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Windows and Linux...at the same time!

Thu, 21 Feb 2008 17:30:00 GMT

Be prepared ... cool geek stuff ahead.

I think I came across this blog entry on digg, but I can't remember for certain. But wherever the original source, it is awesome.

Long story short, you can run a virtual Windows machine (with vmware server) and connect to it via seamless rdp allowing you to interact with your windows applications right on your linux desktop.

Here is a screenshot example. You can see my Gnome panel at the top of the screen, and the Windows taskbar at the bottom.

While this is cool in a gadgety sort of way, it is also going to be so much nicer for IE browser testing and who knows what else.

Here is a blog post detailing exactly how to get your own symbiosis up and running.

NOTE: in the example below the "\" in his examples were removed for some reason... your launcher should look like this

rdesktop -A -s 'c:\seamlessrdp\seamlessrdpshell.exe c:\windows\explorer.exe' WindowsIpAddressHere -u YOURUSERNAME -p YOURPASSWORD

Windows-Linux-Symbiosis-Not-a-Dream-Anymore

Installing Vmware Server 1.03 on PCLinuxOS 2007

Fri, 01 Feb 2008 16:10:00 GMT

Recently I got the bug to try out a different Linux distribution on my laptop. I have been a die-hard Ubuntu user since I made the switch full time (haven't looked back since!), so after trying and failing to install Gentoo (guess I'm not L33T enough for that distro yet) I landed on PCLinuxOS 2007.

Once I got my development environment configured just like I like it, it was time to install a Windows VM so I can run some applications that I need at my day job (IE6,IE7, Flexbuilder, etc). For this purpose, I elected to use Vmware Server 1.03 (we already had that tarball downloaded).

When installing, I encountered an installation error that turned out to be somewhat commonplace.

Building the vmmon module. Using 2.6.x kernel build system.  make:  Entering directory '/tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only' make -C /lib/modules/2.6.22.15.tex2/build/include/.. SUBDIRS=$PWD SRCROOT=$PWD/. modules  make[1]: Entering directory '/usr/src/linux-2.6.22.15.tex2' CC [M]  /tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/linux/driver.o In file included from /tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/linux/driver.c:80: /tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/./include/compat_kernel.h:21:  error: expected declaration specifiers or ... before compat_exit  /tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/./include/compat_kernel.h:21:  error: expected declaration specifiers or ... before exit_code  /tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/./include/compat_kernel.h:21:  warning: type defaults to int in declaration of _syscall1  make[2]: *** [/tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/linux/driver.o] Error 1  make[1]: *** [_module_/tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only] Error 2  make[1]: Leaving directory '/usr/src/linux-2.6.22.15.tex2'  make: *** [vmmon.ko]  Error 2 make: Leaving directory '/tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only' Unable to build the vmmon module.

To get past this error, a quick Google search turned up a patch called the "vmware-any-any-update" that needed to be run. (get that here).

Ok, so that fixed the first error but then I ran into this...

Building the vmmon module.  Building for VMware Server 1.0.0. Using 2.6.x kernel build system. make: Entering directory '/tmp/vmware-config1/vmmon-only' make -C /lib/modules/2.6.22.15.tex2/build/include/.. SUBDIRS=$PWD SRCROOT=$PWD/. modules  make[1]: Entering directory '/usr/src/linux-2.6.22.15.tex2' CC [M]  /tmp/vmware-config1/vmmon-only/linux/driver.o CC [M]  /tmp/vmware-config1/vmmon-only/linux/driverLog.o CC [M]  /tmp/vmware-config1/vmmon-only/linux/hostif.o CC [M]  /tmp/vmware-config1/vmmon-only/common/comport.o CC [M]  /tmp/vmware-config1/vmmon-only/common/cpuid.o CC [M]  /tmp/vmware-config1/vmmon-only/common/hash.o CC [M]  /tmp/vmware-config1/vmmon-only/common/memtrack.o CC [M]  /tmp/vmware-config1/vmmon-only/common/phystrack.o CC [M]  /tmp/vmware-config1/vmmon-only/common/task.o gcc: error trying to exec 'cc1plus': execvp: No such file or directory  make[2]: *** [/tmp/vmware-config1/vmmon-only/common/task.o] Error 1 make[1]: *** [_module_/tmp/vmware-config1/vmmon-only] Error 2  make[1]: Leaving directory '/usr/src/linux-2.6.22.15.tex2' make: *** [vmmon.ko] Error 2  make: Leaving directory '/tmp/vmware-config1/vmmon-only'   Unable to build the vmmon module.

Another quick trip through the Google search told me that I just didn't have g++ installed. The easy way to find this package is to just open Synaptic and do a search for "g++".

Starting VMware services: Virtual machine monitor [ OK ] Virtual ethernet [ OK ]  Bridged networking on /dev/vmnet0 [ OK ]  Host-only networking on /dev/vmnet1 (background) [ OK ]  Host-only networking on /dev/vmnet8 (background) [ OK ]  NAT service on /dev/vmnet8 [ OK ]   The configuration of VMware Server 1.0.3 build-44356 for Linux for this running kernel completed successfully.

Create VMware virtual machines without VMware Server

Mon, 11 Jun 2007 16:18:34 GMT

If, for some reason, you opt not to use VMware Server, you can still create your own virutal machines.

VMware Player does not provide functionality to create a VM, only the ability to run one. The other day I came across EasyVMX , a site offering free VM creation for use in VMware player.

Once you download and install VMware player (click here to go to downloads ). Create a VMX at EasyVMX, then open that with VMware player. It really is that easy. If for example you want to create an Ubuntu VM, you would obviously still need an Ubuntu install disk, or .iso. (Get Ubuntu!)

A little about VMware Player (From VMware.com):

Run multiple operating systems simultaneously on a single PC

Get more out of your existing computer hardware. Use the free VMware Player application to run multiple operating systems simultaneously on a single PC.

With VMware Player, you can use any virtual machine created by VMware Workstation, VMware Server or VMware ESX Server, as well as Microsoft virtual machines and Symantec LiveState Recovery disks. Use 32- and 64-bit Windows, Linux, NetWare, or Solaris x86 operating systems side-by-side, without rebooting or partitioning your hard drive.

Evaluate virtual appliances with ease

VMware Player makes it simple to quickly evaluate one of the many virtual appliances available through the VMware Virtual Appliance Marketplace. A virtual appliance is a pre-built, pre-configured and ready-to-use enterprise software application on a virtual machine. With VMware Player, anyone can quickly and easily experience the benefits of preconfigured products without any installation or configuration hassles.

Robots and main page accessibility

Tue, 15 Nov 2005 06:00:00 GMT

On my quest towards e-stardom (aka a relevant and content-rich website), I realized that the navigation towards my older "news items" was somewhat lacking. My solution for this problem was to create a side bar menu that would contain all of the news item titles in descending date order (aka newest first).

A day or two after this change, I began to notice a positive side-effect to including all of these titles as links on the main page...The robots (spiders) were crawling all through my site! I'm not 100% sure, but I can't imagine how this increased indexing would hurt my chances of being returned in some search results.

In a possibly related subject, a Google search for 'Aaron Lynch' now returns this page in the top 10 search results (#6 as of this entry) and an MSN search returns www.AaronJLynch.com as #3!

Does anybody want my autograph?

UPDATE 1/25/06: Either Google has changed my ranking somehow, or my switch to BlogCFC has harmed my accessibility somehow. I now turn up on like page 5 or something terrible. Back to the drawing board!