JDPFu.com 2025

Below is the 2nd of 6 questions from a reader. I definitely don’t have all the answers, but I’m not short on opinion. ;)

Part 1 – LVM+JFS+RAID | Part 2 – Service Virtualization | Part 3 – Virtualizing Media Storage | Part 4 – Hosting Email

duijf asks:

Q2: I read everywhere about Virtualisation, should I directly install packages to the base system to provide services, or should I virtualise all services? What are the advantages here?

Advantages of Virtualization

The list of advantages is long, but with those advantages comes a few disadvantages. I cannot hope to point out all the advantages, so I’ll limit it to just the main ones.

This weekend, my 3 yr old VirtualBox VDI storage for this, my primary virtual machine, was getting close to 100% filled. It was a 10G partition that started out as a 6.06 installation, then was upgraded to 8.04 and finally to 32-bit Ubuntu Server running 10.04. To get a GUI, I added LXDE a few minutes after the 10.04 upgrade about a year ago. So as I wanted to start a new development project leveraging PerlBrew to manage different versions of entire Perl versions, libraries and CPAN modules, I knew the little space remaining would not be enough.

I did a little research before I began. The web pages that I found seemed to be taking the long way around to solve a fairly easy issue. They wanted users to download some tool, which was completely unnecessary. Anyway, below the shortest, easiest, way to increase the available storage in a VDI-based virtual machine.

It is possible to run the Android development environment inside a KVM virtual machine. Below is how.

A nice article on Lubuntu_ … Lubuntu is my current desktop and has been for a few years.

Not Just for Old Hardware

The article implies that Lubntu is only for old hardware. It isn’t, though it does work well on P4 systems with 1GB of RAM (my Mom’s). It is worth checking out, even on current, modern hardware like mine, a Core i5 with either 6GB or 8GB of RAM. My daily laptop runs Lubuntu in a virtual machine with 1.5GB of RAM and 10GB of disk. It runs nicely on all these systems.

Other Options Besides Lubuntu

If you really want a small, light weight Linux, check out TinyCore. Sure Puppy and DSL are options too, but with TinyCore, you get to load the apps that you want and completely control the amount of excess storage and RAM required.

Messaging is easy, but Enterprise Calendaring is hard. I’ve just learned about the guys over at SOGo who have a GPL/LGPL competitor to Zimbra and MS-Exchange. Sure, you pay for support, but using the server software doesn’t cost anything.

• If you want to connect MS-Outlook clients, that’s fine.
• If you want to connect smart-phones, that’s fine.
• Thunderbird seems to be their main integration client, which is nice. That’s what I use.

Anyway, go take a look.

I’ve just pulled the VM appliance VMDK down and will be playing with it on ESXi in the next few weeks. They claim it was setup for VirtualBox, but I’d rather not run this sort of thing on that VM technology. This could be perfect timing for my company – we have been planning a Zimbra upgrade and honestly, it scares me.

There are lots of search hits on SOGo on freshmeat.net – that’s encouraging to me.

Check back here later. If SOGo is great, I’ll certainly write more. If it is crap, it will be in the comments below.

This could be good, really good. I’m hopeful.

I was going to create a Top 10 List of 2010 here. Then started looking through the articles and some constant themes can out.

1. Virtualization For Desktops and Servers
   • Tagged as Virtualization
   • Laptop Virtualization
   • VirtualBox Performance Tips
   • VirtualBox on Ubuntu
   • KVM on Ubuntu
   • Win7 and VMware
   • VM-Explorer for Backups
2. Disk Encryption
   • Laptops
   • Prevent Data Loss
   • Password Managers
3. Backups Rock!
   • Back-In-Time
   • KNOW You Have Good Backups
   • Rdiff-backup Isn’t Perfect
   • VM-Explorer for Backups
4. Risks and Concerns for Cloud Computing
   • Cloud in Centralized or Federated Services
   • Real World Cloud Computing Costs
   • Private Cloud Computing
   • Cloud Computing Risks
   • Understanding Software As A Service Risks
5. Quicken Runs on Linux – ’nuf said.
6. Security Isn’t Easy
   • Passwords – Never the Same and Use a Password Manager
   • Desktop Security Tips
   • Browser Security Settings
   • WiFi Router Security Checklist
   • Privacy Is Gone Online
   • Don’t Use Adobe Software
   • Windows Software to Avoid
   • Free Security Tips Ebook
   • Dealing with Computer Viruses
   • Been Hacked?
7. How To Build A Home Server – Cheap
   • Part 1
   • Part 2
   • Part 3
   • Part 4

Previous Best Articles Here

Happy New Year!

Last night I did a little presentation on Using VirtualBox on a Desktop. I’d give myself a D+ for a grade on the presentation. Fortunately, it was a small and highly interactive crowd. I tried to cover too much stuff. Also, I showed how to do this on a Windows host OS with a Linux client OS to a Linux-specific crowd. Initially, I’d planned to show an install on a Linux host OS too. The physical machine had a really slow disk controller, so I wasn’t able to create a virtual disk to install the OS into. I tried it a few weeks ago on the test machine and it took 45 minutes to create a 10GB .VDI file. On my home machines, doing this is just a few minutes.

The good thing was that I covered some of the key performance choices in virtualization – multiple times. The good news is that the newer VirtualBox releases choose most of these settings automatically. I should probably create a blog entry for each of the different client OSes that covers performance choices. Anyway …

Last week, I visited some relatives. Their computer running MS-WindowsXP had at least 1 rootkit installed and a number of viruses and spywares. This machine was running Firefox with NoScript (disabled) and Thunderbird for email. The main user is not very technical, but uses Firefox, Thunderbird, Quicken, and Investor’s Toolkit most days. I knew that solving the issue on Windows was going to be a problem again and again.

Linux to the rescue.

Seems that 2GB isn’t enough for some specialized PBX Linux solutions to build, so I found myself needing to increase the size of a KVM virtual machine image on running Ubuntu Server 10.04 Lucid Lynx in the VM. This technique probably will not work for sparse or VMDK-based VM images. It should work for Xen and KVM IMG-base VM files, however. Anyway, below is how I did it.

This morning, I decided to install KVM and OpenQRM on a spare machine here. The machine is suitable to be a VM host with lots of CPU and 8GB of RAM. It is not a blank machine, rather, I wanted to add openQRM to it and leave the existing services running there … untouched. The existing services are for a storage server and DLNA/media server. Nothing too fancy, but there are some non-default settings that proved to be small issues when attempting the OpenQRM install.

Following the sparsely written guide Setup_your_own_openQRM_Cloud_on_Ubuntu_Lucid_Lynx from the openQRM team, I was hopeful that this complex system wouldn’t be too complex that I couldn’t get it running quickly and easily.