Yeah, I wanted to try CentOS and it was a minor pain to put it in a VirtualBox box.

1. Create the new machine in VirtualBox as "Linux – Other"

2. Use the ISOs to install the OS

3. Open a terminal window and su to root

4. Run yum install gcc to install the GNU Compiler

5. Run yum install kernel-devel to install the required headers

6. From the VirtualBox menu select Devices -> Install Guest Additions, this will hopefully present you with a mounted filesystem in your CentOS guest.

7. Use your terminal (still under su) to copy the appropriate VBoxLinuxAdditions-<arc>.run file to a location on your CentOS filesystem. You can put it pretty much anywhere, you just need to copy it locally so you can run it, you may delete it afterwards.

8. Run the ./VBoxLinuxAdditions-<arc>.run and let it install.

How ya like them apples?

Something else I forgot to mention is how it is a pain the in ass to clone virtual machines in Sun VirtualBox. I think it would be appropriate if a user were able to right-click on a machine (or one of it's snapshots) and select "Clone This Friggin' Box". However, it ain't so simple… you need to use a command line application that is included with VirtualBox. Some folks might think it is enough to copy a VM's files to a new directory but that seems to fail (at least in VirtualBox 3.x) with an error message like this one:

You can't just copy a .VDI file to clone a Virtualbox virtual machine... It will barf up crap like this at you!

VirtualBox – Error
Failed to open the hard disk C:\Path\NewDrive.vdi with UUID {1234} because a hard disk C:\Path\OldDrive.vdi with UUID {1234} already exists in the media registry ('C:\Path\.VirtualBox\VirtualBox.xml').

Result Code: E_INVALIDARG (Ox80070057)

Component: VirtualBox

Interface: IVirtualBox {1234}

So how DO you get a box cloned? Follow these steps:

1. Open a Command Prompt (or DOS Window) and CD to the directory that VirtualBox is installed in

cd "\Program Files\Sun\xVM VirtualBox"

2. Use the following command to create a copy of an existing VM

vboxmanage clonehd "c:\sourcepath\sourcedrive.vdi" "c:\targetpath\targetdisk.vdi"

Where "sourcepath" and "sourcedrive.vdi" point to the hard disk you want to make a copy of and of course "targetpath" and "targetdisk.vdi" will be the new disk.

3. Go back in to the VirtualBox GUI and press CTRL-D to open the media manager.

4. Browse to and add your new .VDI file, then close the media manager.

5. Press CTRL-N to start the "New Virtual Machine" wizard. Name your new machine, allocate memory for it, then select the new hard disk you just added to your media manger.

6. In addition to the above steps I would also suggest that you boot up your new machine to immediately run NewSID on it (and give it a new hostname). It probably won't be the end of the world if you don't but strange things (typically permissions related) can happen to machines sporting the same name and/or SID.

It isn't hard at all if you are familiar with typing in DOS commands and working with directory structures but it still should be easier.

There is a whole world of virtualization going on and some of it is pretty good… Though some of it has just not quite made it yet. Virtualization on a Linux desktop seems to still be a little crappy. There is QEMU which is a pain to use, MS Virtual PC which frankly requires exceptional hardware and provides minimal emulation, Xen which says it is bare-metal but appears not to be, oh blah blah blah… VMWare and VirtualBox seem to be the only ones who have a simple app that lets you run multiple OS's on your desktop. The whole bare-metal virtualization thing is a whole other story.

VMWare seems to be making the most money at this game but still has some problems.

1. Their naming convention is total shit. The Workstation version seems more feature packed than the Server version and the GSX/ESX/ESXi thing is a joke. Even though the name Sphere sucks, hopefully it'll get them away from naming everything with the same name.
2. They overcharge. They clearly have no interest in making their shit available to the common jackass. They also clearly have no interest in allowing someone to make an educated descision about what products they should buy. Look at this shit.
3. Their downloads center works like crap. When I try to download shit, I sign in with my stupid username and then it still insists on emailing me so I can download shit. Then half the time the email never fucking comes. I actually phoned them and talked to some guy in India who told me that it can be a couple of days before the email will show up. Good thing nobody wants to evaluate this shit today eh?
4. Their certification system is as much of a moneygrab as Microsoft's. They have a nice and fast progression through versions, making previous versions obsolete as quickly as possible without hindering sales.

Don't get me wrong, VirtualBox has some problems too but at least you can just freely download the friggin thing and start throwing OS's on virtual boxes. I only wish it were easier to setup the free version (NOT the OSE edition) on Linux. Oh yeah, and I wish it used subdirectories by default instead of piling all the VM files in the same place. Oh yeah, and they claim to have 3D support (experimental) but Guild Wars sure doesn't detect DX8 or higher. :-(

OK, enough ranting, time for me to go eat.

Yeah, I seem to save up all my posts and blast 'em out all at once don't I? Anyways, if anyone keeps an eye on the IP address of this website (and I doubt anyone does) they would have seen that it changed today. Thankfully NCF is working significantly more stable than Barrett Xplornet is and as a result I switched this website (and a whack of other shit) over to NCF today. Hopefully it'll have enough balls to support whatever phpBB site Lil wants to have for Aion.

You know, after my last post I thought that it might be unfair to say that it doesn't work under Linux. So I checked, and it works just fine under Wine. So now I guess the worst thing I can say is that the grid lines (or rather dots) seem to work a little odd to me. That is easily customizable though in the settings dialog (press F9). Screw you Microsoft, I don't need Visio now!

OK, I haven't posted dick all in almost a month! Maybe something about my search to replace Visio? Sure!

I actually like one feature of Visio… it saves documents as a single file that is not dependent on other files. What do I mean? Well, most similar applications (diagramming tools) like to save their files as XML which means they do not have embedded images. They just POINT to images in the directory structure (or copy them to the present directory). Why is this a problem? Because if I send my document to someone else I do not want to send them the images as well. Because I do not want to maintain the same directory structure of images in each PC I use it on. Because I think that sucks and a document should contain the information it contains!

However, there are some features of Visio that I do not like. Everything else.

So I went on a search to find an application that will let me draw network diagrams and also let me save them as a single file. The application should of course be fairly small (much smaller than Visio) and should not require the use of .NET, Java, or any other schmeckle product. Truth is, I never finished my search… sort of. I found one that I think is going to do the job, no shit… I really think so.

I found Diagram Designer. The two worst things I can say about it are: (1) it has no Linux version and (2) the grid lines don't seem to work the way I would want them to. Everything else is pretty bitchin' about it! The price is right, the interface is simple, the size is just right, and it saves documents (diagrams) as a single file! Nice job Meesoft.

As a little bonus, anyone who wants to export their diagrams should consider doPDF which is also free and makes your diagrams readable by any jackass with Adobe Acrobat Reader (or Foxit v1.3 if they know what is good for them).

Now why the hell wouldn't ntfs-3g be installed by deafult? Does it take up a lot of diskspace? Perhaps it is unstable? Perhaps not? Booo!