Main Area and Open Discussion > Non-Windows Software
*NIX: Relatively Minimal Host OS for VirtualBox Use
40hz:
I've made a number of attempts to get Xen working over the years, but without much success...never quite make it far enough. Have you had good experiences with it?
-ewemoa (March 08, 2014, 07:35 AM)
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Outside of a class lab, no. It seemed to work as advertised although it was a little fiddly to set up. But that was also well over 18 months ago so I'd guess things would have changed for the better on that front.
I'm trying to avoid too many steps during set up (cf. getting Arch and/or Gentoo installed - worth it a few times, but not great if I want to recreate a similar set up from scratch) as well as having VirtualBox or comparable stop working somewhere down the line because of an upgrade...
-ewemoa (March 08, 2014, 07:35 AM)
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That's why I'd just go with a vanilla Debian/Ubu server setup as the base. You could always strip out anything you really didn't want afterwards if size is that important. Then install VBox. Dump a copy of installed packages via synaptic - or use a config backup tool like Aptik and it should be a breeze to build a new one (real or virtual) any time you want. The beauty of this approach is it will autoupdate through the repositories once it's built so that hassle goes away.
Hmm...damn...now you've got me thinking... ;D
ewemoa:
That's why I'd just go with a vanilla Debian/Ubu server setup as the base. You could always strip out anything you really didn't want afterwards if size is that important. Then install VBox. Dump a copy of installed packages via synaptic - or use a config backup tool like Aptik and it should be a breeze to build a new one (real or virtual) any time you want. The beauty of this approach is it will autoupdate through the repositories once it's built so that hassle goes away.
-40hz (March 08, 2014, 07:55 AM)
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I know you said "like Aptik", but just to confirm, Aptik doesn't work with Debian, right?
One thing that I'm a bit fuzzy about is how much cruft might remain from stripping things out -- it's not so much size but not wanting extra services running (more from a security perspective than anything else). I've had odd experiences trying to get cups-related, portmap/NFS-related, and other things to go away before when trying the "carve away unnecessary things" approach. It's been a while since I closely examined Debian's default server installation -- do you happen to recall if it has these sorts of things by default?
May be I'll try this sort of approach with Manjaro and try out its remastering capabilities...
Hmm...damn...now you've got me thinking... ;D
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Ha ha ha!
40hz:
I know you said "like Aptik", but just to confirm, Aptik doesn't work with Debian, right?
-ewemoa (March 08, 2014, 08:46 AM)
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Some people have cobbled it to work with Debian, but I wouldn't advise it. Debian repository software usually slots very nicely into Ubu - but not the other way around with PPAs. And since Aptik is primarily for handling PPAs (which are intended to be exclusive to Ubuntu and its derivatives) there's really no reason to try it anyway.
In any Debian-based (i.e. non-Ubuntu or other VCIW modded) distro you can use the dpkg -- get selections > {some file} command to compile a list of installed software, and then pipe that same list back in via dpkg --set-selections < {some file} and then use dselect to reinstall some or all of it.
If you're less "blood & guts" - or just don't want to dork around with dpkg and dselect (which allows a lot more granular control) just use Synaptic's "Generate package download script" and "Add downloaded packages" feature to dupe the entire works.
Note: I'm guessing you already know about this stuff so I'm mostly including it for any non-Nix user who's reading along in hopes they'll someday give The Penguin a try.
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re CUPS: don't read too much into anything from the perspective of a frustrated CUPS user. It's a mess that's slowly getting worked out. CUPS got so bad (and unmaintained) that a several distros stopped including it in their base install of even desktop releases. Even now it has problems with a lot of HP printers - although that may not be completely CUPS fault since HP can't seem to decide if they really want to support Linux or not.
Most annoying! :down:
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re: Manjaro
I have zero experience with Manjaro, so please keep us updated on what you find out if you do? Thx! :Thmbsup:
40hz:
Ok. Did some quick research and found somebody else over at the Crunchbang forum who seems to be thinking the way I am. So maybe there's something in it worth trying.
Start with a Debian net install. Skip the desktop environment and widows manager options and only have it install X.
Once you've got that, do an 'apt-get install virtualbox'. If apt works as advertised (and the VBox config was set up correctly for the repositories) it should also install all the dependencies needed.
Disclaimer: I haven't tried this so I don't know if it will work as described. I somehow don't think it will be quite that simple. But at least it's a place to start - and help determine what else probably needs to be done.
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Quick note: Did some checking - using TinyCore as the host distro is definitely not gonna work.
ewemoa:
Start with a Debian net install. Skip the desktop environment and widows manager options and only have it install X.
Once you've got that, do an 'apt-get install virtualbox'. If apt works as advertised (and the VBox config was set up correctly for the repositories) it should also install all the dependencies needed.
-40hz (March 08, 2014, 06:58 PM)
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I think one might be able to skip specifying the installation of X -- somehow I get the feeling that just doing apt-get install virtualbox will pull X in...wishful thinking?
As you were probably hinting, after installing VirtualBox, I'd guess there may be some things to tweak such as adding certain users to the vboxusers.
Since I dug out a spare machine, may be I'll give this a try.
Quick note: Did some checking - using TinyCore as the host distro is definitely not gonna work.
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I came across a thread on their forums with a post indicating someone had managed at some point (though perhaps with an older version of VirtualBox):
http://forum.tinycorelinux.net/index.php/topic,1761.msg27870.html#msg27870
Regarding Manjaro, I've now installed it twice -- not much luck with UEFI, but I suspect this has more to do with the specific machine I tried it on (from what I've read, a fair number of Lenovo notebooks seem to have "uncooperative" UEFI implementations).
I think Arch's docs are in better shape (many of which make sense for Manjaro), but Manjaro was much easier on my fingers and time during installation :)
Manjaro seems to suggest using Pamac or Octopi (roughly GUIs for Arch's packaging tool "pacman") and I'm pretty sure I'd have found those easier to use at first than pacman (though I think pacman is worth learning, I wouldn't want to start there if I had to start over).
I went for the Openbox flavor but it looks like one can choose from:
XFCE
KDE
Net (bare)
and some other community-created versions:
Cinnamon
Gnome
LXDE
Enlightenment
Hmm, hadn't noticed the Net version...may be I can try out your build-up-from-minimal idea with that as a starting point.
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