virtualisation newbie questions

[martyboy]

I am having a look at virtualisation, following a suggestion from anandasim that it was a lot safer than dual booting. From what I've read, that seems clear, and would suit me more for what i want to do. However, there a few things not clear to me. I have not attempted this before so excuse if my questions seem stupid. I am looking at installing Virtualbox, as there is a good guide on the net to using it to install vista on a vm. As i want to install win 7, this seems pretty close. I gather I can install win7 on the vm via an iso image on cd. Seems straight forward. Once I have installed it, assuming i get that far, I cant see why it would run as it hasn't been booted. why would it or any applications run? Do I need to install apps on the vm or copy them somehow from the host? The guides show to install a vw machine, but not so clear on using it..any good guides out there?

[martyboy]

I set up virtual box on my machine, that went ok. then tried to install win 7 from iso image. all went well, until the end. Win 7 finished the install and then said it needed to reboot. so it rebooted in the vm box and then a blank screen with a message 'saying press any key for cd or dvd'; when any key was pressed the install process started again at the beginning. dont know what went wrong..any ideas?

[lomaca]

I set up virtual box on my machine, that went ok. then tried to install win 7 from iso image. all went well, until the end. Win 7 finished the install and then said it needed to reboot. so it rebooted in the vm box and then a blank screen with a message 'saying press any key for cd or dvd'; when any key was pressed the install process started again at the beginning. dont know what went wrong..any ideas?

You should not have pressed any key, you started the installation over again. If there is a bootable CD in the drive you will always get this message!

[martyboy]

its working!! i found not press any key, but recoverd from that and it continued to i9nstall.. more thanks to virtual box than me, I think. Anyway, its now installed win 7 in virtual box and am replying using win 7 and IE 8 etc. Ony problem is, how do i get back to win 7 after i close it down, close virtual box and close my computer?
any special ways to close win 7?

[anandasim]

The VM of my choice is VirtualPC. The VM of AussieBoykie's choice is VMWare. Stephen of course uses Microsoft product. I think one of our forum members uses VirtaulBox.

Speaking in general then, one of these Virtual environments is "like" a simple program e.g. Microsoft Word. You run this like you would run Microsoft Word.

When Word opens, it loads an new document or you can choose an existing document that you have already written.

When you run one of these environments, it runs and waits for you, just like Microsoft Word waits for you to start a new document or open an existing document.

In VirtualPC, you can choose any one of several virtual machines. I have a Windows XP one, a Windows 98 one, a Linux one, a DOS one, a Windows 7 one.

You choose whichever one you have already produced - in your case, you have one, it is consists of Windows 7.

When you choose Windows 7, in general, the virtual environment will display a black window which is your virtual machine - it will count memory, etc.. exactly like you started your machine. Except, your real machine is not doing that, it is this fake machine in a window. Just like a real machine, your fake machine will finally complete firing up Windows 7 and you will be presented with a login screen. You do your usual thing and Windows 7 is now at your service. When you decide to shut down Windows 7, your fake machine will wait while Windows 7 shuts down. When Windows 7 has shut down, you are now in your real machine and VirtualBox is waiting for you to close it.

[martyboy]

I went with virtual box as it was suggested in another forum that it was easy to use. i certainly found it so, bit i haven't tried the others so cant compare. I managed to get win 7 up and running in the vm box as anandasim said. I haven't installed anything else there yet, not sure how to do so, but its not really an issue as I only wanted a peek at win 7. Might do more later. I haven't activated the copy yet, but i do have a key- got i early enough to get one. So far, i lile the look of win 7 tho it is very like vista; guess it is vista that works...like a service pack or something as it just improves vista.

[aussieboykie]

Marty, it really doesn't matter much which package you use as long as it works for you. It sounds like you are well on your way with VirtualBox and unless there is a compelling reason to change, stick with what you have got.

I use VMWare Workstation for a variety of reasons - e.g. support for direct attachment of USB devices and switching USB devices between host and guest, cloning of VMs, and Unity mode - that are not necessarily important to others.

Regards, AB

[RDee]

Martyboy
Let us know if you get around to install the Guest Additions available for Virtual Box(see Chapter 4 in the VirtualBox manual ).
There are none listed for Windows 7 though given the similarity of Vista to Win 7 the Vista Guest Additions may be appropriate.

RDee

[lomaca]

I use VMWare Workstation for a variety of reasons - e.g. support for direct attachment of USB devices and switching USB devices between host and guest

I seem to be able to use USB on Virtual PC OK, albeit by sharing but it works OK.

[martyboy]

Martyboy
Let us know if you get around to install the Guest Additions available for Virtual Box(see Chapter 4 in the VirtualBox manual ).
There are none listed for Windows 7 though given the similarity of Vista to Win 7 the Vista Guest Additions may be appropriate.

RDee

I think i have it installed. not sure what it does, buut I am able to move my mouse cursor from off the vm box to my normal desktop. I think it enables better audio and video. i get audio alright and the video seem ok. It says virtual additions are there..
cant figure how i run other programs in the vm box under win 7..I have IE there but nothing else so far..

[lomaca]

cant figure how i run other programs in the vm box under win 7..I have IE there but nothing else so far..

Strange as may sound to you at the moment martyboy, but you have treat your VM as a "normal" PC.
If you want to run Office then you have to install Office the normal way in Win7 while you are running it. The same goes for any other application.

Cheers

[martyboy]

I have not managed to install Ubuntu as well. I understand i may have to treat vm as 'normal' machine. but not quite sure how I actually install anything, assuming i want to. mite try open office on win 7, dont want to put word there. mite try a game or maybe a demo to see how they go, once i figure out how to do it. i like the fact that i cant stuff anything up on my normal pc with what i do in vm. Brilliant tip anandasim, thanks to all for your help.

[lomaca]

"but not quite sure how I actually install anything" once i figure out how to do it

Marty, are you sure you are not pulling our collective legs here?

[anandasim]

I have not managed to install Ubuntu as well.

Teach a man a thing and he wants to create an empire!


You don't have to mix multiple OS in on vm, you create one vm for each OS.

How do you install Word on a real PC? You get the Office or Word CD, shove it into the CD drive, run the setup program on the CD (or it automagically launches)

How do you install Word on a fake PC (vm?). You fire up your Virtual Box, you fire up Windows 7 inside it. Login to Windows 7. Now, there should be a menu on Virtual Box (not Windows 7) that says something like "attach real CD to this vm". You click that, voila, your fake PC's Windows 7 now sees the real CD with Word on it.

How do you install Open Office on the fake PC? You fire up Windows 7, surf the net inside it, go to http://www.openoffice.org, download open office onto / into Windows 7. Then you run the setup program

How do you run Ubuntu in Virtual Box?

You run Virtual Box. You create a new virtual machine with a fake blank hard disk. You shove in the Ubuntu CD into the real CD Drive. You use the menu on Virtual Box to attach the fake CD drive to the real CD drive. You reboot the fake PC. Ubuntu launches and you proceed to install Ubuntu into the fake PC

[martyboy]

thanks for the help, anandasim. I figured out how to do the open office thing, and now i I understand how to install from a cd if i choose to. On with the empire building...

[Stephen]

FYI - I am using Sun's Virtual Box on Windows 7 as my main Virtualization platform now - I can use MSFT VHD's & VMwares VHDK - Serial Ports - USB Devices - Audio - 128MB Video Ram - Direct 3D and many other cool bits and pieces.

I use Microsoft Hyper-V for 'enterprise' level virtualization and if building a demo machine in Virtual Box I just don't install the 'Guest Additions' and 'Sysprep' the machine and move it to Hyper-V for deployment and install the 'Guest Additions' then after redecting HAL/ACPI etc.

I was using Server 2008 with Hyper-V as my main 'Workstation' OS and used Hyper-V with that but due to some serious issues regarding using a PC with 'multimedia' capabilities enabled (Aero/DirectX etc) even Windows Server 2008 R2 makes this to hard so Sun's VirtualBox gets the go ahead as I can use VMWare & 'Microsoft Virtual Hard Drive Formats' and just move them around as needed.

Also if you are looking for pre-compiled Virtual Machines check out http://www.rpath.org/ for various custom virtual machines with support for VMWare/Microsoft/XEN/Amazon EC2 depending on the developer on which platforms they have compiled the VM for.

[anandasim]

Surprising, Stephen, for you to leave the fold and embrace le Soleil. Does Virtual Box have more features than VirtualPC? I guess recognition of .vhd and vmare together is one. Any higher resource useage etc...? Any downsides?

[Stephen]

Surprising, Stephen, for you to leave the fold and embrace le Soleil. Does Virtual Box have more features than VirtualPC? I guess recognition of .vhd and vmare together is one. Any higher resource useage etc...? Any downsides?

Not that I can think of except if you are creating a VM to be shipped to a client you need to make sure the settings Audio/ACPI/IO ACPI/VT-x/AMD-V/NestedPaging/PAE-NW/3D etc are set to a compatible format the end VM will be happy with, thus 'sysprep' for MS VM's.

I have yet to try deploying a Linux image from VBox to Hyper-V as there is too much pain in kernel recompiling. VBox has superb support for near on every flavour of *nix http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Guest_OSes (That list doesn't show Windows 7 and released an update within a few days of Win7 being dropped). They have frequent updates and as a sandbox it is brilliant.

A future (when time allows) is to try a Mythbuntu install using the USB TV as a passthru to the VM and see how that goes.

[anandasim]

Not that I can think of except if you are creating a VM to be shipped to a client you need to make sure the settings Audio/ACPI/IO ACPI/VT-x/AMD-V/NestedPaging/PAE-NW/3D etc are set to a compatible format the end VM will be happy with, thus 'sysprep' for MS VM's.

Grrrr!

I didn't think harder about your statement. I had a differencing HD. I didn't want to install both VirtualPC and VirtualBox so decided to uninstall VirtualPC and try VirtualBox. First problem was the UI for managing virtual disks - it defaulted to collapsed outline meaning silly me kept trying to delete the parent virtual hd and getting stooopid error messages when actually, all I had to do was to expand the outline of parent to child in the collapsed outline to delete the child first, then the parent.

Also, due to evolution, I had two parent virtual hd of the same UID and VirtualBox won't allow two even though they are alternately and not simultaneously used.

Next, I boot my guest OS, Windows XP and it BSOD. It obviously needs sysprep - groan!
Is there a min effort migration path, that can avoid BSOD? What are the least problematical hardware emulations?

[martyboy]

How do you install Word on a fake PC (vm?). You fire up your Virtual Box, you fire up Windows 7 inside it. Login to Windows 7. Now, there should be a menu on Virtual Box (not Windows 7) that says something like "attach real CD to this vm". You click that, voila, your fake PC's Windows 7 now sees the real CD with Word on it.

I cant find any menu in virtual box that says anything like ' attach real cd to this vm'..the nearest i can see is a menu that refers to mounting a cd drive, but as that is where the additions iso file sits, it doesn't seem right to change it..where is this menu?

[anandasim]

I cant find any menu in virtual box that says anything like ' attach real cd to this vm'..the nearest i can see is a menu that refers to mounting a cd drive, but as that is where the additions iso file sits, it doesn't seem right to change it..where is this menu?

When VirtualBox is running Windows 7 in a window, you have the Virtual Box Menu at the top.

Devices > Mount CD/DVD-ROM > Host Drive X:

where X: is the drive letter of your real CD / DVD Drive.

[martyboy]

ok, that seems ok. When i do that I can either have the additions iso image 'clicked' or the Host CD drive 'clicked' ie the buton is choice between the 2, but I dont know if that matters

[anandasim]

ok, that seems ok. When i do that I can either have the additions iso image 'clicked' or the Host CD drive 'clicked' ie the buton is choice between the 2, but I dont know if that matters

How many things can you fit in a real drive? One

How many things can you fit in a fake drive? One



You either have the fake drive attached to the guest additions ISO image or you the fake drive attached to the real CD.

If you have a program CD, you put the program CD into the real drive and attach the fake drive to the real drive.

[martyboy]

I understand that I can only have one thing attached to the drive, real or fake. I wondered if i didn't have the additions iso attached to the drive , whether that would mean the additions weren't available, but it doesn't seem to matter. i guess its the the same as having a program cd in your drive, but not running, just sitting there..presumably the additions are written to the virtual hard drive

[anandasim]

I understand that I can only have one thing attached to the drive, real or fake. I wondered if i didn't have the additions iso attached to the drive , whether that would mean the additions weren't available, but it doesn't seem to matter. i guess its the the same as having a program cd in your drive, but not running, just sitting there..presumably the additions are written to the virtual hard drive

Hmm. You seem to be a bit puzzled at how virtual machines "think". They are exactly like real machines. The Guest Additions are like a real CD - there is a setup.exe there somewhere. If you nominate the the Guest Additions are attached to the fake drive, then as usual in a real machine, go to the fake machine, open the My Computer or the Windows Explorer window inside the fake machine, then double click on the fake drive, probably fake D:.

You will see that it is setup.exe and other files, just like you would see in a real CD.

In a real CD if you were adding sound drivers, video drivers, some program, you would double click on setup.exe (or whatever the installation file is called).

Thusly for the Addtions - they are drivers.

Once the drivers are written to the fake hard drive, there is no longer any need to keep the Additions CD in the fake drive - the jobs been done.

So one would normally eject the CD and put in some other CD that one wants to install further programs. This is how you use a real CD and a real drive, this is how you use a fake CD and fake drive or a real CD and a fake drive.

[martyboy]

ok, I'll try it when back home. I haven't used explorer or my computer to 'run' the iso image so i guess it hasn't installed. vm box and win 7 seem to go ok tho. just lacking some graphics and desktop candy in win 7, but i gather thats normal in a vm box

[martyboy]

following advice from anandasim, i have now installed the additions . It was just sitting as an iso image before. not sure what difference it will make, will see. I like win 7 tho, even if I cant see all the candy in a virtual box..Something to look forward later this year.

[martyboy]

i have installed win 7 rc 1 now in virtual box . I got rid of ubuntu as I didn't like it. I notice that win 7 doesn't pick up my video card and defaults to standard vga adapter . I thus get poor results when rating my pc on win 7. That doesn't bother me as i am only having a look at the next version of windows for a possible new machine. However, is there any way to make win 7 in the virtual box use my graphics card?

[anandasim]

I don't know anything about virtual box - after Stephen's recommendations I got excited with this product but cooled off when none of my pre-existing virtual PC .vhds although able to be read by virtual box, would not boot successfully because of incompatible driver issues.

1. If Virtual Box has driver enhancements like Virtual PC has, then the best you can make is that once your Windows inside is running, you install these driver enhancements - these are called "additions" in Virtual PC, I don't know what they are called in Virtual Box.

2. Virtual Box, Virtual PC and Vmware Player / Workstation fake hardware - that is, Windows 7 that lives inside never sees real hardware - there is a fake video card, fake DVD drive, fake disk controllers. Therefore Windows 7 living inside Virtual Box will never see your real video card.

3. Windows 7 by itself can install into a separate partition / separate hard disk / .vhd file on a real volume. If you install it into a separate partition, you of course risk damaging your current partition. If you install it onto a separate hard disk, and remove the other hard disks, that's ok but cumbersome. If you install it into a .vhd file in a real volume, then it thinks it is working with a real hard disk even though it is a .vhd but it definitely is working with the real motherboard and the real video card. Then it will run very fast. The procedure described here:

http://blogs.msdn.com/cesardelatorre/ar ... -file.aspx

is not for the newbie but it works fine - I now have a Tosh notebook with a new replacement hard disk that has

real C: partition containing Vista
real D: partition containing data folders and several .vhd
one real Windows 7 RC booting in one of the .vhd which is a file on D:
three real Windows 7 Beta booting in a .vhd each on D:

When I boot the machine, the BCD entries allow:

Vista
Windows 7 RC
Windows 7 Beta
...

Vista, Windows 7 RC, Windows 7 Beta all run at full speed or nearly full speed.
Vista sees real C:
The Windows 7 things see each, one .vhd which fakes a C:

[martyboy]

ok. thanks for the advice, but I think I'll leave well alone for now. Understand more about how virtual os uses, or doesn't, 'real' hardware. At least it explains why I get a lousy score for 'rate my pc'