LEXECORP

Entries categorized as ‘Networking and protocols’

coLinux Fedora 10 with GNOME via VNC viewer

March 25, 2009 · 2 Comments

I recently mentioned that one could dump the desktop (GNOME or KDE) on a virtualized Linux and use Vista’s (with a little assist from Cygwin XServer) to seamlessly integrate Linux and Windows. All this care of coLinux. If you are working with Windows and Linux, then that is the way that I recommend.

Of course there is VNC. If you have gobs of RAM (you will need it) then you can go another way. Have a separate window (the vnc client or viewer) displaying  a complete GNOME or KDE desktop. To be honest, if you want to do it this way, then there are many other virtualization solutions that will run a full machine with less hassle, but then more than likely you will have lost the point of my approach.

My goal was to fit one or multiple Linux distros into a not unlimited amount of RAM. You can then use real development tools (big fat IDEs) and applications on this configuration with all your platforms live at the same time and on the same box. Think about it, you can work on your Windows box with 2 major Linux variants, like a RedHat and Debian based distro (that package quite differently), whilst also developing and testing on Windows. I do this on my notebook with 2GB RAM.

Nonetheless, if you get your bridged networking configured, have installed VNC on your coLinux distro, then an option is to crank up a vnc server, uncomment the 2 lines in

~/.vnc/xstartup

and export your display to the host IP address that your XServer is running on. Then run your vncviewer.

Here I give you the RAM hungry approach with my Fedora 10 coLinux and a full activated GNOME desktop, all via VNC. But maybe you’ll want a 4GB machine :-) But please understand, you can run your GNOME dev tools and applications without a GNOME desktop in place. This technique might make things a little faster, a little leaner and maybe you, a little more agile ;-) Have fun!

Fedora 10 / GNOME on coLinux via vnc viewer

Fedora 10 / GNOME on coLinux via vnc viewer

Categories: General · Networking and protocols · Software Design, Development & Programming · The Windows platform · UNIX and Linux platforms
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Mapping coLinux to VISTA

March 24, 2009 · Leave a Comment

In my last post I mentioned coLinux as a virtualisation solution. I must say that if you want a recommendation, it is far easier to dual boot.

But, if you use Vista for whatever reason, then I find Linux better to virtualise (than big fat Vista). The latter is quite slow enough as it is.

So, if you are not running your preferred Linux distro native, then by using an XServer on Windows, one can drop all X and Desktop from the equation. What does that mean? Much of the RAM requirement is gone. And more to the point, you can have multiple virtualized Linuxes each with a very small foot print indeed. They will run both fast and lean. Think of them as your own embedded systems.

Well I won’t try to explain coLinux configurations (there’s enough at their site). If you feel that I need to, then I really would prefer that you choose something easier, or just pay me to do it for you ;-) For developers with a technical bent, this solution will suit those doing work with both Windows and Linux platforms.  Possibly also fitting for those wishing to understand networking in greater depth.

I like it because when I’m sat with Vista running on my Desktop, I can still have on my notebook, and thus at my fingertips

  • Programming on Windows
  • Porting via Cygwin
  • Programming on Linux / POSIX
  • Building and packaging on all

Ok, I will not make you pay me, but I won’t try to impart in verbose English the core networking requirements. I’ll simply give you a map instead. Click on it for the big picture. Maybe this will help you if, after reading the doc, you still can’t (see that big picture :-) ).

Integrating coLinux and Vista

Integrating coLinux and Vista

Categories: Embedded and mobile phone platforms · Networking and protocols · Software Design, Development & Programming · The Windows platform · UNIX and Linux platforms
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The command line world (and more)

March 23, 2009 · Leave a Comment

Well I use UNIX too often to wish to use cmd.exe or similar whilst on Windows. I keep Cygwin to make my life a little easier. If you do the same, don’t forget that the bundled XServer will give one a better experience than just a plain vanilla cygwin terminal. If you’ve installed the full kit, make use of it!

Make sure you start cygwin with windows admin rights (right click and Run As admin), you’ll get much further :-) Then just start X.

$ startxwin.bat
startxwin.bat – Starting on Windows NT/2000/XP/2003

Or

$ sh startxwin.sh

The end of my .xinitrc brings up an xterm automatically

# start some nice programs
exec xterm -e /usr/bin/bash -l

The xterm with colours is a nice touch too. If you haven’t, set an alias

$ alias ls=”ls –color”

If you’re using a dynamic scripting language like Groovy, you don’t have to crank up your favourite but RAM guzzling IDE. You can just

$ gvim &

$ xemacs &

or whatever takes your fancy.

Yes you can do as I do, have a dual boot system with Ubuntu as an option. But I’m happy to work on Windows Vista too (though it’s definitely not as lean as Linux. Out of the box, my Ubuntu starts faster, connects to the network faster and surfs faster. And if you do programming outside of a VM, well it is the platform with better API’s too :-) ).

But whilst on Windows, don’t just use Cygwin, go the whole hog, run a lightweight virtualization package like coLinux. Combined with a Linux distro like Debian or/and RedHat you can use the local Cygwin XServer as your display (though VNC works just as well).

As a Linux (or even a multi concurrent) server you won’t need too much memory and you can test your product builds if you deliver to both Windows and Linux

For coLinux, make sure the driver is installed and running

C:\colinux>colinux-daemon.exe –status-driver
Cooperative Linux Daemon, 0.6.4
Compiled on Mon May 29 22:19:09 2006

checking if the driver is installed
current state: 4 (fully initialized)
current number of monitors: 1
current linux api version: 10
current periphery api version: 15

and start her up

$ cat colinuxALX.sh
./colinux-daemon kernel=vmlinux cobd0=Debian-3.0r2.ext3-mit-backports.1gb root=/
dev/cobd0 eth0=tuntap,TAP coLinux bridge

If your network is working (/sbin/ifconfig) then once logged in as root, or you, send an X app to your windows desktop. Amazed? After vmware, I was.

colinux:~# export DISPLAY=192.168.0.1:0
colinux:~# xeyes &
colinux:~# [1] 268

Yep your Linux server X Application is running on your desktop side by side with your Windows (in my case Vista) applications. And you can “ssh -l ‘userAccount’  from your cygwin terminal into your Linux. Once going, just use your imagination.

Food for thought :-)

Categories: Networking and protocols · Software Design, Development & Programming · The Windows platform · UNIX and Linux platforms
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