VirtualBox Windows Vista - Host Network Bridge and Tap

VirtualBox is well equipped for a Windows environment. Most of its features have a mechanism for automatic installation and setup. To get your guest OS, in Windows Vista, to have a real IP address from your router you first need a network bridge and tap. Open the VirtualBox manager:

Then select a guest OS and open its settings. Then click the network tab:

Then click the add network tap button:

It doesn’t matter what the name is Then adjust your guest OS networking adapter accordingly.

Now open your Windows Vista network configurations manager:

This screenshot is what your network configurations should be after everything is done. To achieve this simply select both the VirtualBox tap, that was previously created, and bridge it to your LAN connection. Select both by click on each adapter while pressing the shift key. Then right click on either of the two highlighted icons and select “bridge”. This will automatically create a bridge between the tap and your real host networking adapter. Wham bam, now you can select a real static IP in your VirtualBox guest OS on a Windows Vista system

LTSP-Build-Client –Arch option not in –Help

To find the options for a command you type:

command --help

It spits out a bunch of options that you can use to tweak the parameters of a command. On the --help for the ltsp-build-client script is the --dist option, which I thought can be used to install a different distribution that the one you are current using on the host. For instance:

sudo lts-build-client --dist lenny

There is another option, and it is not specified in the --help. The --arch option allows the specification of different architecture than your hos. For instance:

sudo ltsp-build-client --arch -i386

If you are using a 64 bit host, you can install an i386 client file system with this.

Blogging - the Start of a New Year

The start of a new year requires making new decisions, and trying different paths. I highly recommend diversifying your blog topics. If your blog is about electronics, talk about research. Or dare to talk about politics. Maybe interject some hot news topics, and dabble with pop culture. Overall what you blog about it not as important as the quality; be thorough and explicit. Provide substantial and useful information. Disseminate ideas, and rational. Post your thoughts, your ideas, your dreams. The internet is about content, and the best original content is what you think about.

Maybe start a new website. Current hosters know thats as simple as buying a new domain, and adding a virtualhost configuration. I like to play with CMS software every once in a while. Joomla 1.5 is coming soon, and given the tremendous hype it should make for highly controllable website interface. I have been extremely impressed with the progress of Joomla 1.5. Its simply cool. If your reading this and do not currently have a Wordpress blog, please start one Its simple, I promise.

Windows Completely Integrated with Linux - VirtualBox Guest OS

I as the vast majority of people grew up with Windows. I had programs that would only run on Windows; for example Napster. Napster requires Windows Media Player because of the DRM (Digital Rights Management) software embedded in the music.

Then I switched to Linux because of Stability reasons. I wanted a system that would work, without needing a restart, for months on end. I wanted a system that could run on a Pentium 2 processor, with 256 megabytes of RAM. Linux was the answer, and it ran extremely well on my first server that had a Pentium 2 processor running at 300 Megahertz. Windows XP is not capable of running on such a low power system, but Linux runs just fine!!!

My current server I also use for blogging, and miscellaneous surfing. It is technically the most powerful machine I have ever owned. While there are many more upgrade I can implement, its current configuration is relatively powerful:

• AMD Athlon 64 x2  @ 1.9 Ghz
• 3 Gigabytes of RAM
• 3 RAID1 160 Gigabyte hard drives (1 SATA, 2 PATA)
• ASUS M2N-SLI Deluxe Motherboard

With this system I have over 1 Gigabyte of RAM left over after Linux, my Virtual Server, and Windows have completely loaded. There is much potential for Virtual OS environments, as it makes for compartmentalization and organizational ease. Also you can have your guest OS .vdi images on your /home partition, allowing the formatting and upgrade of the root “/” partition as easy as a default Linux installation.

I have my Virtual web server running a Debian LAMP setup with 512 Megabytes of allocated RAM. If obviously is utilizing a network tap to the host system. For more information about VirtualBox guest OS host networking see:

http://www.bgevolution.com/blog/index.php/virtualbox-host-networking-script-versus-interfaces/

I have my Windows guest OS running Windows XP, with 1024 Megabytes of allocated RAM. It also utilizes a network tap, but technically this is not really necessary. I use Windows in seamless mode for certain Windows only applications (Napster), and primarily for Windows Firefox and Internet Explorer. My Debian Host OS is 64 bit, and since Macromedia Flash does not have a 64 bit compilation, the 32 bit Windows XP comes in handy rather than installing a 32 bit Debian environment and associated applications.

Hits -Traffic - Rankings - Disseminate Your Information via Proper Coding

There are three blog top lists that produce considerable traffic on a consistent basis.

http://www.blogtoplist.com

http://www.blogcatalog.com

http://www.topblogarea.com

If your a relatively active poster then your blog will show up substantially in the search engine results on these websites. I highly recommend using the All in One SEO Plugin, which will tag your blog posts using the categories you select. When someone searches the above websites, the results are associated with the categories you attached to your blog posts. The more posts, and the more categories the better results, including more targeted traffic. Do tweak your All in One SEO Plugin, because the better your website’s semantical structure, and W3C compliance the increasing Google search engine inclusion you will achieve. Google, by far provides the most hits; therefore it should be considered a priority to achieve substantial Google inclusion. This requires consistent and content rich blog posts, that are directly relevant and “title” and specified categories.

The categories you select should be descriptive of the particular blog post. Your categories should begin to tell the story of your posts before they are even read. Then when a search engine spider comes along, it will have seen your categories, and then read your posts saying “ohhh, I see”. You can almost say that a blog post is an elaborate, and textual description of the chosen categories.

A couple of important semantical factors include the <a> link “title” option. Always include the title option and specify the EXACT title of the linked page. For example:

<a title=”Server Guide - Blog” href=”http://www.bgevolution.com/blog”>Server Guide - Blog</a>

This is a proper html link, incorporating correct semantical structure. Also in your <img> tags do include the “alt” option at minimum. There are many option to the <img> tag, but the alt option allows for a brief message specific to people that cannot access your images. Web browsers will automatically display the alt message in the event that your images do not load. For example:

<img alt=”Sunshine rays coming through a window” src=”http://www.bgevolution.com/blog/sunshine.jpg”>

I also highly recommend using the absolute URL in the src option. Using a relative link does work in most browsers, but I have had requests to use the absolute URL to resolve certain spidering issues.

Two methods of substantially reducing your html size include:

• External Javascript
• External CSS
• HTML Includes

I’ll introduce each of the above concepts in individual posts.