How to test with low RAM and just one CPU core

[Phill Whiteside]

Hi Jonathan,

please excuse my attitude in the last email (It was late and I was on my
2nd bottle of wine!). With respect to using the extras package in VBox, it
is my understanding that the extra package is needed to access usb devices
in order to boot from. It is roughly the equivalent of restricted-extras.
If you are willing to hold the classroom session for VBox that would be
really helpful. I'm capable of running VBox, but as you know I use
virt-manager / KVM on my server for the virtual machines. Please feel free
to edit what were my rough notes for what to include on the VBox session.
We are hoping to hold the sessions in June. As a bit of further background,
the VBox instance in the 12.10 repos was considerably out dated. Getting
the more recent one then caused testdrive application to fail owing to to
the version level of VBox being hard-coded into that application (Yup, not
a really smart idea, I know). Unit193 provided a fix and with the updates
to it and VBox we can now use both. As testing is fast moving, it was
decided not to SRU the fix into 12.10 but concentrate on the 13.04 and
13.10 repos. I've also been made aware of another virtualisation system,
but have not delved too far into it yet!

Many thanks,

Phill.

On 1 June 2013 14:50, Jose Lopez <josewendy1 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Jonathan, I'm very interested in learning CLI from Grub, never done it
> before and I,m pretty new to (advance CLI) as I would look at it. is there
> a link or a tut that you can point me to.
> Thanks
> Jose Lopez
>
>
> On Fri, May 31, 2013 at 11:36 PM, Jonathan Marsden <jmarsden at fastmail.fm>wrote:
>
>> On 05/31/2013 09:10 PM, Phill Whiteside wrote:
>>
>> > you can also utilise the abilities built into the linux kernel.
>>
>> Those kernel parameters *are* "abilities built into the Linux kernel",
>> aren't they? :)
>>
>> > I know at times I seem like a fan boi of virt-manager, but it is a
>> > GUI that uses the kvm abilities that are in built to the linux
>> > kernel. I'm sure the purists will prefer using virsh exactly, but I
>> > do ask why we need to learn so much command line stuff :)
>>
>> (1) When your machine doesn't boot, knowing enough to play with Grub a
>> little is something that suddenly seems well worth knowing :)  Grub is
>> command based and text-file-configured, so unless you can point me to a
>> 100% GUI-configured boot manager to use instead of Grub, I think that
>> means learning a few keystrokes and config items, in order to understand
>> and manage how your PC boots.
>>
>> (2) Creating a test VM and installing a fresh Lubuntu OS into it, then
>> booting the VM and testing, and then (if you have limited disk space)
>> deleting the VM afterwards, takes *way* more time and effort than
>> rebooting a PC with an existing Lubuntu installation on it and typing
>>
>>   mem=512M nosmp
>>
>> into one line of boot info and pressing Ctrl-X.
>>
>> I was responding to someone who said they "couldn't" test a Lubuntu in a
>> low RAM low-CPU environment because they had a dual-core CPU and 1GB...
>> my point was and remains that they absolutely *can* do such testing on
>> that hardware, with minimal time investment and in a way that leaves
>> their PC "just like it was before" once they are done testing and reboot
>> normally.
>>
>> Are you *sure* "use KVM to create a VM to test in" is an appropriate
>> response to a user with a Pentium D and 1 GB RAM?  I think it's possibly
>> more appropriate for users with later CPUs and 4GB or more.
>>
>> Finally, even *if* the Pentium D the user concerned has supports VT-x
>> (which is needed for KVM, and the Smithfield Pentium D CPUs don't have
>> it, only the later Presler ones do!),
>> https://help.ubuntu.com/community/KVM says that KVM in Ubuntu is
>> intended for server, not GUI workstation virtualization, for which
>> Virtualbox is better suited... that info may be out of date now, but it
>> used to be valid...
>>
>> Jonathan
>>
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>
>


-- 
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