VirtualBox 3.1 significantly changed the way that harddisks, dvd/cd drives and floppies are mounted. The following steps are to install Windows XP as a guest on an Ubuntu 9.04 host with a IntelAhci SATA controller.
Make sure you download the Windows XP Intel SATA Drivers and unzip to extract “F32.IMA”.
Read More
Create a Windows XP VirtualBox guest from scratch using a SATA harddrive.
sudo -i
VBoxManage createhd --filename /srv/virtualbox/harddisks/CHANGEME.vdi --size 20480 \
--variant Standard
VBoxManage createvm --name CHANGEME --ostype "WindowsXP" --register \
--basefolder /srv/virtualbox/machines
VBoxManage modifyvm CHANGEME --memory 1024 \
--boot1 dvd --boot2 disk --boot3 none --boot4 none \
--sata on --sataportcount 1 \
--sataport1 /srv/virtualbox/harddisks/CHANGEME.vdi \
--dvd /srv/virtualbox/iso/WindowsXP_sp3.iso \
--floppy /srv/virtualbox/floppy/F32.IMA \
--nic1 bridged --bridgeadapter1 eth0To transfer a large amount of data (200GB) across a 100mbps network without saturating the connection, I used rsync with the –bwlimit=KBps flag.
Transferring from Windows to Ubuntu 9.04, I first mounted the windows share:
sudo mkdir /mnt/winshare sudo mount -t smbfs -o username=user,password=pass //winserver/share /mnt/winshare
Next, run rsync with a specified bwlimit. Optionally, unmount the share
sudo rsync -vrR --delete --delete-excluded --bwlimit=6144 /mnt/winshare/* /destination/ sudo umount /mnt/winshare
For the sake of reliability and flexability, I wanted to install Ubuntu 9.04 Server on a Dell PowerEdge using Software RAID1 (reliability) and LVM (flexability). Software RAID1 was also considerably cheaper (except for the time it took to figure this out) than adding in the $200 Dell SATA RAID contoller. Read More
After deploying Ubuntu 8.10 server, installing Ruby on Rails and all its prerequisites, and installing Phusion Passenger, there are just a few Passenger specific steps necessary to get your Rails application up and running. Read More
Phusion Passenger™ — a.k.a. mod_rails or mod_rack — makes deployment of Ruby web applications, such as those built on the revolutionary Ruby on Rails web framework, a breeze. It follows the usual Ruby on Rails conventions, such as “Don’t-Repeat-Yourself”.
After setting up Ubuntu 8.10 and installing Rails, I executed the following steps to get Passenger installed. Read More
After creating and launching a VirtualMachine on a Vista Host and installing Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex, I executed the following steps to configure my Ubuntu server for Ruby on Rails.
After trying (and failing at the implementation of) several other sets of Ubuntu/Rails howto guides, most of my inspiration came from a Ubuntu/Ruby on Rails install guide that actually works. Read More
After creating and launching a VirtualMachine on a Vista host, I captured the following screenshots to document the process of installing Ubuntu 8.10.
Post install, I updated the Network Interface config and enabled the Firewall. Read More
I was recently coerced into checking out what all the Ruby on Rails hype is about. In reading about Rails, it sounds like trying to get it to run with IIS is probably not the best idea. So I’ve taken the leap to setting up a virtual machine running Ubuntu 8.10 Server.
Being strictly a .NET developer for the last 8 years, I know practically nothing of the *NIX environment, LAMP stack or anything else that doesn’t come with Windows Update. So, everything here must be taken with a grain of salt, as I am well out of my comfort zone. Read More