aparecer toda vez que volvamos a activar la disketera en la ventana del player.

Internal_Power_Error

2007-11-27T04:49:00.000-03:00

Finalmente pude hacer funcionar la última versión de VMware Player (la 2.0.2) en Windows Vista Ultimate y dejar atras la version 1.0.4, la última que hasta entonces había podido instalar sin problemas.

Resulta que tras instalar instalar las últimas versiones del player, luego de reiniciar la compu la carga de Windows se interrumpía con un una pantalla azul de error (BSOD) que generaba un bolcado de memoria y la leyenda "internal_power_error" como única pista significativa, tras lo cual, la máquina volvía a reiniciar y la única forma de parar el ciclo era presionando F8 y restaurar Windows a la última configuración exitosa anterior. Ni siquiera el modo seguro se salvaba de la BSOD.

Por varios meses me resigné a seguir usando la versión 1.0.4 del player con la esperanza de que ese bug sea corregido en una futura versión, pero luego de experimentar la misma BSOD con la última versión del player que salió a principios de mes, me decidí a buscar nuevamente alguna pista en la Web y la encontré en un intercambio del foro VMware Communities titulado WS6 BSOD with INTERNAL_POWER_ERROR on WinXPSP2.

Allí queda demostrado que el problema también ocurre con varias de las últimas versiones de VMware Workstation y no es un problema exclusivo de Windows Vista.

Para no sobreabundar, la solución en mi caso pasó por reparar primero la instálación de VMware Player 2.0.2, desconectar el teclado de uno de los puertos USB y conectarlo al puerto PS/2 usando un adaptador. Una vez hecho eso la compu reinicia sin problema.

Igualmente, que este bug siga sin resolverse en el player no le debe hacer mucha gracia a los que prefieren usar un teclado inalámbrico.

2007-11-14T11:18:00.000-03:00

VirtualBox: The best virtualization program you've never heard of - DesktopLinux.com

Double Personality Disorder

2007-07-20T22:12:00.000-03:00

What's all that fuzz about dual booting!? Specially hyped in Apple's Mac notebook line. Dual-booting, the ability to boot a PC either into one (say Windows) or another (say Linux) operating system is most of the time a useless black or white proposition which reduces productivity dramatically. Because, yes you can boot into Linux when you want, but doing so means that you have to quit Windows... that means, suspend all things you or your desktop are doing, like downloading that wonderful movie, transcoding that two and a half hour movie to play in your portable multimedia brick, for example.

Let's cut to the bone, the ability to boot a pc into an alternative OS is most of the time just useful for emergency situations, let's say when some new driver update have stuck your Windows and prevent it to load until you use your installation disk (you have it, don't you?) to revert your system to a previously saved rescue point. If you have to do something in Windows right away and can't take the time to fuzz with system rescue, well, then just reboot your system into Linux and, if you have it set up properly, you could access your files and complete that urgent asignment. Just later you will take care of the comatose Windows.

If you insist on trying different operating systems by dual-booting between them daily, you will develop a double personality disorder much sooner than later.

What I recommend is that you use virtualization technology to test your target OS (say Linux) as a virtual machine running in your everyday desktop (say Windows). Then, there's no need to suspend any tasks in progress and shut down Windows, or even wait for the system to reboot; just click your Linux virtual machine shortcut in the Windows desktop and there your Linux boots, or resumes if you have previously suspended, preserving all opened programs, windows and documents you where using before closing the virtual machine.

Much better than that, once the virtual machine is properly configured, you can access shared files in one or another OS by just switching from the virtual machine windows to your Windows desktop, that simple!

Linux running in the virtual machine, given your computer is powerful enough (talk about this later), will perform and feel as if running on real hardware.

Of course, there are those once in a while situations where virtualization does not cut it and dual-booting shows its usefulness, like when you want to be shure that your real hardware is supported by your target OS, because a virtual machine runs on virtual hardware, which generally has different "virtual" specs than your real hardware. For example, you could configure a virtual machine to simulate being running on an Intel Celeron CPU, while your real digital brain is an AMD Athlon piece. Specially, dual-booting is almost inevitable if you want to check how does your target OS supports the advanced features of your graphics card, like 3D.

What is Virtual Debian

2007-07-10T03:42:00.000-03:00

In Virtual Debian I will blog about my experiences and know-how gained while I test Debian GNU/Linux running as a virtual machine in Windows Vista.

I've been trying Debian as a VMware player guest a little bit for a while so now I already have some useful and time-saving tips worth to blog about and the relative confidence that I can further test Debian as a desktop OS without having to stop whatever I am doing in Windows.

Granted, using and seting up Linux is not an easy task for newcomers and takes quality hacking time to get experienced with, even more if we are dealing with Linux running as a guest in a virtual machine, but I really think that a virtualized Debian, unlike a Windows-Linux dual boot system configuration, is the best and more efficient way for a Windows user to test, learn and compare both operating systems without sacrificing any productivity.

Once I get confident with VMware player, I will try other alternative virtualization solutions and compare all of them to identify the best one to test Linux desktops in Windows Vista.