Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Java and 64-bit Linux

For anyone considering running something on top of 64-bit Ubuntu (esp. OpenVPN-ALS), be aware that Java still has a few bugs in it, when run on 64-bit. Firefox, when pointed at a OpenVPN-ALS site, is not able to start up the web forwarded windows. Instead, it just times out and then complains about not being able to synch. The apps on the server end run fine, as do the local apps in a 32-bit browser.

I get around this by running a 32-bit version of Ubuntu in a VM. It's still a bit cranky, but it works.

Sunday, December 20, 2009

A whole lot of virtual

Apologies for the delay in posting. The last four weeks have been a bear, what with the car accident (see previous post), the dryer quiting, the back of the house losing power, receiving a DMCA warning, finishing the semester, and the danged holidays. (I've been busy! Still don't have my car back...)

On top of all that, I've been experimenting with a slew of virtual technologies, including Sun Containers, Xen, KVM, Virtualbox, VMware Workstation, VMware Server, and VMWare ESXi, on either Solaris or Ubuntu platforms. Quick notes (in no particular order):

  • Xen does not play nicely on 64-bit Ubuntu. It's time for the packager to spend some additional time with the code (I think the current packages were meant for 8.04).
  • Solaris Containers take a bit of research and trial/error to get running, but once it's up, it's up. I need to figure out how to do the remote graphical login next.
  • On Linux, the two most successful installs were (believe it or not) Virtualbox and KVM. Workstation needed a couple compile-time tweaks and Server failed in the middle of install (though I kept it because the disk manager came in handy when converting the DimDim appliance to KVM).
  • I played with converting formats between the various software packages and was able to get DimDim running under KVM.
  • The most powerful of the bunch is ESXi. Unfortunately, you just can't dual boot the thing. I came up with a cheesy way to work around this by reconfiguring the boot order in BIOS. It runs quite nicely on my little AMD Dual Core. Needs a Linux version of the VIC, though.
  • KVM needs a bit of code to handle shutdowns (the power off piece).
  • There's a whole lot of discussion about Solaris Containers on Google but very few pointers to actual howtos. (Yeah, I know. I need to write down how I set it up.)
  • (On my equipment) None of them play nicely with each other. I bought my computer when hardware hypervisors were just coming out so my half-arsed implementation of a BIOS causes enough problems that I cannot run the various programs, nested or side-by-side.

There, my techie catharsis should be complete. I'll start writing up notes on all of this, this coming weekend.