Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with virtualmachine

Cool things to do with my virtual machine?

teraspawn — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 09:05:54 -0800

I've just signed up for a virtual server, and I'm looking for ideas of fun things to use it for. I'm intending to run a web server, an instance of OwnCloud and a PyScrabble server from it. Is there anything else I should consider?

Virtual Windows Servers on Mac OS X

OneMonkeysUncle — Tue, 24 Jul 2012 08:26:04 -0800

I have a Summer 2011 Mac Mini Server, running Lion. It serves as a common network share for backups, iOS syncs, etc., and media storage for an Apple TV. In coming months, I need to study for some Microsoft SharePoint certifications, and I'd like to do it at home. There are popular solutions I am aware of for desktop virtualization, but is anyone aware of a virtualization solution that will allow me to run multiple instances of Microsoft Windows on the Mac Mini Server to represent two or more servers for SQL Server, Active Directory, etc. Note that it's important for my purposes that these appear to be separate "machines" on the network, not services running on the same machine. Thanks in advance for any suggestions or assistance.

Help me time travel.

Obscure Reference — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 10:02:06 -0800

I have some devices (scanners, actually) for which there are no drivers for Windows 7. Is there some way to use them anyway? What I have in mind is, can I run older operating systems on a virtual machine under windows 7 and have these devices work? Or does virtualization not work down to the machine level?

Help me keep track of all the machines.

chengjih — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 05:56:44 -0800

Recommendations for a server inventory tracker? I'm looking for recommendations for a server inventory tracker.

We're suffering a bit from virtual machine sprawl, and the Google Docs spreadsheet is no longer cutting it. We'd like to keep track of properties like the allocated RAM, disk space, versions of Ruby, the list of projects/websites hosted on a given machine, whether it's a staging or production box, etc., and let us search for all machines that, say, are using Ruby 1.8.7 or are nginx servers.

Does anyone have any suggestions? The last time I thought about this sort of thing was in the early 2000s, and we found a LAMP app that kind of does that, but I don't recall the name of it.

Advice and encouragement, please, on jumping the rest of the way into Linux

Mngo — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 14:36:08 -0800

Advice and encouragement, please, on jumping the rest of the way into Linux. Several specific issues inside, but the gist is that I got fed up with Windows and started dual-booting Ubuntu 10.10 on several machines. Now I think I'm ready to make Ubuntu my permanent all-the-time OS. What are considerations and best practices I should consider? What am I not thinking of? I already use open source software exclusively, and I've been using Ubuntu most of the time for a month, so I'm ahead of this question. I've figured out that my canon scanner is anti-linux, and my travel printer, so I may need to keep XP on my netbook. Aside from that, I don't think I've found any deal-breaking hardware or software issues.

I was running Ubuntu on a 16gig SD card in my netbook, but that apparently died. Should I re-install to another card or to the HD? How to think about the partition? On my desktop, which has a huge HD, I have a bad install of Windows 7. Should I just forget windows there and put Ubuntu on the whole drive? Finally, on my work desktop I just installed Ubuntu directly and let it have the whole drive, so that's good the way it is, right?

I'm moderately technically competent but the Ubuntu help pages, for example, aren't great on the big picture aspects of switching, so any other considerations are welcome.

Is there virtual machine software that plays nicely with dual monitors?

aloysius on the mixing boards — Sun, 03 Oct 2010 20:58:24 -0800

Is there virtual machine software that plays nicely with dual monitors? Linux (Ubuntu) guest. Windows 7 host. I'm using VirtualBox now, but I can only use one monitor. And I can't expand the size of the window to be larger than the size of one screen.

I tried VMware Player, but it was really slow. So I gave up. I'm not sure it would do what I want anyhow.

Has anyone had any success using dual monitors with a VM Linux guest?

Testing IIS websites locally over virtual machines

LeiaS — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 16:29:21 -0800

I'm running IIS on Windows 7 to test a website locally. How can I access my local site through my virtual machines? I'd like to test my website locally across multiple browsers before putting them into our staging environment. I have two virtual XP machines set up on my Windows 7 laptop, with various browser versions on each. I want to be able to see my locally-hosted site on these virtual machines.

For example, I have http://site.leia.dev pointing to my folder of files on my Windows 7 laptop. I can view that URL in my Windows 7 browsers. In my IIS settings for the site, I have the bindings for "all unassigned" IP addresses on port 80 to use site.leia.dev as the host name.

Is there a network setting I'm missing to make my virtual machines recognize IIS as a server? Is there a specific IP address I should use instead of my host name?

Games that work in virtual machines

mtphoto — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 23:38:49 -0800

What games have you played on a windows virtual machine? What games for Windows have you played successfully inside either Parallels or VirtualBox?

I did see this thread on the VirtualBox forums where people talk about what games worked for them. I'd just like to see more.

Virtual Machine sharing between Ubuntu/Vista dualboot and some general virtual machine / virtual machine software questions.

Javed_Ahamed — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 18:59:42 -0800

Virtual Machine sharing between Ubuntu/Vista dualboot and some general virtual machine / virtual machine software questions. Greetings,

I currently run a Vista/Ubuntu dualboot and want to make a Windows and a Linux virtual machines to test code/malicious software out on. I however would like the convenience to be able to access either of these virtual machines from whatever physical OS i happen to be booted into at that time, either ubuntu or vista. Is there anyway to achieve this?

I also had some general questions about setting up these virtual machines. If i was to setup a vista or an xp virtual machine, would I need a seperate cd-key for it that is not being used by another computer?

I will require a "save state" feature, so I can configure virtual machines to my liking, then "save" them and play around with them and if something goes wrong revert back to the saved state.

Thanks in advance and if you can recommend any software/ideas on how to make this setup work your help would be greatly appreciated!

(i have been looking into virtualbox so far, ideas on this? would this work?)

Insights to convert a physical computer to a virtual machine

fcoury — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 04:53:29 -0800

What are the alternatives on converting a physical computer to a virtual machine that would run (preferably) on a Virtual Box emulator? I have an old computer around with Windows XP that I use only from Remote Desktop. I was wondering if I could transform that into a VM image and shut it down once and for all.

The only drawback is that it runs a modified version of Windows so I would not be able to just install a new WinXP VM and backup / restore. It would have to be a more physical-style copy.

Any insights?

Forgive me, Steve Jobs!

photomusic86 — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 16:31:44 -0800

What do I need to do to prep my MacBook Pro for running Vista as a virtual machine? I need Windows to run two or three specialized programs. I am also a die-hard Apple lover. Thus, I don't know what needs to be done to a Vista system to keep it from catching every virus ever made. I'm running last year's MacBook Pro model OS X 10.5 with free virtualization software VirtualBox. And please explain everything as if you were teaching someone who knows nothing about Windows (of any type), and only just barely knows anything about VirtualBox, or any virtualization software. Links are appreciated.

Help me save the boot record on this VM!

genial — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 13:22:14 -0800

FixMBR, Fixboot, FixAnything and I can't get this Parallels partition to boot up. Urgent advice needed from fellow Mefites! I have a boot camp partition that was brought into Parallels for a client. Everything was working fine. He also wanted 30GB of free space on the drive as a separate partition to install another version of OSX. After handling that (using GParted to do the live partioning) it appears it has messed up the bootloader for the Boot Camp partition.

Things I've tried:

*Boot from XP disk, go to recovery console, FixBoot and FixMBR commands
*Attempt a "Repair Restore" which does not show up after accepting the license agreement on the XP disk
*Edited the Parallels PVS file to recognize the boot camp drive on disk0s3
*Boot from GParted, UBCD, any other live disks for any tool that can make this bootable again.

All the files are there, the thing just hangs when attempting to boot from the hard drive. Is there any free tool I can use quickly that will repair this? The client will be back in less than an hour and I've been racking my brain and finally turn to AskMe. Help?

Catching that Intrepid Ibex

photomusic86 — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 17:57:21 -0800

How can I use Ubuntu (running as a virual machine on VirtualBox with OSX 10.5) to improve my computing experience? After some initial problems, I finally got VirtualBox to run Ubuntu 8.10, which is cool, but I'm not sure what to do with it. Born and raised on a Mac since OS 7, I'm not used to Linux, or even Windows (which I might run at a later date). Why should I use Ubuntu, and what for?

How do I install a disk image using Boot Camp?

EatenByAGrue — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 11:29:09 -0800

Can I convert/install a VMWare Fusion image onto a Boot Camp partition? Or alternatively, can I copy/install a drive image onto a Boot Camp partition? I have a VMWare Fusion-based virtual machine with Windows XP installed in it. I would like to set up a Boot Camp partition and move the Windows environment over from my virtual machine. Can this be done? I found a solution for Parallels, but I'm not sure it's applicable to Fusion VMs.

Alternatively, can drive images be installed/copied onto a Boot Camp partition, and if so, how?

The reason I ask these questions is my workplace cannot set up my Mac with a virgin install of XP and then individually install the programs I need, but can only install a disk image. They were able to set it up using Fusion, but they don't know how to do it for Boot Camp. Thanks for any help.

Looking for advice on running Windows in a virtual machine

rkent — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 14:14:13 -0800

Seeking advice on eliminating my existing Windows PC in favor of a virtual machine running on Linux. I'm going to build a new PC soon, after using my existing Windows 2000 machine for about 6 years. I want to mostly switch to Linux, but set up a virtual machine to handle all the Windows apps I really, really don't want to give up. I've never set up a VM before, and so I need some advice. Specifically, what VM should I use? KVM? Qemu? VMWare? Cost is not (necessarily) an object, it doesn't need to be free if a professional one is really far more awesome.

Also, what should I expect in terms of hardware compatibility? Will a hosted Windows instance be able to see the network printer set up via CUPS in the host OS, for example? What about USB peripherals in general - perhaps most importantly, will iTunes in a VM be able to access my iPod?

Are there any good sites (especially any with forums) directed in particular to setting up VMs? I've done a few Google searches and came up with some introductory info, but nothing to get me from here to up and running. Any good FAQ/Howto links would also be appreciated. Outside of VMs in particular, I've set up Linux a few times so I'm not completely new at compiling and configuring apps, etc., if that affects the advice you'd give. Thanks!

Must have Windows apps for Macbook user.

modernnomad — Sat, 25 Aug 2007 11:12:20 -0800

I just installed Parallels on my Macbook for a 15 day trial. Before I decide to shell out at the end of the trial period, can anyone suggest any "must have" windows apps (must have as in there is no os x comparator) that make it worthwhile?

Looking for tips and resources for learning how to run a webhost on a linux virtual machine

MetaMonkey — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 10:20:44 -0800

I’m planning on getting a linux virtual machine (something like linode) for webhosting, but I could use some tips and resources for getting started. My only experience of administrating a linux server is through a control panel program (like cPanel) on a typical shared-host setup. My question therefore, is what do I need to know to:

1. Get my virtual machine set up with all the stuff needed for web hosting (installing/configuring apache, php, mysql, mail server, ftp, dns, security etc.), basically so its kitted out in a manner similar to the shared hosting service I'm familiar with.

2. Handle ongoing administration.

I’m looking for any good information; tips, links, tutorials, books, anything useful really.

Thanks!

(Distro-wise, I'm leaning toward Debian because I'm informed its fairly light and simple. Also, I've seen these questions, but they're not entirely useful. )

Are there any web-based services that will show me what my webpage looks like in different engines?

jpburns — Mon, 24 Jan 2005 07:21:32 -0800

Is there any web-based service that will image (render) a webpage using specific rendering engines, and then email or display the result? I'm developing on a Mac, and experiencing some weird Explorer 6 CSS problems, and don't have a PC handy to troubleshoot.