Da Vinci Planet » Virtualization

Become Completely Virtual with Desktoptwo

Da Vinci — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 12:59:53 +0000

Almost everyone has a personal email address (or two or ten) and by far most of them are free accounts at AOL, Yahoo!, Hotmail or Google. We all love our own email accounts at these providers because we can access them from anywhere, the user interfaces are great and we simply trust that our old email messages will always be there. Google Docs, Zoho and other applications like Basecamp have enabled us to move more applications to the Web. So it should be kind of expected that our own desktops, the place where we save our files, should be available to us any time we’re connected to the Internet. Desktoptwo is a virtual desktop with the goal of making you completely computer, OS and browser independent. Desktoptwo offers all the basic applications that one needs on a desktop like email, a notepad, an address book and an MP3 player. It has a desktop-like feel and gives you a taste of what our desktops could become.

Now, I think that I am actually ready to give up my desktop, but I’m not quite comfortable to do it the Deskktoptwo way. It’s an intriguing solution, but somehow it seems too old school and I don’t think it’s how we’re going to get rid of our desktops. But it worth checking out and knowing about.

See Your Web Site in Different Browsers

Da Vinci — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 00:07:49 +0000

Have you tested your Web site in different browsers and on different platforms? Web designers tend to focus on the one or two that they deem most important and often forget to test their Web sites in other browsers and on other platforms. That normally means testing sites in IE and Firefox, but the different versions of IE and Firefox and different versions of operating systems are ignored. Besides, very few have access to all the different browsers and operating systems, not to mention the hundreds of combinations that you get when you include screen sizes, Javascript versions and Flash enabled.

Browsershots is a free, open source solution for your problem. Browsershots takes screenshots of sites and displays the screen captures in .png files. You can use Browsershots as a free online service, but what makes this product cool is that itâ€™s available as an open source (written in Python) download so that you can run it on an internal server. This is very useful when you need to test a site that isnâ€™t live or accessible from the Internet yet.

The catch with the download version is that it uses â€œscreenshot factoriesâ€? to produce the screenshots and that these factories need to run on the operating systems and browsers that they produce screenshots for. So you need to have computers or virtual instances with the operating systems and browsers that you want to use as screenshot factories which requires a fair amount of infrastructure and support. It also means that when a new version of a browser or OS comes out you may need to create several more screenshot factories. So how is this better than simply having a bunch of test machines? The advantage is scalability and ease of use because multiple users have access directly from their desktops. One downside is that users get to see screenshots of what a particular Web page looks like and can’t interact with it so you cannot test interactivity like DHTML and AJAX.

There are other solutions like using VMWare virtual appliances for each of the operating system/browser combinations. This is a quicker and possibly easier solution, but doesnâ€™t scale as well with multiple users (or testers). Another solution is using a high-end service like Gomez and while they offer a lot more it comes with a price!

Operate multiple desktops and screens using Synergy

Da Vinci — Sat, 23 Dec 2006 18:16:26 +0000

If you have multiple computers all connected to the same network and would like to access them from one mouse and keyboard, Synergy might be a good alternative to a KVM switch. With Synergy, you can redirect your mouse and keyboard to another computer and screen by moving the mouse to the edge of the current screen. Synergy can be configured to arrange screens the way they are physically arranged to become one big virtual screen. You can also copy & paste between computers and screensavers can be synchronized. It’s great for developers and system administrators that run multiple computers with different operating systems. Synergy is an open source project.

BartPE bootable windows liveCD

Da Vinci — Sat, 21 Oct 2006 12:58:48 +0000

Looking at my Google Analytics reports I noticed that a lot of people are finding my site by searching for terms like “WinXP virtual appliance” and “windows live CD”. My guess is that they’re hoping to find a free download. Well, they are available – but, they’re not legal. Besides not being legal you shouldn’t trust them because it can’t be from a trusted source and who knows what’s installed on there. If it was a trusted source – like a friend – then it’s an illegal copy but hey at least you trust it

However, you can create your own VMware Windows virtual appliance or live CD if you had a windows installation CD. You really need a fresh Windows installation CD (with an unused license) to create a legal Windows VMware virtual appliance. However, you can legally create a Windows live CD from your original Windows installation CD using BartPE. But wait, you can run a live CD virtual appliance so then you do have a way to get a free WinXP virtual appliance!

Bart’s Preinstalled Environment (BartPE) is a hack of the Microsoft Windows Preinstallation Environment (Windows PE). Windows PE is only available to OEM users and BartPE’s creator was kind enough to make a (legal and more flexible) version that we all can use. Bart’s PE Builder helps you build a “BartPE” bootable Windows CD-Rom or DVD from the original Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 installation/setup CD, with a complete Win32 environment with network support.

VMware Live CD Player

Da Vinci — Tue, 03 Oct 2006 02:22:57 +0000

Live CDs have become quite popular, but I’ve always argued that it’s easier and more convenient to run virtual machines inside a host OS because it gives you the Internet and file access that you typically need when experimenting with something new. Never mind the hassle to actually burn live CDs. However, there are many more live CDs available than there are VMware virtual appliances. Here’s a neat little script that will enable you to launch a live CD, as an ISO image, inside VMware Player. Here’s what you need to do:

Of course you first need to have the VMware Player installed. (See previous post for more info)
Download the OS Integrated Live CD Player, available as a BitTorrent download from the VMware directory. If you don’t have a BitTorrent client try ÂµTorrent, a portable BitTorrent client.
Read the README.txt. For Windows it goes something like this:

There is no configuration script for Windows 2000/XP, so it will need to be configured manually.

From Windows Explorer, Click “Tools” -> “Folder Options”. Select the “File Types” tab and scroll down the list looking for the type with extension ISO (If it is not there, you will need to make one by clicking “New”). Highlight the ISO type and Click “Advanced”. Click “New” and under “Action:” give it a name like “Boot with VMware”. Under “Application used to perform action:”, give the filename with path to the ISOPLAYER.BAT script, followed by and switches you want and finally “%1″. It is important that the %1 be enclosed in quotation marks. Also make sure to enclose in quotes any filename that inclused spaces.

For example, you might type something like this:
“C:\isoplayer\isoplayer.bat” /d /vmware:”C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware Player\vmplayer.exe” “%1″

After this, click “Ok”.

So it really is easy to set up even though it doesn’t use an installation wizard. Once setup you can download and launch live CDs within a virtual machine without burning CDs and without installing anything!

Virtual Appliances update

Da Vinci — Mon, 02 Oct 2006 03:59:10 +0000

In a previous post on VMware virtual appliances I wrote about how easy and convenient they are. So it is good news and for good reason that the VMware directory of free virtual appliances has grown. The directory is up to date with recent versions of most (free) operating systems and many applications. They even have a “Voice Mail RSS Feed Generator” . Personally, I have been mostly using a WinXP virtual appliance – one that I had to create myself using the VMware server (also free, but because of the XP licensing it’s not really “free”).

If you ever want to test an operating system or an application, but you are hesitant to install it on your own computer or server, this is an excellent virtualization option. There are, of course, many torrent downloads available – both good and bad. Other uses of virtual appliances include testing of software, like Windows Vista, IE7 or Microsoft Expression Web – all those beta applications that you really want to try out, but don’t want install on your computer just yet.

Run virtual appliances on your desktop PC

Da Vinci — Sun, 23 Apr 2006 01:56:46 +0000

Virtualization is becoming more real and if you ever wanted to try Linux, but have been too afraid to install it or give up your Windows or Mac, the VMware Player will allow you to run most operating systems virtualized. The VMware Player is a free application that allows you to run virtual appliances. It is a perfect sandbox solution: test and install applications without messing up your desktop. VMWare Virtual Server and Microsoft Virtual PC allow you to create and run virtual desktops or servers on your desktop. The VMware Player is a light weight virtualization server without the overhead of a full fledged virtual server that has system management features.

A virtual appliance is a fully pre-installed and pre-configured application and operating system environment that runs on any standard x86 desktop or server in a self-contained, isolated environment known as a virtual machine. Virtual appliances provide an evolutionary step in the software distribution model.

There is a substantial list of free virtual appliances available on the VMware site, including operating systems like:

Debian
Fedora Core (4 & 5)
FreeBSD
Gentoo
Kubuntu
Puppy Linux
RedHat Enterprise
Ubuntu

and applications like:

BEA WebLogic
BugZilla
MySQL Network
Twiki

All you need to do is to download install the VMware Player (it’s a 28MB download). During installation it will ask if you want to disable autorun on your cdrom and also if you want to install the Google Deskbar, which you typically would want to disable by unchecking the checkboxes. To use the player you can either download pre-built virtual appliances or you can create your own. To use a pre-built appliance, simply download the one you want and open it with the VMware Player. You can also create your own virtual appliances, e.g. a virtual Windows XP desktop, by installing the VMware Virtual Server. It is currently in beta, but it is free for home use and it works just fine for creating virtual appliances. Note that you will need OS and application licenses (as usual) for the products that you install on the VM instance (e.g. Win XP).

So for me, as a new-cool-app-I-have-to-try-it type of person, this is awesome. It’s like having unlimited sandboxes at hand

VMware
Microsoft Virtual PC (MS Virtual Server 2005 R2 Enterprise Edition is currently available for free)