I've followed most of your trials and tribulations with the Linux testing, but I know I haven't caught all of it...
Have you considered doing a dual-boot install of Ubuntu on your system? The install partition-manager can slice off a minimal piece of one of your partitions (assuming you don't have a spare one to contribute to the cause) to load and configure Ubuntu. When I did a basic dual-boot install, it found enough usable drivers to run my hardware without searching the web for hours on end.
The problem is, I don't trust the partitioning tools. I simply cannot afford to have my hard drive fouled up. Also, with the VM, there is no "searching for drivers". You get a fixed set of virtualized hardware that is roughly equivalent to a Pentium II / early Pentium III class system with a virtual SCSI disk. The abstraction layer (hypervisor and/or binary translation) then takes care of things.
Several questions I have is how in the world can it be taking advantage of HyperTransport, is the virtual SCSI anywhere close to performance of native SATA/DMA, and is the virtual memory driver (vmmemctl) adding in large amounts of latency otherwise not normally there.
The thought I had real early this morning was to create another VM, but this time Windows. Microsoft has a trial VM for Windows Server 2003 R2 that you can download. If I can't get that downloaded, then I can always get my Windows XP media and install a virtualized XP. I only need a basic installation; enough to get SuperPI running. I then compare the times...
The only other way is to take the chance and do a dual boot, which, given my lack of income and my need to have this system for school that starts on January 7th, I'm very hesitant about doing that...
I've found the partion resize tools to be quite reliable, except. . .
When you resize a Windows partition, you'll want to have a Windows CD that you can boot from and run chkdsk from. I've found that oft-times, you won't be able to boot from a Windows partition that you've resized until the chkdsk has been run. After that, you should be fine.
Ubuntu will make the resizing easy, as it has a resizer built in to the installation utility.
The only other way is to take the chance and do a dual boot, which, given my lack of income and my need to have this system for school that starts on January 7th, I'm very hesitant about doing that...
I've found the partion resize tools to be quite reliable, except. . .
When you resize a Windows partition, you'll want to have a Windows CD that you can boot from and run chkdsk from. I've found that oft-times, you won't be able to boot from a Windows partition that you've resized until the chkdsk has been run. After that, you should be fine.
Ubuntu will make the resizing easy, as it has a resizer built in to the installation utility.
I'm debating it... I'm going to go ahead and process the tasks that I already downloaded first though...
Ubuntu will make the resizing easy, as it has a resizer built in to the installation utility.
I'm debating it...
I've installed the PCLinuxOS 2007 live CD on a large variety of machines now. Whilst most of the installs had a spare partition already available, at least 5 or so were done after shrinking an existing NTFS partition by using the built-in resizer. I've not had any problems with any of these installs or with booting the remnant windows partition. I seem to recall that once or twice while booting windows after a partition shrink, windows itself (during the first boot only) would decide that chkdsk needed to be run and would ask for permission to run it. In each case chkdsk ran uneventfully and Windows then completed the boot process without issue. I can't guarantee that you wont have any problems but my experience has been very positive.
The precautions I took before attempting the partition shrink were simply to clean out any unneeded files and then to defrag the partition. I also did things like moving a sub-tree of folders onto a network share, defragging again and then moving the sub-tree back which seemed to help in creating a large totally free area on the tail end of the partition that was much bigger than the space I was planning to allocate to Linux.
Please realise that I'm writing this just to share experiences. Ultimately the decision to attempt it or not and the potential risks are entirely yours :).
Ultimately the decision to attempt it or not and the potential risks are entirely yours :).
I've thought more about this, and I have decided not to attempt a repartitioning at this time. I cannot afford to have something go wrong. Long-term plans for this computer were to perhaps get a Raptor / RaptorX (if going for speed) for the boot drive and mirror the data to it, or getting another Seagate drive of about the same size or larger. Would I still be able to dual-boot to Linux if the Linux OS was installed on the other drive? I think the answer is "yes", but not real sure...
Ultimately the decision to attempt it or not and the potential risks are entirely yours :).
I've thought more about this, and I have decided not to attempt a repartitioning at this time. I cannot afford to have something go wrong. Long-term plans for this computer were to perhaps get a Raptor / RaptorX (if going for speed) for the boot drive and mirror the data to it, or getting another Seagate drive of about the same size or larger. Would I still be able to dual-boot to Linux if the Linux OS was installed on the other drive? I think the answer is "yes", but not real sure...
Yes, you can. Before installing, though, see if your motherboard will let you choose the boot drive when you start your computer. (My Hewlett-Packard machine brings up the boot menu when I press the "Escape" key.) If this is the case, you'll be able to install GRUB on just the Linux drive, which will allow you to leave your Windows drive untouched. Otherwise, just choose for the Linux installer to put GRUB on the MBR of the Windows drive--which would be your primary drive--and it will automatically find the Windows partition.
That is--theoretically. I've found that some Linux distro's aren't very good at this. They'll ignore other boot partitions, and make them inaccessible until you hand-edit the GRUB menu.lst file. With Ubuntu, though, you shouldn't have that problem.
Just a note to let anyone know that has been watching this adventure of mine that I'm in wrap-up mode... I've come to the conclusion that there is significant overhead for this particular type of workload with a VM. I never did go get the Windows Server 2003 R2 VM, so I may do that and post the SuperPI time for a 1M calculation, but until I get another drive or I feel brave enough to risk losing my installation, that will be all I do...
Thanks for tuning in, and thanks for the suggestions!
All software is 'virtual' to some degree, as it generally requires some abstract model of the hardware to be manageable, otherwise we'd all still be doing machine code.... however getting one machine to emulate another ( in the Turing sense ) always leads to trade-offs with speed & resources.
Cheers, Mike.
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...
... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal
Just a note to let anyone know that has been watching this adventure of mine that I'm in wrap-up mode... I've come to the conclusion that there is significant overhead for this particular type of workload with a VM. I never did go get the Windows Server 2003 R2 VM, so I may do that and post the SuperPI time for a 1M calculation, but until I get another drive or I feel brave enough to risk losing my installation, that will be all I do...
Thanks for tuning in, and thanks for the suggestions!
Brian
Here's something else that you may try, if you want to avoid the overhead of a VM. . .
Just install BOINC onto a live CD session, and run from that.
Here's something else that you may try, if you want to avoid the overhead of a VM. . .
Just install BOINC onto a live CD session, and run from that.
I do that a lot and can recommend it fully. I use mostly Knoppix for this which is booting quite fast and allows to "semi-install" Linux by basically creating some large regular files in your regular Windows partitions (so no re-partitioning), and those files will then be mounted transparently as Linux file systems when running from live DVD/CD. There's Very little overhead involved.
Unfortunately Knoppix hasn't been updated for some time now so you may run into problems with very recent hardware.
RE: RE: Brian, I've
)
I've found the partion resize tools to be quite reliable, except. . .
When you resize a Windows partition, you'll want to have a Windows CD that you can boot from and run chkdsk from. I've found that oft-times, you won't be able to boot from a Windows partition that you've resized until the chkdsk has been run. After that, you should be fine.
Ubuntu will make the resizing easy, as it has a resizer built in to the installation utility.
RE: RE: The only other
)
I'm debating it... I'm going to go ahead and process the tasks that I already downloaded first though...
RE: RE: Ubuntu will make
)
I've installed the PCLinuxOS 2007 live CD on a large variety of machines now. Whilst most of the installs had a spare partition already available, at least 5 or so were done after shrinking an existing NTFS partition by using the built-in resizer. I've not had any problems with any of these installs or with booting the remnant windows partition. I seem to recall that once or twice while booting windows after a partition shrink, windows itself (during the first boot only) would decide that chkdsk needed to be run and would ask for permission to run it. In each case chkdsk ran uneventfully and Windows then completed the boot process without issue. I can't guarantee that you wont have any problems but my experience has been very positive.
The precautions I took before attempting the partition shrink were simply to clean out any unneeded files and then to defrag the partition. I also did things like moving a sub-tree of folders onto a network share, defragging again and then moving the sub-tree back which seemed to help in creating a large totally free area on the tail end of the partition that was much bigger than the space I was planning to allocate to Linux.
Please realise that I'm writing this just to share experiences. Ultimately the decision to attempt it or not and the potential risks are entirely yours :).
Cheers,
Gary.
RE: Ultimately the decision
)
I've thought more about this, and I have decided not to attempt a repartitioning at this time. I cannot afford to have something go wrong. Long-term plans for this computer were to perhaps get a Raptor / RaptorX (if going for speed) for the boot drive and mirror the data to it, or getting another Seagate drive of about the same size or larger. Would I still be able to dual-boot to Linux if the Linux OS was installed on the other drive? I think the answer is "yes", but not real sure...
RE: RE: Ultimately the
)
Yes, you can. Before installing, though, see if your motherboard will let you choose the boot drive when you start your computer. (My Hewlett-Packard machine brings up the boot menu when I press the "Escape" key.) If this is the case, you'll be able to install GRUB on just the Linux drive, which will allow you to leave your Windows drive untouched. Otherwise, just choose for the Linux installer to put GRUB on the MBR of the Windows drive--which would be your primary drive--and it will automatically find the Windows partition.
That is--theoretically. I've found that some Linux distro's aren't very good at this. They'll ignore other boot partitions, and make them inaccessible until you hand-edit the GRUB menu.lst file. With Ubuntu, though, you shouldn't have that problem.
Just a note to let anyone
)
Just a note to let anyone know that has been watching this adventure of mine that I'm in wrap-up mode... I've come to the conclusion that there is significant overhead for this particular type of workload with a VM. I never did go get the Windows Server 2003 R2 VM, so I may do that and post the SuperPI time for a 1M calculation, but until I get another drive or I feel brave enough to risk losing my installation, that will be all I do...
Thanks for tuning in, and thanks for the suggestions!
Brian
It's been a very informative
)
It's been a very informative 'blog' Brian ! :-)
All software is 'virtual' to some degree, as it generally requires some abstract model of the hardware to be manageable, otherwise we'd all still be doing machine code.... however getting one machine to emulate another ( in the Turing sense ) always leads to trade-offs with speed & resources.
Cheers, Mike.
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...
... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal
RE: Just a note to let
)
Here's something else that you may try, if you want to avoid the overhead of a VM. . .
Just install BOINC onto a live CD session, and run from that.
RE: Here's something else
)
I do that a lot and can recommend it fully. I use mostly Knoppix for this which is booting quite fast and allows to "semi-install" Linux by basically creating some large regular files in your regular Windows partitions (so no re-partitioning), and those files will then be mounted transparently as Linux file systems when running from live DVD/CD. There's Very little overhead involved.
Unfortunately Knoppix hasn't been updated for some time now so you may run into problems with very recent hardware.
CU
H-B