Printable View
johnrw
Great thread; after years of messing about with wine and then crossover virtualbox was a great find. Hopefully this thread will lead people to another solution; virtualbox ('free' or 'non-free' versions) was just right for me but others might prefer vmware - no right or wrong but a good debate here
drb
Hi drb,
I did notice your earlier vote of VirtualBox works for you... and meant to throw you a shout out for it. Debating this topic is very time consuming. I have been rebooting so much, I felt like I was in the Windows 98 days. lol. I have never installed vmware before. Well Ok... I did grab a mozilla building Linux Reference Platform... that had CentOS in it... all ready to build mozilla that used vmware player to create a Linux in Windows XP. That worked out of the box for me.
Seems I missed some news apparently. Looks like the next edition of Knoppix will have VirtualBox OSE...
http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20080303#news says...
OSE= Open Source Edition. It's without those USB ports...Quote:
New versions of the popular KNOPPIX live CD may not come out as fast as they once used to, but that doesn't mean that the project is no longer active. In an announcement that will surely please all the fans of the distribution that started the Linux live CD revolution back in 2002, Klaus Knopper revealed that a brand new version would make its appearance during this week's CeBIT exhibition in Hannover, Germany: "The first edition of KNOPPIX 5.3.0 is included in c't magazine 06/2008 published during CeBIT 2008. After CeBIT, it will be available on the KNOPPIX mirrors for download, mostly unchanged." What can we look forward to? "Linux kernel 2.6.24; KDE 3.5.8 with Compiz Fusion as the 3D window manager; updates - cloop 2.624 realtime decompression with threads and experimental 'suspend' feature; Debian Etch + testing, Iceweasel and Icedove updates; OpenOffice.org 2.3.1; VirtualBox OSE; special accessibility features - ADRIANE Audio Desktop and Orca graphical screen reader." And if you can't wait for the public release, we have more good news: LinuxTracker has the torrent. Get it from here: KNOPPIX_V5.3.0DVD-2008-02-12-DE.iso
As for VMware... I have downloaded about everything I could find... read all kinds of stuff both good and bad... but to be honest... it is very overwhelming. I have no idea what each product does... and doesn't do... have a couple of thirty day serial numbers... which will certainly expire before I have the time to try them all out. I am disappointed in the Linux installer script breaking a working network configuration. But in my opinion... there is no excuse for not getting past installing into a computer by such a top notch company. Why?
Thanks again drb,
Yes I do hope this topic helps people who want to leave Windows behind to do so.
drb,
Did you try out the knoppix-pmi-setup.sh? The dcop was frustrating and yet fun for me... but I'd like to know what others think of it.
I made a few changes in the original post.
1. USB high speed needs a High Speed device plugged in before you can add that to a VM.
2. Guest Additions is a 2 step process. Mounting the iso... and then a feature that autoplay enabled machines will just run. Mine is not Autoplay enabled... so I had to Explore it and run the file specified in the autoplay.inf file.
I know I'm responding to an old post, but how well has this configuration with the TED been working for you? I just got a TED, and I am trying to figure out how to run TEDservice on a Linux box. I think i will just follow your steps, as that sounds like it has worked. Are you able to view the TED data on another computer using the port 9090 service?
I had eventually decided I needed the box for other things... once I knew how much electricity my stuff uses... I decided to make an x86 router/server out of it. It is only a PIII so it uses a lot less power than most newer pc's. Like 100 watts or so. TED 5000 is coming... and it will be able to hold all that live data, until it is offloaded to any pc. So Linux running VirtualBox, and Footprints will be even more usable... as I won't need to have a pc running 24/7 to recieve the live data. It is expected to be around $200 US, and will include the Footprints software.
The TED service runs in windows. It comes on the software disk.
It should be a file similar to this one... http://www.ftdichip.com/Drivers/CDM/...0Certified.zip
Be sure to Enable the usb port in VirtualBox... first.
Once you get windows installed, run the exe inside the zip.
Then hook up the TED to the usb port. You can use software like the freeware Tera Term Pro 2.3 to check for data coming in on the virtual serial port.
Once you have the usb->serial port verified to be working... then you need to install Footprints.
You may have to play with your serial ports... as the driver creates a new virtual serial port.
Then be sure to tell Footprints what port the TED is using.
Let me know if you need any help. You can pm me.
Quote:
Originally Posted by drb
To me, the killer in VMWare is the need to compile the kernel module. I know that if you are using one of the "standard" distributions (and these days, that seems to mean either Red Hat or Ubuntu), then there will be a pre-compiled module for you, but, of course, those of us who use Knoppix are not so lucky. Everytime I've setup VMWare on Linux (which is many times over the years), I've had to compile the module. And, this is the point, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.
I am currently running KNOPPIX_V5.3.1DVD-2008-03-26-EN (installed onto hard disk), but the kernel module compile in VMWare didn't work. Failure was a syntax error in the C code - something about "struct mm does not have a member <something>" - I can't remember. I can get the exact error message in a day or so. Note that the DVD version does have the kernel source on disk, so it should work. Over the years, I have, as I've said, done this several times, and this time, I think I tried just about every variation I could think of - but nothing worked.
Usually (that is, in past experiences), I can get it to work - by futzing with the exact contents of the kernel source directories and/or which C compiler to use. For a long time, the VMWare module would only compile with gcc2.95, so you had to either change the symlink so that "gcc" invokes gcc2.95 (which is the way I usually did it) or you could do:
export CC=gcc2.95
first. Incidentally, in this version of Knoppix (KNOPPIX_V5.3.1DVD-2008-03-26-EN), gcc2.95 isn't installed by default, so I had to apt-get it.
Now, the point of all this are these points:
1) Can anyone help me with my VMWare problem? I'd still like to get this working under the current version of Knoppix.
2) From what I've read here, the VirtualBox requires the same sort of thing - a module compile on the host machine. This seems to me to be a real limitation in what should be "install & go" software. Note that I haven't done anything myself with VirtualBox, so this is somewhat speculation on my part.
3) Win4Lin is cool. Yes, it costs a little money ($30, I think), but it works well and "just works" (doesn't require a module compile). I'm a big fan of VMWare in general, but in at least a few respects, Win4Lin is even better. Win4Lin is my current solution to this problem - certainly unless and until I can get the VMWare problem fixed.
About helping you get vmware running... in a hard disk install of Knoppix 5.3.1... well you do know that Knoppix 5.3.1 has the open source version of VirtualBox right? If you are managing to get by on win4lin... then you don't need usb in your vm, because win4lin doesn't provide it. Why not, open a console and type virtualbox?
At any rate... before you try and install vmware... you will need to remove VirtualBox.
Harry may have some experience in this regard... but he generally doesn't like to see Knoppix installed to disk.
He may be right in that regard. Recently, I had occasion to download a weekly snapshot of Debian, named debian-testing-i386-netinst.iso and installed that. Was pretty easy, and finshed without errors. My problem with that was there it was... a full system. What next? It had so much software that ran at startup, I was feeling like a newbie all over again... because I was.
My goal on that machine didn't justify a full Debian system... so I threw a 0wn hard disk install of Knoppix 5.3.1 in because I was more comfortable with it. It was a for a machine that sits behind a hardware NAT, as a Samba file server.
I did, and it generated an error message that said "the device /dev/vboxdrv did not exist" and that that meant that the virtual driver (module) hadn't been installed. So I did some checking around, and couldn't find the module installed on the system, nor any good idea about how/where to find it. So, virtualbox is not a "just works". Note incidentally that it brought up the GUI screen for virtualbox, but the message said it would not be possible to start any VMs until the module was installed.Quote:
Originally Posted by johnrw
I don't think I buy that, because the problem was in the module compile - the success or failure of that should be independent of the presence of other software or processes.Quote:
Originally Posted by johnrw
What does
do? If it gives an error, it is not installed anymore. How or why that could happen... who knows. I'll wait for the results.Code:sudo /etc/init.d/vboxdrv start
sudo /etc/init.d/vboxnet start
If it does start up the drivers... and you want it to do so every time you start your machine... then a
should enable virtualbox drivers to startup on every bootup.Code:sudo update-rc.d vboxdrv defaults 80 20
sudo update-rc.d vboxnet defaults 80 20
Works for me. When run from a Knoppix dvd... it will work. On a hard disk installation of Knoppix, well that is not really Knoppix anymore... and not really Debian... but a hybrid.