[GLLUG] virtualization/netboot question

Peter Christenson simple.solutions at comcast.net
Mon Mar 9 11:19:24 EDT 2009


I'm supprised that no one has responded to this. (that I have seen) Anyway, I don't know much but let me see if I can help. First off how far have you gotten?

What I've gotten to work. 
I'm currently pxe booting dsl, memtest, spinrite, and ghost/win98 bootdisk.  I'm working on a variant of xp embedded, and just saw and want to try a pxe-boot xen.  I also want to build a (working) menu.

I am interested in your project but I would want to change a few things if possible.. I want to use one computer to run two VMs in kiosk mode mapped on different keyboard, video, mouse. Making it so that both my kids can play at the same time at +/- half the power. I also want to run the vms off a nas with only a local swap file.   Although I only have first hand experience with VMware ESXI. I'm planning on building both virtualbox and xen then I can compare all three.  If you have any insite on witch one to use I'm all ears.

As a side note I am looking for a floppy img that can boot---connect to nsf drive--mount iso file---boot as if it was a local drive.


Regards
Peter. 

  

-----Original Message-----
From: "Sean O'Malley" <picasso at madflower.com>
To: linux-user at egr.msu.edu
Sent: 02/25/09 10:38
Subject: [GLLUG] virtualization/netboot question

I have a couple of computers at home(doh). My little cousins like to play
on them on occasion.  However, some of the programs they like to use are
windows based,and some of them are linux based. I like to use the
computers for linux based things and they are running a distributed
client when not in use.

What I -want- is a system that lets me netboot the machines, copy vm image
files to the netbooted system's harddrive. Allow me to launch the VM in a
fullscreen kiosk mode. (copy a new image file in the background while they
are using the vm that is in use.) Let them log in as admin let them
completely screw up the system. When they logout or restart, they get a
nice fresh image to work with. (They have shared filespace on my server
because i do end up wiping out the machines often as I retool for
different projects.)

I would like this to work with both linux and windows so you can pick n
choose which OS you want to run/destroy.

I was going to use the linux k12 or cobbler for the netboot system.
Then I was going run qemu on top of it for my choice of VM's to use and
just adjust qemu to run fullscreen in more of a kiosk mode after selection
of the vm to actually use.

I was going to manage/reload the vm images using the unused bandwidth in
the background with a shell script, and do checksums on the images to
verify the copy completed, etc.

I found the paravirtualization drivers for kvm for Windows and I use those
on my laptop and it seems to work okay for my use.

I can handle it if say cobbler can drop the customized image onto the
disk, wiping the drive isn't that bad, but I do have different sized
drives on the system.

I could just use a terminal server, but that doesnt really let me leverage
the horsepower of the client machines which means my -real- projects won't
have enough horsepower when they are screwing around.

Does anyone know of a project that lets me do this?  Or know of a better
way to do this? comments/flames?

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