Fix your virtualization with more virtualization!



  • I'm setting up a dev server (using an old dual-socket workstation tower that nobody's using) at work since we still have no proper separation between testing/development and production environments. I decided to get virtualization set up so we can easily spawn more server instances with different environments, and use snapshots to restore borked VMs. The host OS is CentOS 6 (a server Linux variant). I needed a Windows server to run some .NET websites, so I found a dead system in our PC graveyard with a Windows Vista Business sticker on it and took its license key. Got it set up and installed inside a VM with no problems.

    The virtualization environment is Oracle VirtualBox 4.1.2. I installed the VirtualBox Guest Additions into the Vista VM, rebooted, and Windows helpfully notified me that there was a problem with VirtualBox Guest Additions and the solution is to install an update. I clicked the included link to download the update and it redirected me to the download page for Oracle VirtualBox 3.1. Not the Guest Additions, but the actual virtualization application.

    So, if you have problems with a virtual machine, Windows/Oracle/whoever populates the Windows Problems & Solutions thing recommends you install an older virtualization platform within the virtual machine.

    I'd like to install it and see what happens, but that probably wouldn't be a good use of company time.


  • Considered Harmful

    Virtualization is like violence: if it's not solving your problems, you're not using enough.



  • Since the recommended version number is lower than the installed version, maybe the correct title for this post would be

    Fix your virtualization with less virtualization!



  • @mott555 said:

    I found a dead system in our PC graveyard with a Windows Vista Business sticker on it and took its license key.

    A Windows OEM license (the kind found on stickers) cannot be transferred to another machine, virtual or otherwise. So instead you could have downloaded a key generator from your favorite P2P and the result would be the same, license-wise.



    Windows licenses are very expensive unless you have a very large number of them, or unless you agree to the limitations inherent to OEM licenses (where the PC manufacturer basically paid Microsoft to get you a cheaper Windows license that can be used only on the specific machine it was sold with).


  • ♿ (Parody)

    I've never had a positive experience with VirtualBox. OTOH, I've had really great results with VMWare.



  • @mott555 said:

    Oracle

    ^- found the WTF


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

    @joe.edwards said:

    Virtualization is like violence: if it's not solving your problems, you're not using enough.  you need to jam something into something else.

     

    Edit: Added FTFY and removed a spelling mistake. So I guess I FTFM



  • I am merely adding a post to support my new favorite tag.

    Also because I am pleasantly surprised at the lack of yo dawg jokes in a thread about virtualization virtualization. +1 point for everyone!


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @boomzilla said:

    I've never had a positive experience with VirtualBox. OTOH, I've had really great results with VMWare.
    I started off using VMWare when I started my current job (3 or 4 years ago) initially running Linux under Windows, then vice-versa. Moved over to VirtualBox for some reason (think it was a collegue using VB instead and wittering on about it.) Don't personally have any complaints about VB (well not any sufficiently serious to post here about.)



    That said, all it's being used for (in our department[1], and especially in my case,) is to run Windows when Windows is Obligatory[tm] and for supplying code and (Linux) compilation environment to the escrow services that (senisbly) expect the code supplied to actually compile to something useful.





    [1] One massive WTF is going to hit our department Soon. The product/service our company sells runs exclusively on Linux. Our department provides the kernel/apps/support/etc for what our company sells. Using Linux. Rumour has it we are to be issued Windows Boxes. On desks. Running a VM running Linux to do our, actual, work. To be compatible with the rest of the company. (You know, like Accounts. H.R. Sysadmin[2] The sorts of departments no company could function without.)



    [2] I get the impression it's the sysadmins pushing this. This is the department who's (initial) solution to my problem of them using Cisco VPN (as opposed to OpenVPN) to access the servers (that I never did get access to) is that I (exclusively - no VM shite or stuff) run Windows to access Linux servers which I needed to debug. Which serve the Linux clinets I also needed to debug. I gave up when I was denied access to the (not yet in production) servers, and had the joy of waiting for the UK sysadmins to be around in the 3 hour window that's common when working from the US.



    Erm - sorry; that turned into a rant didn't it?



  • @PJH said:

    Which serve the Linux clinets I also needed to debug.

    Those clinets are very buggy. Much more than the guinets.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @thistooshallpass said:

    @PJH said:
    Which serve the Linux clinets I also needed to debug.
    Those clinets are very buggy. Much more than the guinets.
    Google not entirely helpful. EXPN?



  • @PJH said:

    @thistooshallpass said:
    @PJH said:
    Which serve the Linux clinets I also needed to debug.
    Those clinets are very buggy. Much more than the guinets.
    Google not entirely helpful. EXPN?

    </facepalm> Better?


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @PJH said:

    @thistooshallpass said:
    @PJH said:
    Which serve the Linux clinets I also needed to debug.

    Those clinets are very buggy have very steep learning curves. Much more than the guinets.
    Google not entirely helpful. EXPN?

    CTFY?



  • @thistooshallpass said:

    @PJH said:
    Which serve the Linux clinets I also needed to debug.

    Those clinets are very buggy. Much more than the guinets.

    Oh man. I would have posted "I see what you did there" but I honestly did not see it. +1 Internets to smoking Obama.



  • @PJH said:

    Google not entirely helpful. EXPN?
     

    drnuk poztign



  • @Xyro said:

    I am merely adding a post to support my new favorite tag.

    Also because I am pleasantly surprised at the lack of yo dawg jokes in a thread about virtualization virtualization. +1 point for everyone!

     



  • Where do you even find a image editor that doesn't anti-alias text? Fucking Paint.exe does it.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    Where do you even find a image editor that doesn't anti-alias text? Fucking Paint.exe does it.
    I didn't pay attention at the time since I was just throwing together a shitty picture for a joke, but it appears my nice new very expensive installation of Photoshop has AA turned off by default.  WTF?



  • @El_Heffe said:

    I didn't pay attention at the time since I was just throwing together a shitty picture for a joke,

    "Didn't pay attention?" It jumps out of the screen and stabs your eyeballs with teeny jaggy pixels!

    @El_Heffe said:

    but it appears my nice new very expensive installation of Photoshop has AA turned off by default. WTF?

    Haha, we should start a project to determine the exact moment Adobe Creative Suite turned to shit. (You can actually turn off anti-aliasing in Paint.NET too, but obviously that's not the default.)



  • Heck, my copy of Paint Shop Pro 4 has antialiasing of text. If I had to venture an exact moment at which Adobe became more crap than good, it'd have to be CS4. The moment when they stopped bothering to try and make their products fit the OS at all (not that they ever succeeded) and proceeded to make everything look and sometimes work like a strange hybrid of OS X and XP.



  • @nexekho said:

    Heck, my copy of Paint Shop Pro 4 has antialiasing of text.

    Yes. And you can turn it off in Paint Shop Pro 4 as well, when necessary (e.g. when the text is very small and anti-aliasing just makes it look fuzzy and blurry by comparison, or any other time when the anti-aliased result just looks ugly).



  • @Xyro said:

    I am pleasantly surprised at the lack of yo dawg jokes

    I was planning to put one in if there wasn't one already, but you went and spoiled it. Fortunately El_Heffe stepped up to the plate.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    @El_Heffe said:
    I didn't pay attention at the time since I was just throwing together a shitty picture for a joke,

    "Didn't pay attention?" It jumps out of the screen and stabs your eyeballs with teeny jaggy pixels!

    Didn't pay attention to it . . . you know . . . as in  "Didn't really give a shit because it was only going to be seen by a bunch of pedantic dickweeds."@blakeyrat said:
    we should start a project to determine the exact moment Adobe Creative Suite turned to shit.
    I wouldn't call it shit.  Well, not exactly.  Even the latest version is pretty good and gets the job done without any major WTFs . . . . unless you make the mistake of thinking that some of the new features are actually going to work.  For example, Photoshop's new "Content Aware Fill" feature.  Looks awesome in the demo videos.  Seriously awesome.  Makes you want to immediately rush out and buy a copy.  In actual use however, it turns out that the photos used in those demos are pretty much the only pictures in the entire universe where the Content Aware Fill actually works.  For everything else, it's pretty much useless.



  • @El_Heffe said:

    For everything else, it's pretty much useless.
     

    Just like:

    - Vanishing point
    - liquefy
    - content-aware transform
    - Extract
    - smart filters (VERY useful, but the implementation sabotages it to be completely useless)
    - layer comps
    - selection Refine Edge
    - smooth zoom
    - documents in tabs
    - that 3D shit

    At the same time, small features that are a big deal are completely ignored. Such as when Photoshop 8 finally allowed multi-nested sets. And multi-layer select. And putting the tools on 1 column.

    I'm still on CS3, but I think there's some new adjustment layer palette in 5 or wut that might actually be handy. And rotating the canvas is handy for drawing artists.

    Meanwhile, actually handy innivations would be:
    - linked documents in smart objects
    - search in images. Now that would be content-aware.



  • @PJH said:

    [2] I get the impression it's the sysadmins pushing this. This is the department who's (initial) solution to my problem of them using Cisco VPN (as opposed to OpenVPN) to access the servers (that I never did get access to) is that I (exclusively - no VM shite or stuff) run Windows to access Linux servers which I needed to debug. Which serve the Linux clinets I also needed to debug. I gave up when I was denied access to the (not yet in production) servers, and had the joy of waiting for the UK sysadmins to be around in the 3 hour window that's common when working from the US.
    Cisco does have a Linux client for their VPN, but even their Windows client is awful, so I wouldn't expect too much (not to mention they initially didn't intend to offer a 64-bit compatible version at all). I did use vpnc in the past to connect to Cisco, and ShrewSoft VPN Client should also work (though I've only used their Windows client).


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @ender said:

    I did use vpnc in the past to connect to Cisco
    That's what I was eventually pointed to when they got half-way to getting me connected. Along with "Here's the Windows config we use with everything in it that you'll need to use it."


    Except the group password as it turned out 2 days later.


  • Garbage Person

    @ender said:

    (not to mention they initially didn't intend to offer a 64-bit compatible version at all)
    And when they did finally cough one up, it was ONLY for their newest, top of the line concentrators and was completely incompatible with ones even a year or two old. I know of at least one huge organization that said "Fuck it" to the entire VPN concept and converted to 802.1X in response to that one. Of course, 802.1X has its own family of drawbacks, but at least it works uniformly across any piece of hardware you care to mention.



  • @Weng said:

    @ender said:

    (not to mention they initially didn't intend to offer a 64-bit compatible version at all)
    And when they did finally cough one up, it was ONLY for their newest, top of the line concentrators and was completely incompatible with ones even a year or two old. I know of at least one huge organization that said "Fuck it" to the entire VPN concept and converted to 802.1X in response to that one. Of course, 802.1X has its own family of drawbacks, but at least it works uniformly across any piece of hardware you care to mention.

    Since we're piling on Cisco's VPN, it seems to have a hissy fit if you dare to use it on a computer with more than one active ethernet port on it. If your computer has Internet Connection Sharing turned on, it won't just hissy-fit, it'll crash and burn spectacularly, requiring a reboot before you can use your network again.

    I've been using Juniper Network Connect, which is merely ok, but at least it works. Not sure if it's 100% Cisco-compatible, or if our company has both Cisco and Juniper VPN hardware...


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @blakeyrat said:

    Since we're piling on Cisco's VPN, it seems to have a hissy fit if you dare to use it on a computer with more than one active ethernet port on it. If your computer has Internet Connection Sharing turned on, it won't just hissy-fit, it'll crash and burn spectacularly, requiring a reboot before you can use your network again.

    I've been using a Cisco VPN client for a while on customer supplied hardware. I haven't really had a problem with it. I tell it to connect and it does. I don't think I've ever done anything like what you describe, though. My biggest problem is that the machine blue screens after a couple of hours. I think it's a bad video driver or something. The machine has a Vista sticker on it, but it's got XP installed.

    @blakeyrat said:

    I've been using Juniper Network Connect, which is merely ok, but at least it works. Not sure if it's 100% Cisco-compatible, or if our company has both Cisco and Juniper VPN hardware...

    Be glad you weren't using Nortel. Well, since you use Windows 7, I know that you haven't been. They still apparently haven't gotten their shit to work with 7. We've switched to Juniper, too. So far, no complaints. It seems to connect faster than the old Nortel crap.



  • @PJH said:

    Except the group password as it turned out 2 days later.
    You can decrypt that from the PCF file.
    @Weng said:
    And when they did finally cough one up, it was ONLY for their newest, top of the line concentrators and was completely incompatible with ones even a year or two old.
    Nah, the client works fine with older firewalls (google for VPN client 5.0.07.0290 - there's always one or two sites available that have it in their public downloads section; Cisco won't give it to you unless you have an active maintainance contract). You could also use previously-mentioned ShrewSoft client.
    @boomzilla said:
    My biggest problem is that the machine blue screens after a couple of hours. I think it's a bad video driver or something.
    ...or bad network driver, or bad version of Cisco VPN client (latest version should be fine, but good luck finding it).


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @ender said:

    @boomzilla said:
    My biggest problem is that the machine blue screens after a couple of hours. I think it's a bad video driver or something.

    ...or bad network driver, or bad version of Cisco VPN client (latest version should be fine, but good luck finding it).

    Well, I say video driver, because when I checked the logs (my video camera was broken) there was some sort of video driver message right before the BSOD happened. Also, the BSODs happen whether or not the VPN client is even running. It's not my machine, and other than occasionally having to log back in after a BSOD, it works well enough for looking in on logs and stuff like that.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @ender said:

    @PJH said:
    Except the group password as it turned out 2 days
    later.
    You can decrypt that from the PCF file.
    Quite probably. However since all access to other servers we mess around with (and therefore subsequent clients) is via normal SSH, I was expected to know this, how?



    Bear in mind I was being sent -8hrs to what is essentialy a deployment of a test system, and I was denied access to the systems involved - what's the point? (The trip wasn't totally wasted - I apparently imparted a lot of knowledge to the local staff.)


  • Garbage Person

    @ender said:

    @PJH said:
    Except the group password as it turned out 2 days later.
    You can decrypt that from the PCF file. @Weng said:
    And when they did finally cough one up, it was ONLY for their newest, top of the line concentrators and was completely incompatible with ones even a year or two old.
    Nah, the client works fine with older firewalls (google for VPN client 5.0.07.0290 - there's always one or two sites available that have it in their public downloads section; Cisco won't give it to you unless you have an active maintainance contract). You could also use previously-mentioned ShrewSoft client
    That may be true - but that's absolutely not what they told the administrators with the active maintainance contract when they were trying to work through the "problem". 



  • Oh man, VMWare's free server setup is a gargantuan series of WTFs. The web interface simply doesn't work. The good (bad?) news is that since they're phasing out support, we're all moving to VirtualBox, which seems like a far superior setup, what with cloning VMs and such - the only issue is that it's harder to run a VM server (or maybe just more annoying) because the VMs don't start up when the server does.



  • @Power Troll said:

    Oh man, VMWare's free server setup is a gargantuan series of WTFs. The web interface simply doesn't work. The good (bad?) news is that since they're phasing out support, we're all moving to VirtualBox, which seems like a far superior setup, what with cloning VMs and such - the only issue is that it's harder to run a VM server (or maybe just more annoying) because the VMs don't start up when the server does.
     

    My experiences with virtual box have been nothing but aggravation, and buggy crap.  Which is not surprising when you consider who makes it.


  • Garbage Person

    @Power Troll said:

    The web interface simply doesn't work.
    Try IE. It works GREAT in IE. It just doesn't work at all in anything else. (It used to work in Firefox, but stopped doing so around FF3)



  • @Weng said:

    @Power Troll said:

    The web interface simply doesn't work.
    Try IE. It works GREAT in IE. It just doesn't work at all in anything else. (It used to work in Firefox, but stopped doing so around FF3)


    Ah, go figure. I'm running jewbuntu. But, I guess I can access it through my W7 local VM... thanks for the heads up.



  • @Power Troll said:

    go figure. I'm running jewbuntu.
     

           WTF?




  • @thistooshallpass said:

    @mott555 said:

    I found a dead system in our PC graveyard with a Windows Vista Business sticker on it and took its license key.

    A Windows OEM license (the kind found on stickers) cannot be transferred to another machine, virtual or otherwise. So instead you could have downloaded a key generator from your favorite P2P and the result would be the same, license-wise.



    Windows licenses are very expensive unless you have a very large number of them, or unless you agree to the limitations inherent to OEM licenses (where the PC manufacturer basically paid Microsoft to get you a cheaper Windows license that can be used only on the specific machine it was sold with).

    You are 100% correct on the non-trasnferability of an OEM license. However I find the comment of "Windows licenses are very expensive" to be suprising - at least in the USA [PRicing in other countries is a whole different ball of wax, and NOT what I am commenting on]

    Full List for professional is $299, ($199 for upgrade) which is most likely less than what you are paying (including G&A overhead) the person using the machine for a single day.



  • @TheCPUWizard said:

    You are 100% correct on the non-trasnferability of an OEM license. However I find the comment of "Windows licenses are very expensive" to be suprising - at least in the USA [PRicing in other countries is a whole different ball of wax, and NOT what I am commenting on]

    Full List for professional is $299, ($199 for upgrade) which is most likely less than what you are paying (including G&A overhead) the person using the machine for a single day.

    One of the running themes in this forum, and also a source of many, many of the WTFs, is that IT people (and their managers) seem to have no clue what things actually cost. Especially in relation to labor costs.



  • Blakeyrat ... not sure if your last post was a general agreement with mine, or if you were considering me in the " IT people (and their managers)" category of clueless..... Hopefully the former.



  • @TheCPUWizard said:

    Blakeyrat ... not sure if your last post was a general agreement with mine, or if you were considering me in the " IT people (and their managers)" category of clueless..... Hopefully the former.

    Yeah, sorry, I agree with you. I was just pointing out that it's the basis for a lot of WTFs here-- companies assigning 40 hours of work to an employee to save a $500 purchase, for example. I point it out because it constantly amazes me.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @blakeyrat said:

    @TheCPUWizard said:
    Blakeyrat ... not sure if your last post was a general agreement with mine, or if you were considering me in the " IT people (and their managers)" category of clueless..... Hopefully the former.

    Yeah, sorry, I agree with you. I was just pointing out that it's the basis for a lot of WTFs here-- companies assigning 40 hours of work to an employee to save a $500 purchase, for example. I point it out because it constantly amazes me.

    I think it's another face of the broken window fallacy, i.e., the visible vs the hidden. The salary cost is something the manager was going to pay anyways. The new license or equipment or whatever is something added. The hidden thing here, of course, is the additional work that the employee could have accomplished. Given that Nobel Prize winning economists haven't mastered this concept, it's no wonder that garden variety PHBs can't figure it out.


  • Garbage Person

    @blakeyrat said:

    @TheCPUWizard said:
    Blakeyrat ... not sure if your last post was a general agreement with mine, or if you were considering me in the " IT people (and their managers)" category of clueless..... Hopefully the former.

    Yeah, sorry, I agree with you. I was just pointing out that it's the basis for a lot of WTFs here-- companies assigning 40 hours of work to an employee to save a $500 purchase, for example. I point it out because it constantly amazes me.

    Alt.: Buying a $3M piece of equipment to eliminate two minimum wage temps.



  • Yes, it seems that erros at both extremes are far too common. Understanding "Total Cost of Ownership" as a principle seems to be overlooked on regular basis.



  •  jewbuntu == GeuBuntu

    Well, it was equal to GeuBuntu.  Then Ubuntu complained, so they changed their name to OpenGeu.  But it's dead in the water.  It was very cool while it lasted.

     Remember, an OpenGeu is better than a ClosedJentyle.


  • :belt_onion:

    @blakeyrat said:

    Since we're piling on Cisco's VPN, it seems to have a hissy fit if you dare to use it on a computer with more than one active ethernet port on it. If your computer has Internet Connection Sharing turned on, it won't just hissy-fit, it'll crash and burn spectacularly, requiring a reboot before you can use your network again.

    I've been using Juniper Network Connect, which is merely ok, but at least it works. Not sure if it's 100% Cisco-compatible, or if our company has both Cisco and Juniper VPN hardware...

    I've experienced the same thing, and my laptop only has one Ethernet adapter and one wireless adapter. If I ever restart it, it won't connect to anything until I turn off the Deterministic Network Enhancer if it's on, or vice versa. (Either state it's in when it restarts, it won't connect to anything.)

    Seriously, fuck everything about Cisco's VPN client.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @heterodox said:

    Seriously, fuck everything about Cisco's VPN
    +1.



  • @heterodox said:

    Seriously, fuck everything about Cisco's VPN client.
    Did you ever have the pleasure to use their AnyConnect VPN client? I recently encountered that at a client. With it's default settings, all LAN access was cut off when the VPN connection established, which meant no printing while working remotely at their client. Got in touch with the client's client, they reconfigured the gateway to allow local LAN, and we tried again. This resulted in AnyConnect going in infinite reconfiguring loop on most computers (the client connects, 15 seconds later it shows a message box saying it has to restart to reconfigure, disconnects, reconnects, 15 seconds later it shows the same message again... and again). Googling found suggestions to lower the MTU on the VPN gateway, but for some reason they can't do that, and this is still unresolved for now.


    BTW, for those that are stuck with Cisco's VPN Client, I found Shrewsoft VPN Client to be a nice replacement. It can import the .pcf files directly. Unfortunately, AnyConnect uses a different protocol, so Shrew doesn't support it.



  • Weird, I didn't have these issues with Cisco's client. Maybe it was because I used an older version, or our network config was different or whatever.

    Citrix, however, glory be, needs to be personified and given life as a conscious human being, to grow up in it, allowed and encouraged to experience all the amazing wonders and beauty this world has to offer, be it grand vistas of the natural world; the cultural masterpieces of yesteryear; the sweetest, most delicious meals our best chefs can prepare; friendship, romance, love, a sense of belonging and happiness, and then be fucking impaled on a dragon's tooth and slowly turned into a husk and blown to bits by a random uncaring protagonist.


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