Virtual Box in Windows vs. Linux

Virtial Box is the best free virtualization program I have come across. Since it runs in Windows and Linux the question in do you create a virtual box of Windows in Linux or of Linux in Windows. I have tried a virtual installation of Ubuntu Feisty on Windows Vista, but frankly I prefer the desktop interface and usability of Linux as the primary desktop. Its not just the Beryl desktop environment that Linux provides, its also the speed of the OS! In the end I prefer having a Virtual Box of Windows XP running on a Linux desktop!

A Recent Restore of my System

My system required a complete reinstall the other day, luckily I had my handy complete .tar file system backups. Once the new file system was reinstalled, I proceeded to unzip the .tar backups. It works as expected, restoring all files and settings to the expected parameters, but some programs, VirtualBox and Beryl in particular, required a re-install. VirtualBox obviously has a kernel module, and this would require a backup of the kernel, which would make for a hefty backup. Beryl required a meticulous removal of all files that were left behind by the straight forward “sudo apt-get remove beryl”. After tracking down all associated dependencies and packages, Beryl was reinstalled by the standard method and everything worked perfectly.

Serving Files and Virtualhosting Thoughts

File transfers consume far more bandwidth than any website (php or html). There is no way to avoid bandwidth loading issues with regard to file transfers if you are on a simple residential cable internet connection. Although with use of file compression I have found that even under high bandwidth load my html and php websites are still loading rather quick. I am currently hosting 7 websites on 1 machine, and everything is running smoothly. I do recommend file compression if you have access to your Apache configuration file. Add the following and substitute within the quotes with the home directory of any of your websites. You will have to add a directory section for each website that you virtual host.

<Directory “/export/html”>

SetOutputFilter Deflate

</Directory>

Fsck Boot Interruption

If you have ever mounted a hard drive, and then remove it without updating your LVM, you will encounter problems booting. It all boils down to the /etc/fstab file that contains information about what disks are going to mount at startup. If the disk is referenced in fstab, although the disk is not present, problems booting will result. The only resolution is the following if you can get to a terminal:

First you must mount your hard drisk in read write mode: mount -o remount,rw /

Then you must edit your fstab file: nano /etc/fstab

Remove all entries that declare a disk, other than your hda, to boot at startup

The Simplicity of Virtual Hosting

Virtual hosting is simply running multiple domains from a single IP address. Apache has virtual hosting built in, and all you have to do is point all of your domains to the ip address of the server, and configure Apache virtual hosting. Everything is configured in /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf

Cleaning Up your System - Ubuntu Feisty

Two quick methods to cleanup unnecessary dependencies:

first do a quick “sudo apt-get autoremove”

then “sudo apt-get install deborphan”

then hit “apt-get remove $(deborphan)”

Autoremove is good, but deborphan seems to remove more unnecessary files!!!

Tar Archives as a Complete System Backup

It is as simple as tarring your entire file system, and saving it on an external drive. If your system ever fails, just untar the archive and your entire system, including program, Firefox bookmarks, taskbar icons, literally everything will be restored.

This script that I posted a little back works excellent, and a recent test verifies its efficiency.

Download the Backup Restore Terminal Script; Simply place the script in your root “/” directory, and open a terminal:

type “sudo ./backup.sh”

or “./backup.sh” if you are logged in as root

Everything else is on screen. I recommend backing up everything. If you use a custom GRUB menu.lst file, you should edit the script to backup the /boot/ subdirectory. I will post a script that does that soon.