frisco
August 20th, 2002, 21:29
i love VMware: http://www.vmware.com/
VMware is a program that runs in Windows and Linux on i386 platforms. It provides you with a virtual machine. It opens a window and that window acts like the monitor of your virtual machine - including booting up and running through bios, configuring disks, booting an OS, etc.
You can install a variety of host OS's in it - linux, windows, freebsd, novell - including OpenBSD. I install OpenBSD into it Many Times.
Since VMware is a virtual machine, shutting down/starting up is only a click-click-click inside a window, no need to go over to a box, flip a switch, etc. And since it is a virtual machine, you can tie a cd drive to an iso image (or floppy to a floppy image too) so you dont have to change cd's or even burn a cd from the iso image you made.
I use these features all the time. when i create a bootable openbsd cd image with a test kernel, i dont waste a cd, i try it in vmware and see what happens. when i want to test a particular configuration (like for the raidframe-mfs howto i wrote) i do it in vmware, no need to bother with another machine. Want to test some client/server programs out but cant afford 3 more machines? start up 3 vmware instances (you better have the RAM for it). Want to use windows but not reboot? install it in VMware. Lately i'm using vmware to test out kernels+ ramdisks i'm making - vmware saves me from having to reboot a Real machine, and i can run it from home or work, remotely displaying the app so i dont have to be at the actual location of the machine (again, no need to change cd's, just tie the drive to a different iso image). The manual for vmware also suggests tying the serial ports of 2 vmware instances together to test out serial port programming.
Yes, i love VMware. It is right up there with true serial consoles.
VMware is a program that runs in Windows and Linux on i386 platforms. It provides you with a virtual machine. It opens a window and that window acts like the monitor of your virtual machine - including booting up and running through bios, configuring disks, booting an OS, etc.
You can install a variety of host OS's in it - linux, windows, freebsd, novell - including OpenBSD. I install OpenBSD into it Many Times.
Since VMware is a virtual machine, shutting down/starting up is only a click-click-click inside a window, no need to go over to a box, flip a switch, etc. And since it is a virtual machine, you can tie a cd drive to an iso image (or floppy to a floppy image too) so you dont have to change cd's or even burn a cd from the iso image you made.
I use these features all the time. when i create a bootable openbsd cd image with a test kernel, i dont waste a cd, i try it in vmware and see what happens. when i want to test a particular configuration (like for the raidframe-mfs howto i wrote) i do it in vmware, no need to bother with another machine. Want to test some client/server programs out but cant afford 3 more machines? start up 3 vmware instances (you better have the RAM for it). Want to use windows but not reboot? install it in VMware. Lately i'm using vmware to test out kernels+ ramdisks i'm making - vmware saves me from having to reboot a Real machine, and i can run it from home or work, remotely displaying the app so i dont have to be at the actual location of the machine (again, no need to change cd's, just tie the drive to a different iso image). The manual for vmware also suggests tying the serial ports of 2 vmware instances together to test out serial port programming.
Yes, i love VMware. It is right up there with true serial consoles.