gary’s web sofa

Hmmmm…. Not as easy as it looked. We’ve got a driver issue. My ADSL router is in the kitchen, and my server is in the attic, and I don’t like running cables. I get around this with wi-fi. Unfortunatly Xen’s modified CentOS 4 base install, which the VMs run on top of doesn’t support the wi-fi cards I use.

Now installing a driver on Linux is more involved than Windows. If the driver is supplied as a binary, it needs to match the exact version of the OS kernel. Not a huge problem if like Windows the kernel changed once every 4 years or so, but with Linux you could change the kernel every week if you really wanted it, and anyway, different distros ship with slightly different kernel versions.

To get around this, most drivers are supplied in source code, to enable you to compile it yourself to match your kernel. To do this, you need the kernel header files. You can download the kernel headers using the standard “yum install kernel-devel” method, but they’re the wrong ones! It wuldn’t take a lot of time to get around this, but I’m not going to bother, because I’m only going to run up against something else. I’m just going to install Debian Etch on the box and manually set up Xen tomorrow.

Xen, the open source competitors to VMWare have just taken a huge leap forward. Up until now they were acknowledged as having the fastest virtualisation platform on the market. You could have several virtual servers running on a single physical server and even transfer them to new servers if you wanted to do repairs or upgrades without having to interrupt services.

Installation and management of the open source version was a bit on the tricky side, so a proper company, XenSource, was formed by the development team to add some polish and make it easier to deploy and manage. They’ve finally cranked out their first release, and it’s better than anyone expected. An extra bonus is that not only are there two commercial versions, but Xen Express is a free cut down version for the enthusiast and developer.

Installation is a snap. Basically all you need to do is boot an existing server from the install disk. It will install the core application layer under the existing OS and transition the OS into a virtualised one. I’m moving my email server onto meatier hardware in a few weeks and my intention all along was to use Xen to have multiple virtual machines for testing purposes. Xen Express just made this a lot simpler. Instead of yet again doing a full OS setup and data migration, I’ll install Xen onto the old server and translate my mail server’s OS into a virtual machine. I’ll then transfer this VM onto the new server, which will already have Xen Express pre-installed. It should turn a full day chore into a 30 minute exercise.

Today I bought and installed Norton Antivirus 2006 for a PC at home. My old AV subscription had expired, and upgrading to the new(-ish) shiny 2006 version was only slightly more expensive. It took 3 reboots to install! There was one between installation and activation, and two more after runs of the LiveUpdate function. Why can’t it download everything at once? Why does it need a reboot just so it can go and download more updates?

And why in God’s name does it insist in popping up a “you must reboot your PC to complete the process” dialog box that you can’t hide behind other windows with only an OK option!!!! Even when Windows does the same thing it softens it with a “Reboot Later” option. My PC takes about 5 minutes to reboot (it’s my home office PC, so there’s a lot of “stuff” running at start-up), so this one simple little job ended up taking me away from work for over 45 minutes. Aaaaggghhh!

And another thing…. What gives Symantec the right to try and scare me into upgrading to Norton SystemWorks or Norton Internet Security? The status screen says I’ve got “No Coverage” for data recovery risks, and “Limited Coverage” for Performance, Web Browsing and Email & Messaging. I’ve got full coverage thank you very much; just not with Symantec products! I want my AV status display to tell me how I’m fixed for virus protection. I’ll go to my backup client to see how I am for “Data Recovery”. Bastards!!!!!