VMware ESXi Hypervisor Now Free

After making VMware Player and VMware Server available for free and the VMware toolkit open source under a GPL license, VMware now makes VMware ESXi Hypervisor available at no cost.

Making NetBSD 4.0 and OpenBSD 4.3 install in VirtualBox

Installing NetBSD 4.0 in VirtualBox fails with:
Failed to write to file. /usr/bin/dig (or whatever) (Bad address).

To make it work disable ACPI, enable VT-x and set the IDE controller type to PIIX4.

VT-x makes all the difference for NetBSD also. Without VT-x, unpacking install sets is very slow (200kb/s). With VT-x, I get 6.42 MB/s.

Plus, it won't fail writing to files.

The same thing happens with OpenBSD, and can be fixed by using VT-x.

Making VirtualBox work in headless mode on Solaris

If you've ran VirtualBox 1.6.2 on Solaris or OpenSolaris (SXCE anyway) you'll see something interesting happen when you run VBoxHeadless (let's say in GNU screen) and kill X :-). It will die.

cthulhu% ./VBoxHeadless -s CentOS51
VirtualBox Headless Interface 1.6.2
(C) 2008 Sun Microsystems, Inc.
All rights reserved

Listening on port 3389
X connection to :0.0 broken (explicit kill or server shutdown).

Which is kind of silly for something called "headless"...

Here's the fix:

env DISPLAY=buggerthis /opt/VirtualBox/VBoxHeadless -s SomeMachine

Now you can kill X happily.

It basically dies when :0.0 dies. Make it look for another DISPLAY, and it's fine.

Mortal Kombat 4 on Solaris - Wine

Using Wine, DosBOX, DosEMU, GSNEX, GBA, ePSX and various other Windows, DOS and game console emulators you can get a fair amount of fun old games running on Solaris (like StarCraft, Mortal Kombat Series, Final Fantasy 1-8, etc). Not to mention the whole Doom, Quake 1,2,3 series using the open sourced engines.



Add a Windows XP in VirtualBox to the mix and you're set :-). You can also use SeamlessRDP to run remote Windows app on your desktop.

Hyper-V - Windows 2008 Virtualization

Can't say Hyper-V is much fun. It seems to fail in spectacular ways when it comes to running non-Windows operating systems. FreeBSD 7 (AMD64 and i386) builds fail to boot, OS/2, eComStation and QNX fail to install (QNX 4 installs, but fails to boot after), Solaris 10 doesn't get past the GRUB screen (at least in the 10 minutes I've waited) and other operating systems experience strange issues:

QNX in Hyper-V:


OpenBSD install:


Though OpenBSD did install after all:



So far, it seems that VMware Server (or ESX) is a safer choice. Even though it's probably possible to get some of these systems installed with some tuning, I wasn't all that pleased with graphical performance either. The Debian installer for example was very sluggish.

And it seems to crash quite often:



Still, the version in Windows 2008 RTM is actually Hyper-V RC0, so I'll wait for a release version to come out before bothering with it anymore.

Project Etude - The Solaris 8 Migration Assistant now free

Project Etude - that lets you run Solaris 8 Containers (Zones) is now free.
Announcement here. Solaris 9 containers will also be available.

The project has been renamed into Solaris 8 Migration Assistant.

GNS3 - Cisco Virtual Lab with Dynampis, Dynagen, Idle-PC, PEmu,

GNS3 - Graphical Network Simulator - is a Cisco router and firewall simulator based on ns 3 and Dynamips for Windows, Linux, UNIX and MacOS systems.

It contains a complete Cisco lab solution, including Dynamips, Dynagen, Idle-PC, PixEMU and a graphical design tool.



It can be used to design home labs and training for CCNA, CCNP, CCIP or CCIE certifications or testing configurations.

Runing Solaris SPARC software on x86-64

You can run Solaris SPARC software on Solaris x86-64 (and even Linux x64 and Itanium).

Here is Solaris 10 u4 x86-64 running Acrobat Reader 8.1.2 SPARC via Transitive QuickTransit Solaris/SPARC to Solaris/x86-64 cross-platform virtualization.



Install QuickTransit, start the daemon and run SPARC software. It's as easy as that.

# /etc/init.d/QuickTransit start
Starting /usr/sbin/cron
cron is already running

% uname -simpr
SunOS 5.10 i86pc i386 i86pc

% runsparc
ibmsolaris% uname -simpr
SunOS 5.10 sun4u sparc SUNW,Sun-Fire-V210

Some performance benchmarks using distributed.net Solaris SPARC and x86 clients:

Solaris SPARC emulation:
% runsparc ./dnetc -benchmark

distributed.net client for Solaris Copyright 1997-2004, distributed.net
RC5-72 SPARC assembly by Didier Levet and Andreas Beckmann
Please visit http://www.distributed.net/ for up-to-date contest information.


dnetc v2.9009-494-CTR-04081422 for Solaris.
Please provide the *entire* version descriptor when submitting bug reports.
The distributed.net bug report pages are at http://www.distributed.net/bugs/

[Mar 21 14:43:32 UTC] RC5-72: Running micro-bench to select fastest core...

[Mar 21 14:44:04 UTC] RC5-72: using core #5 (AnBe 2-pipe).
[Mar 21 14:44:23 UTC] RC5-72: Benchmark for core #5 (AnBe 2-pipe)
0.00:00:16.34 [1,484,758 keys/sec]
[Mar 21 14:44:43 UTC] OGR-P2: Benchmark for core #0 (GARSP 6.0)
0.00:00:16.86 [8,291,796 nodes/sec]


Solaris x86 native client:

% ./dnetc -benchmark

distributed.net client for Solaris Copyright 1997-2006, distributed.net
Please visit http://www.distributed.net/ for up-to-date contest information.


dnetc v2.9013-500-CTR-07070322 for Solaris.
Please provide the *entire* version descriptor when submitting bug reports.
The distributed.net bug report pages are at http://www.distributed.net/bugs/

[Mar 21 14:45:19 UTC] Automatic processor type detection found
an Intel Pentium 4 processor.
[Mar 21 14:45:19 UTC] RC5-72: using core #6 (GO 2-pipe).
[Mar 21 14:45:37 UTC] RC5-72: Benchmark for core #6 (GO 2-pipe)
0.00:00:16.33 [8,054,867 keys/sec]
[Mar 21 14:45:37 UTC] OGR-P2: using core #4 (GARSP 6.0-asm-rt1-mmx-amd).
[Mar 21 14:45:57 UTC] OGR-P2: Benchmark for core #4 (GARSP 6.0-asm-rt1-mmx-amd)
0.00:00:17.03 [28,523,204 nodes/sec]

So performance on my Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.40GHz LGA775 is on par with a UltraSPARC running at 700Mhz or so. Still, that's pretty good.

The best part is, you can run SPARC-only software like this NX client:

Skype VoIP on Solaris using BrandZ + CentOS Linux

Now that we've got a CentOS BrandZ Linux container and OSS audio drivers on Solaris, we can run Skype on the BrandZ container, and ssh -X skype. Of course, it's a lot easier if you're emulating Linux 2.6 and running CentOS 5 or some newer distribution, but let's stick to more "tested" software for the moment.



You're going to have to install the dependencies first:
# yum install libstdc++-ssa

And so on.

And you're going to have to use and older version of Skype. But no worries. At least it gets the job done.

BrandZ - Linux Branded Zones in your Solaris 10 Containers

You can easily create a Linux branded container and install Debian, CentOS or some other Linux distribution inside your Solaris container.

# zonecfg -z loonix
loonix: No such zone configured
Use 'create' to begin configuring a new zone.
zonecfg:loonix> create -t SUNWlx
zonecfg:loonix> set zonepath=/export/loonix
zonecfg:loonix> add net
zonecfg:loonix:net> set address=192.168.21.73/24
zonecfg:loonix:net> set physical=bge0
zonecfg:loonix:net> end
zonecfg:loonix> commit
zonecfg:loonix> exit

We can install from a tar image, a CD or DVD or even a .iso file.

# zoneadm -z loonix install -d /export/home/cmihai/Desktop/centosimg/centos_fs_image.tar
Installing zone 'loonix' at root directory '/export/loonix'
from archive '/export/home/cmihai/Desktop/centosimg/centos_fs_image.tar'

This process may take several minutes.

Setting up the initial lx brand environment.
System configuration modifications complete.
Setting up the initial lx brand environment.
System configuration modifications complete.

Installation of zone 'loonix' completed successfully.

Details saved to log file:
"/export/loonix/root/var/log/loonix.install.4649.log"

# zoneadm list -iv
ID NAME STATUS PATH BRAND IP
0 global running / native shared
- loonix installed /export/loonix lx shared

# zoneadm -z loonix boot

# zoneadm list -iv
ID NAME STATUS PATH BRAND IP
0 global running / native shared
1 loonix running /export/loonix lx shared

# zlogin loonix
[Connected to zone 'loonix' pts/9]

Welcome to your shiny new Linux zone.

- The root password is 'root'. Please change it immediately.

- To enable networking goodness, see /etc/sysconfig/network.example.

- This message is in /etc/motd. Feel free to change it.

For anything more complicated, see:
http://opensolaris.org/os/community/brandz/

You have mail.
-bash-2.05b#

-bash-2.05b# passwd
Changing password for user root.
New UNIX password:
Retype new UNIX password:
passwd: all authentication tokens updated successfully.

-bash-2.05b# ed /etc/sysconfig/network
1d
1i
NETWORKING="yes"
HOSTNAME=loonix
.
w
q

Now we can ssh in :-).


Back in the global zone, a simple prstat -Z 1 1 reveals memory usage:

0 87 466M 568M 14% 0:40:04 5.7% global
1 11 7724K 12M 0.3% 0:00:00 0.0% loonix


As you can see, Solaris Zones are *very* lightweight.

There is also a Linux 2.6 BrandZ project, so we can easily run RHEL 5 or any other Linux distribution of our choice (with a bit of work).

ES40 - OpenSource Alpha AXP Emulator

I've already posted about other free Alpha or VAX emulators like PersonalAlpha (the free version of CHARON-AXP, also makers of CHARON-VAX) and SIMH. Now it's time for something open source, that will work on Windows and UNIX systems.

AlphaServer ES40 Emulator is a portable emulator for the HP (DEC, Compaq) AlphaServer ES40. The current version is capable of running OpenVMS with some limitations. The goal is to have a drop-in replacement for real ES40's. Emulates the Alpha AXP EV68CB processor and other devices.

Now you can run OpenVMS or Tru64 UNIX on your own personal computer.



The advantage of ES40 over PersonalAlpha is that you can emulate EV68 CPUs and a more modern system (AlphaServer ES40) and additional hardware. It's also open source, and will run on your Windows, Linux and UNIX machines. The problem is, it's no match for CHARON-AXP or PersonalAlpha in terms of performance.



You can even use ES40 to install other operating systems like BSD and Linux on Alpha.
Here's FreeBSD/alpha 6.3-RELEASE

Runnig Symantec Veritas Cluster Server on Windows Vista 64bit

Getting Veritas Cluster Server Simulator (VCS Simulator) to install and run can be a bit of a pain. Here's the deal:

Start a command prompt as Administrator, and install it using:

msiexec /i vcs_simulator.msi

Once the software is installed, download MSVCR70.DLL and put it in the VCS directory (C:\Program Files (x86)\VERITAS\Cluster Manager\bin\).

Then run "Veritas VCS Simulator - Java Console" and "Veritas Cluster Manager - Java Console" as Administrator (Right Click - Run as Administrator) and unblock the Windows Firewall ports (allow exception).



Enjoy playing with Veritas clusters :-).

VirtualBox on Solaris - Virtualization Software - Installing VirtualBox on Solaris 10

While qemu + kqemu was sufficient for most tasks on Solaris hosts, VirtualBox tends to be faster and simpler to use.

Sneak peak and what VirtualBox can do for you:



VBox in seamless mode.



You get mouse integration, seamless mode, snapshots, shared clipboard and folders, Alt-Tabbing to Windows apps... Virtualbox has it all.

Grab the VirtualBox-opensolaris-amd64-1.5.51-r28040-beta.gz package, gunzip it and install the package as root:

# pkgadd -d VirtualBox-opensolaris-amd64-1.5.51-r28040-beta1

Of course, you'll need to add some libraries to your LD_LIBRARY_PATH:

solaris% ldd /opt/VirtualBox/VirtualBox | grep not
VBoxKeyboard.so => (file not found)
libqt-mt.so.3 => (file not found)
VBoxRT.so => (file not found)
VBoxREM.so => (file not found)
VBoxVMM.so => (file not found)
libX11.so.4 (SUNW_1.1) => (version not found)
VBoxXPCOM.so => (file not found)

Just grep the installed package contents database for the proper path, and export LD_LIBRARY_PATH

solaris% grep VBoxKeyboard.so /var/sadm/install/contents
/opt/VirtualBox/VBoxKeyboard.so f none 0755 root bin 57552 64233 1202698345 INNOvbox
solaris% ldd * | grep "not found"
[...]
solaris% LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:/opt/VirtualBox:/opt/VirtualBox/qtgcc/lib:/lib:/opt/sfw/lib
solaris% export LD_LIBRARY_PATH

Problem 1: the VBox.sh script relies on /bin/bash, change to /usr/bin/bash or /usr/bin/ksh.
Problem 2: VBoxDD.so needs a 64 bit libdlpi.so, but that's only been updated in OpenSolaris:

On Solaris 10 u4:

solaris% file /lib/libdlpi.so.1
/lib/libdlpi.so.1: ELF 32-bit LSB dynamic lib 80386 Version 1, dynamically linked, not stripped, no debugging information available
solaris% grep libdlpi.so.1 /var/sadm/install/contents
/lib/libdlpi.so.1 f none 0755 root bin 49784 28431 1168280598 SUNWcslr
solaris% pkginfo | grep SUNWcslr
system SUNWcslr Core Solaris Libraries (Root)

Easy fix :-). We download it from Nexenta!

http://archive.nexenta.org/elatte-unstable/base/sunwcslr

solaris% /usr/xpg4/bin/ar x sunwcslr_5.11.82-1_solaris-i386.deb

So we file the libs in data.tar - 64 bit:

solaris% tar -tf data.tar | grep libdlpi.so
./lib/amd64/libdlpi.so.1
./lib/libdlpi.so.1
./lib/amd64/libdlpi.so symbolic link to libdlpi.so.1
./lib/libdlpi.so symbolic link to libdlpi.so.1
solaris% tar xvf data.tar

solaris% file ./lib/amd64/libdlpi.so.1
libdlpi.so.1: ELF 64-bit LSB dynamic lib AMD64 Version 1 [CMOV], dynamically linked, not stripped, no debugging

Now we can start VirtualBox and run Vista on Solaris using virtualization :-).




If you want sound, install OSS.





As you can see, apart from the poor graphical performance (as expected from Virtualization software), performance is very good. Especially disk I/O.



And for all the people who wish to convert their VMware and QEmu virtual machines to Solaris / VirtualBox, read this.

Expect a FreeBSD version of VirtualBox soon.

Running Windows 2008 Enterprise and Vista Ultimate on VirtualBox:




If you want VirtualBox Guest Additions, just download a debian package or whatever, and use ar -x to unpack it. Grab the ISO and mount it in the virtual machine. You need them for AMD PCNet drivers (networking) on Vista and 2008 for example.


And, once VBoxGuest Additions are installed, you can work in seamless mode. It basically means the host and the guest Windows both appear on the same host desktop:






Shared folders:



Want to have some fun? Use VirtualBox virtual machines on ZFS with compression and snapshots :-). You'll get at least 1.5x compression with virtually no performance hit (less data to transfer == faster with a minor hit on CPU for compression / decompression).

Note: VirtualBox also released a 32 bit package for 32 bit x86 Solaris systems.

Sun buys Innotek - makers of VirtualBox

First MySQL, now Virtualbox. Sun loves paying money for GPLware.
Sun grabs Innotek. Containers, xVM, LDOMS... virtualization hype ftw.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/02/12/sun_innotek_virtualization/

Schwartz takes another spin on the strategy wheel...



Image from Ars Technica

Good news is you can now run VirtualBox on Solaris x86. There's a beta of Virtualbox for (Open)Solaris x86-64.

Run ancient UNIX v5 on your Gameboy with gbaunix

Bored? Why not run UNIX 5th edition on your gameboy..

http://www.kernelthread.com/publications/gbaunix/



Double bored? Emulate the GBA :P.

Free Veritas Cluster Server (VCS) Simulator

Veritas Cluster Server (VCS) is a High Availability (HA) cluster software for Linux, UNIX and Windows systems.

Symantec (they have bought Veritas) offers a freely available VCS emulator software that lets you train your skills :-).

You can also use the freely available documentation. Here is the Solaris Veritas Cluster Server (VCS) manual.

Of course, you could just grab the trial and run 2 Solaris (or Linux) virtual machines in VMware Server :-).

HP Calculator Emulators for the PC - your very own HP-48

HP-48 was a graphing calculator that uses Reverse Polish notation using RPL (Reverse Polish LISP). It's pretty the best calculator. Ever.



http://www.hpcalc.org/hp48/pc/emulators/

The HP calculators are fully programmable, and you can also download a LOT of applications for it. Even games :-).

Windows Server 2008 RC1 Enterprise with Hyper-V Beta x64 available for Download

Windows Server 2008 RC1 Enterprise is now available with a beta version of Windows Server Hyper-V, a key feature of Windows Server 2008 that will be included in Standard, Enterprise, and Datacenter x64 editions.

An earlier Customer Technology Preview (CTP) of Hyper-V, is also available for download with Windows Server 2008 RC1 Standard, Enterprise, and Datacenter x64 editions.

This version of Hyper-V includes high availability and quick migration features, and is installable under the reduced (no GUIs version) "Core Server" version of Windows Server 2008. It also supports Windows and Linux guests, and snapshots.

PersonalAlpha - Alpha CPU Emulator lets you run OpenVMS or Tru64 UNIX on your PC

I already told you about SIMH, the VAX emulator, now it's time to look at a working Alpha emulator (there is another one I know of that works, but it's rather expensive and intended for development purposes). This means you can run OpenVMS or Tru64 UNIX right at home, on your PC :-).



PersonalAlpha is a Alpha emulator that can run OpenVMS or Tru64 right on your i386 desktop machine.

You can use 128 MB of emulated Alpha memory, 1 Ethernet adapter, VT-terminal emulation and 4 disks.

Minimum requirements: A Windows machine, 1 GHz CPU, 1 GB of memory(512 MB will run with performance penalty), 1 Ethernet adapter and 4 GB of free disk space.

Now all you need to do is join the DECUS society (or Encompassus) and get yourself that free OpenVMS hobbyist kit and you're good to go :-).

Also, check out Virtutech Simics.


Various links and resources to other Alpha emulators / simulators /whatever:
http://www.simplescalar.com/
http://www.yuba.is.uec.ac.jp/~kis/SimCore/functional.htm
http://www.cs.ucsd.edu/users/tullsen/smtsim.html
https://systems.cs.colorado.edu/DistributedSoftware/Aint/
http://www.encompasserve.org/DECUServe/DECnotes/VMS/3411.1.HTML
https://systems.cs.colorado.edu/DistributedSoftware/Aint/

My very own DEC minicomputer - sort of

SIMH is a highly portable, multi-system simulator maintained by Bob Supnik, former DEC engineer and vice president. SIMH runs on pretty much anything: UNIX, BSD, Linux, Windows and even OpenVMS. If you're into historic computing, simulation of historic hardware or trying to migrate some really ancient applications, look into SIMH.

SIMH can also be used to migrate old machines to new platforms. For example, you can run VMS/VAX using SIMH on a modern UNIX system (Vienna's city administration still runs some VMS / VAX systems, and has started migrating them via emulation).

You can even run modern operating systems on SIMH - like OpenBSD/vax.

SIMH implements simulators for:

• Data General Nova, Eclipse
• Digital Equipment Corporation PDP-1, PDP-4, PDP-7, PDP-8, PDP-9, PDP-10, PDP-11, PDP-15, VAX
• GRI Corporation GRI-909
• IBM 1401, 1620, 1130, 7090/7094, System 3
• Interdata (Perkin-Elmer) 16b and 32b systems
• Hewlett-Packard 2114, 2115, 2116, 2100, 21MX
• Honeywell H316/H516
• MITS Altair 8800, with both 8080 and Z80
• Royal-Mcbee LGP-30, LGP-21
• Scientific Data Systems SDS 940