Digital Paint Discussion Board
Digital Paint Community => Other Stuff => Topic started by: Cameron on April 23, 2009, 07:53:20 AM
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as knack requested, i think :)
Warning: Requires having the installation software for an operating system.
1: First of all you will need software to run the image, so go and download VMware from http://www.vmware.com/download/player/ . I recall you have to enter some information into the site to register or something which is quite annoying, but do that anyway.
2: Install VMware Player.
3: Visit http://www.easyvmx.com/easyvmx.shtml This is where you create the .vmx file for VMware to read, but it does not contain the operating system, I will get to that later.
- Set up the Virtual Hardware any way you want according to your computer's specifications, so don't overdo the memory size or Windows will lag massively. For Guest OS, select the operating system you are wishing to run as an image (Windows will of course require a CD key)
- Virtual Machine Description doesn't really matter, just enter what you want, eg: Ubuntu 8.0.1 for description and the same for long, it doesn't matter.
- Select your NIC
- Dont enable floppy drives, noone uses them.
- CD-ROM must be enabled to install the operating system, but don't enable the .iso one.
- The harddisc drives are the size that the .vdmk is allowed to reach, google SCSI if you want to know what it does, but I don't tick that box
- The rest of the settings should be self explanitory, just DONT enable the Direct X stuff down the bottom unless you want a 5% chance of having a good image.
4: Download the package of files it gives to you, i think its in a .zip or .rar and extract them into a folder on a harddisc that has about 700mb of space or more.
5: Now you insert the CD that has the operating system on it. This is where it gets tricky if you don't know what you are doing. Windows will obviously have come in a CD package thing, or unless you have a cracked version, etc. For Linux, you must download the .iso file/s from the website that they are hosted on, eg http://www.ubuntu.com/. Then you must burn that .iso to a disc. I don't know of any good free software that will burn that, but I'm sure there are programs out there. The burner then burns the .iso file to the disc, and then you insert the disc to the drive.
6: Now we get to install the operating system to the image files. You run VMware, find the .vmx file and run it. It should come up without having anything installed and will go towards a CD Drive that you assigned in the setup at easyvmx. It will then run the installation of the operating system, so follow all onscreen instructions during the installation process. When it wants to write to a partition though, there should only be 1 partition in there, the size of what you chose in the easyvmx setup and you choose it. Once the installation is complete, depending on what you installed, it should automatically reboot the image.
7: Once the image is rebooted, the image should run the operating system in a window, and there you go.
Please tell me if I went wrong somewhere, I havn't done that in a while and I took it all off memory. As for the ISO Burners, if someone could list some free ones that would be great :). Man that took a long time to write while I'm half asleep :P.
edit: look at what knack said below for an iso burner :)
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imgburn for your iso files :D
Nice writeup.
I am a VMware shop so I use the industrial strength version, ESX 3.5 for virtualizing.
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What is the main reason for using this?
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Essentially you can have an image of an operating system running on your desktop without having to dual boot your pc.
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So if am running XP, I can use the windows vista OS I have installed too while still on XP?
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Yeah I think so... but more intended for different OS companies, rather than upgrades...
Dual OS I imagine would really crunch your processor... but maybe I'm wrong.
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I'm currently working with the VI Perl SDK to collect performance metrics on all our VMware clusters and import them into our existing performance/capacity management system. I started using VMware Workstation years ago for Linux testing and also used it to build everything I needed to study my MCSE, that was really helpful. They have made a massive amount of improvements since then with their ESX hosts, and their VirtualCenter is very nice if you like to point and click.
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I use VMs to test stuff in different environments, install stuff from questionable places, and do a few other things. <:
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could this be possible used to allow an application to be installed in one place but distributed to multiple operating systems on one computer?
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I think so. ???
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could this be possible used to allow an application to be installed in one place but distributed to multiple operating systems on one computer?
No.
THink of it as having another pc in your pc that is running acompletely seperate and isolated operating system.
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could this be possible used to allow an application to be installed in one place but distributed to multiple operating systems on one computer?
I found a good solution is to have a shared partition in a common filesystem like FAT32 and then keep source/multi-os apps on it. I used to do this with FrostWire and DarkPlaces.
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I just got done doing this to a pc at the house and also to my work laptop.
This should be fun :D
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The worst part about Virtual Images is that the amount of memory they sometimes need. I've only got 1GB of ram with single core (although its 3Ghz) and having the image up and running makes windows run as slow as a snail :(.
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You absolutely need more mem to do this.
For example:
I have a dell server with quad xeons at work with 128gb of mem running 7 virtual servers with room to spare. But I'm also using VMware ESX3.5 as a host.
Expanding on this a bit, VMware makes a converter that you can run on a stand alone pc or server and converts it to a virtual image that you can then run on the ESX host. Slick as snot for replacing outdated hardware.
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I have a dell server with quad xeons at work with 128gb of mem running 7 virtual servers with room to spare. But I'm also using VMware ESX3.5 as a host.
That's one heck of a computer... how much did it cost?
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over 15k
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OVER 9000?!
...had to.
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Let's just say its a very purpose built server.
6 x 300gb SAS drives + 2 x 72 gb SAS drives
128 gb mem
dual power supplies
remote access card
2 port SCSI card
4 nic ports
and yet still only has 16 mb of video mem :D
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How did you get the 128 GB of ram?
And only a 16 MB graphics card? lol
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How did you get the 128 GB of ram?
And only a 16 MB graphics card? lol
Custom built, obviously.
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I know custom built, but that's still a lot of ram... the highest I've ever seen it come is 8GB... so that's really custom built...
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How did you get the 128 GB of ram?
8 sticks of 16 gig memory
And only a 16 MB graphics card? lol
I only use the command line on this server as it runs ESX ( red hat enterprise linux variant )
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8 sticks of 16 gig memory
Ahh... ok I didn't know that RAM came in 16 gb
and i didnt know that computers had 8 slots... only 4 or so
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Yeah Fuzz, there is a big difference between workstation PCs and actual servers.
http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?oc=becwwk1&c=us&l=en&s=bsd&cs=04&kc=category~rack_optimized (http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?oc=becwwk1&c=us&l=en&s=bsd&cs=04&kc=category~rack_optimized)
Check out that bad boy; it can hold up to 256GB of memory.
Also, you don't need good graphics on server machines, thus the 16MB graphics card.
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I knew there was a big difference...
Man add another 30k and you can have the 256gb!
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So I created a new vmdk for Windows 7.
Started VMplayer and had it boot off of the dvd created from the Win7 iso.
Let me tell you, when the installer starts expanding all of the files and copying them over, my laptop came to a screatching halt. It wasn't memory or CPU bottlenecks, but disc I/O.
Once everythign was installed it ran very well. I'm going to play with it and install some of my legacy apps on it and see how it runs.
I suggest those that are adventurous to give it a shot.