riddlermarc

I was supposed to be going into work for a Developer meeting but it’s been postponed until Monday.. so I’m taking the time now to try to get my aged webcam set up under Linux so I can chat to my Dad/various people without having to use MSN and Vista.

GAIM-vv seems to be the way forawrd, I’l ltry it and see how it goes.

Currently sat in the study supping on a cup of tea (do you know I haven’t had a cup of coffee for over seven weeks!) and listening to some quality Bodom lml

Man what a ‘mare! If you don’t have two physical NICs in your server WSv will steal the only NIC for networking and the host server won’t be able to use it (although it *can*) :p

So at the mo my test server is running/installing two copies of 2003 Server under WSv but I can’t RDP to the host, I had to grab a 15″ monitor from the garage and physically attach(!).

I have read that installing Linux VMs is nigh on impossible too under WSv but I’ll give it a try - if it doesn’t play ball I’ll just reboot into Fedora, no stress (aah, dual boot!)
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In my absence it has been released so I am ‘rushing’ to catch up on the situation - I have downloaded a copy from MSDN and just prepping my server for it, should be good. I am particularly up for testing the Viridian stuff, the Virtualization details that are built right in. It seems at the moment it will only support Windows Server 2003 and 2008, so no Linux (!) but hey, it’s stil pre-pre-release code.

If/when my server copes with the upgrade I will let you know.. the only thing(s) I am worried about is the declaration that it will not load any driver that has not been digitally signed.. yeah, I know that makes sense but how many vendors have releasesd digitally signed drivers for beta code.. ?

Well, this took ages of research and I only found the answer on an obscure post on the redhat mailing list.

Basically, the problem is that when you try to install 2003 Server (or XP for that matter) after the initial reboot to continue the installation you lose the cdrom and upon rebooting it fails to find the install media necessary to continue the installation.

This works if you are using an iso as install media, rather than a physical drive (more…)

Well, I had to invest in some new server hardware so I could take advantage of the latest virtualisation solutions. After taking a look at KVM I decided it might be a bit immature so I have gone for the old favourite, Xen. More of that later, down to the interesting stuff!

I ordered an AMD AM2 X2 3800+ and compatible motherboard, very nice and a breeze to install. FC6 x86_64 (yep, back to Fedora!) went on without too much trouble, apart from Gnome freezing on occasions. A quick “yum groupinstall XFCE” and I was away, much faster and smaller than Gnome.

.. I waited patiently for FC6 to come out, trashed my Ubuntu custom install and loaded it up. Did it work..? Did it fcuk
As it turns out, my main problem doesn’t seem to be solely Fedora-based - when I ran an upgrade from Dapper to Edgy I came across the same problem, namely the mouse will refuse to click on anything and the keyboard will respond to nothing but .

That aside, Fedora is getting just as big and clunky as Windows and as Fisher Price-looking as KDE/SuSE which is distinctly NOT a good thing. I still use CentOS 4.x for any server installs I need to do (this blog is running on CentOS 4.4 right now) but unless I can seriously fix the issues I have with Fedora, it’s bye bye baby.

Right now I’m trialling Slackware in VMWare, although I am using Ubuntu on my main machine at home I feel a little ‘dirty’ for doing so.. oh the distro-snobbery of it all :p

In my never-ending quest to satisfy my quest for a “perfect” linux distro, I downloaded slackware 11.0 and installed. well, 99% installed but time and again it refused to install the bootloader :/ I have it running under vmware on my work laptop and it looks good, shame it refused to be happy with the home machine I’m trying to install it on. Looks like the failed install will be over-written with trusty fedora.

Fedora is like that ex-girlfriend you go back to time and again when you’ve tried others and have been seriously thwarted, she’s the easy lay that will never say no or try to be cool. I have been a fedora/redhat user since rh6.2 and I still have a serious soft spot for it - strip away the bloat and it’s still a decent distro.

Microsoft released vista rc2 on friday, I downloaded it and updated my rc1 install. Despite not being a huge microsoft fan, I do need to keep up with the latest developments for work porpoises. I’m definitely liking vista at the moment, so much so it’s currently default boot! I thought the constant security pop-ups would be prohibitively annoying but you soon get used to them, they are no worse than ubuntu in that respect.

I might have another go slackware but try the slamd64 version, it does really grate having a 64-bit machine but only running a 32-bit os on it..