Linux and QEMU

[[U2OP] Willy]

Anyone use QEMU with Linux or am I just showing my nerdness?

I'm trying to find a distro that works well with QEMU (Portable VM). I tried Ubuntu, Debrian, Damn Small Linux which is a flavor of KNOOPIX. All have different issues. Dedrian worked but no desktop enviroment which I need for testing.

[Del]

debian should have a dekstop, I guess it depends on what install options you chose, but you normally have a choice of gnome or kde by default I think. with loonix it's broken in two, the window manager and the desktop itself

so you will have to install xorg too maybe

"apt-get install xorg gdm gnome" should see you with a desktop. There might be other dependencies that you need to fulfill, but they'll be spluttered on the screen

I dont use qemu myself, I'd play with vmware for that kinda tinkering. I know vmware works dandy with debian/ubuntu or similar flavours. vmware server is freebie

have you tried slax? http://www.slax.org
It's a lightweight modular linux distro that can boot happily off a usbkey/cd/hd, has a lightweight window manager and there's some 3rd party windows pointyclicky tools to build it. dunno if qemu is supported out of the box tho

hth

[[U2OP] Willy]

I wanted to use VMware but it requires admin rights to install. Using this on my work computer. I usually use virtual Box. Works great with every distro I've came across. I'll have to check out what you suggested below.

Thing about apt-get, cant use it on the works network. Too locked down. I'd have to manually install and I dont know that much about linux yet.

Anyway I'm trying to playing with PHP, MySQL and Apache with Linux for Play. Dedrian would be my distro choice cause that is what I have worked with the most. Ubuntu is my favorit Flavor of Debrian.

[Supernova]

I've also never used qemu, vmware works fine for testing everything I've done before. If you install from a live CD or a normal CD (the only two options really) they should both come with a desktop manager unless you specify some very specific options to boot with...

Both DSL and Ubuntu didn't boot in qemu? Hmm, there are two other small distros like DSL that I can think of: Feather and Puppy linux, both are going to be less than 100mb to download and fully live cd bootable if small download is what you need... though I've only ever tested DSL. Because of their stripped sizes they lack a lot of things.

The only other program of the type I've used is virtualbox, but the download is a .deb (for debian based computers) and that will also need an admin password. There will be a way to manually install but I don't know it, and it'll almost certainly be fiddly!

I'm still perplexed as to why ubuntu didn't work? I blame qemu!

[Del]

aah, you have qemu installed on work pc and that allows you to run virtual linux within it? and you want to find a distro that works well IN qemu?
not the other way round, a distro that hosts qemu well?

or am I still getting it wrong?

[[U2OP] Willy]

DSL works great with QEMU. I couldnt get mysql to install right though. Ubuntu fails on when the xserver boots so it never goes to the desktop enviroment. Think I'll just have to use Virtual Box on a laptop with admin rights.

Now I cant get MySQL to install manually. I was following the instructions at http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/ ... inary.html and at

shell> scripts/mysql_install_db --user=mysql

I get command could not be found. I would think I'd have to run it using sh?

[[U2OP] Willy]

aah, you have qemu installed on work pc and that allows you to run virtual linux within it? and you want to find a distro that works well IN qemu?
not the other way round, a distro that hosts qemu well?

or am I still getting it wrong?

Yep...nailed it on the head

[Supernova]

looks like it yes, shell> just looks like a prompt to me, so just type the bit after in your shell, assuming you're in the right directory.

Have you looked into LAMP? (linux apache mysql php) - afaik it's one package that should install the whole lot

[[U2OP] Willy]

I tryed that right after shell (ofcourse that is a Unix line but the same command should work on Linux). I'm following a book to learn it. I knew about LAMP but I figured I'd understand it better if I manually installed them

I'm in /home/will/mysql using Ubuntu. I extracted all the sources into a folder then ln mysql to that folder. The real folder is called mysql-5.0.51a. Still get that same error.

[Supernova]

ahah, sneakeh.
it doesnt like it because of this:

the file isn't in your PATH environment variable, try echo $PATH in one of the shells to see.
Whenever you run a command in linux it will search the path in order that it is in the variable, then if it finds it, it will stop looking. If you want to run a command that is in the directory but not the path you need to put ./ before it.
Also, make sure it's executable (chmod it)!