Forum.HaveTheKnowHow.com

Have been experimenting tinkering a bit with VMs, and would appreciate some minor clarification over partitioning the functionality.

Have three hard drives: Host OS on one small-ish one, two * 2GB drives on which I store (mainly) music files for Logitech Music Player. I did have the two big drives Raided, but after a minor fiasco am going to convert in due course to SnapRaid. The music files (and others) need to be visible to various WinXP machines around the house.

From your discussion of VMs, I assume that the minimal Host OS implements SnapRaid, rather than the guests. I also presume that the minimal Host OS also includes WebMin, and VNC/Gnome GUI; the latter only fired up when required rather than automatically.

The guest Media Server VM obviously runs Logitech Music Server, but after that I'm less clear. Do I make the music files visible to to the WinXP PCs by putting Samba in the Host or in the guest Media Server. And if the latter, how does the guest Media Server VM see the music files / disks in the first place?

I guess the temperature monitoring stuff goes in the host OS. I guess I also have to put Webmin and/or VNC/Gnome in the guest server to aid configuration of that.

I'm a complete newby as far as this stuff is concerned, and the answers are probably obvious to anyone with more know how, but any clues are welcome!

Thanks in advance.

Bob

Hi Bob,

All very sensible questions.

I had an issue a while back with the setup I have described (everything on the guests with the host being only a minimal install) and now I put everything on the main OS. The guest VMs consist of "test machines" or windows machines. I use a VM to test something and once I'm happy that I know what I'm doing AND it doesn't bugger anything else up I perform the same steps on the main OS.

At some point I'll go back to a minimal host install and everything running on the guests. If only to remind myself of the problem(s) I had that caused me to change my mind before.
I do recall pass-through of a TV Tuner was one problem but can't recall whether anything else caused me to go back to the drawing board.

So, in summary, I try out stuff on a guest OS and once I'm happy install it on the Host.

Ian

Ah. Perhaps I won't go down the Media Server in a VM route after all, particularly given the problems I've had trying to get it all to work! Once the basic files access/Logitech Media Server is back up running, the stuff I have planned initially isn't going to cause too many issues, I guess! Still, it's been an interesting learning experience!

Thanks

Bob