[tlug] Re: TLUG Casual Meeting (2004-09-18)

[Jim Tittsler <jwt-tlug@example.com>]

On Sep 17, 2004, at 13:33, Zev Blut wrote:
> and will be an open forum to talk about
> ideas for the TLUG group.  Also, if people are willing I have a few
> machines that we might want to try and install Plan 9 or some other
> OS/Linux distro onto for fun and experimentation.  The meeting will be
> held at my company's office (ubit).

Thanks to Zev Blut and his colleague Nara-san (?).  We set up 3 
computers in their jungle-like conference room and had a chance to play 
with three different environments.

- Xen virtual machine monitor.  This project from Cambridge University 
provides high performance virtualization of x86 PC server hardware to 
support multiple guest OSes.  They claim significantly better 
performance than User Mode Linux, but they require a considerably 
larger patch to the guest OSes to achieve that.  Zev demonstrated their 
prepackaged demo CD which includes a copy of their tools and a basic 
Red Hat 9 install.  We were able to start a couple of additional 
"domains" (each running its own RH9 Linux, and some infinite print 
loops) and then experiment with pausing and restarting them.  The 
latest version of the project also claims support for being able to 
save the state of each virtual machine to a file and later reload it, 
suggesting some interesting possibilities for migrating complete images 
from one physical machine to another.
   http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/Research/SRG/netos/xen/

- Chaos, an OpenMosix distribution that can be run entirely from (a 
business card) CD-ROM (or net booted via PXE).  Boot the CD in the 
master machine, and then remove the CD and use it to boot a number of 
other machines to join the cluster..  This provides a "no setup 
required" way to explore having your very own OpenMosix cluster.
   http://itsecurity.mq.edu.au/chaos/about/index.htm

- Plan 9.  We tried installing Plan 9 on one of the machines but were 
frustrated by what seemed to be video driver problems.  After partially 
working around those by reducing resolution, we still failed to 
complete the install from a "cover disc" CD.  (A Plan 9 demonstration 
on a network of 2 or more machines would be an excellent topic for a 
future meeting.  Hint, hint.)
   http://www.cs.bell-labs.com/plan9dist/


-- 
Jim Tittsler  7J1AJH/AI8A                            GPG: 0x01159DB6
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