[CS-FSLUG] Virtual machines

[Frank Bax]

At 03:30 PM 12/1/06, Vincent Danen wrote:

>* Frank Bax <fbax at sympatico.ca> [2006-12-01 12:42:07 -0500]:
> > OpenBSD has emulation for both FreeBSD and Linux binaries.  I have Linux
> > emulation working (because OOo works).  I attempted VMware player install,
> > it didn't work, I asked on bsd-misc list; somebody said "No".
>
>Oh neat, I didn't know it had Linux emulation (I've only really played
>with OpenBSD as a server OS).  It doesn't surprise me that vmware
>wouldn't work on it tho... I believe even on FreeBSD it's pretty
>hit-and-miss.  I think vmware is too tied to low-level stuff in the OS
>for it to be properly emulated like that (could be wrong tho).


grep emul /etc/sysctl.conf

I was reading that vmware (QEMU also) has a bunch of services running 
behind the scenes.  There is what amounts to a nat router between the guest 
and host machines; plus other stuff.  VMWare uses SysV init scripts; not 
compatible with bsd init scripts.  Perhaps FreeBSD has some of those 
converted (which would explain "hit-and-miss").

My OpenBSD experience (since 2000) has also been servers without X.  I 
tried X (and KDE) on OpenBSD a few years ago; but gave up.  I tried desktop 
again with 4.0 - my older monitor (17" 1999) took a little tweak to get 
higher than 640x480; otherwise no biggie problems.  This time I avoided the 
bulkier gui's and went with icewm - so far so good (only a few days).