Fedora 12 as host and installing multiple VMs

tale103108 · #1 30th November 2009, 01:59 PM

Hello,
(I am new ot Fedora Linux)

I was wondering if someone knew of a tutorial or guide to installing Fedora 12 as the host system then installing other Linuxes (or other OSes) as VMs. When I think of other OSes I am thinking FreeBSD, openSolaris, Haiku, gOS, etc. Any help would be appreciated.
I also heard that a free version of VMWare is available for Fedora 12 but I can not find it ... is this true or have I been misled?

Camberwell · #2 30th November 2009, 02:09 PM

yum install VirtualBoxOSE

thats a good, easy VM system, I like it anyway

beaker_ · #3 30th November 2009, 02:22 PM

+1 for vbox but also check out virtual machine manager. With kvm, its pretty good and they brought a lot of options out.

forkbomb · #4 30th November 2009, 02:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tale103108

I also heard that a free version of VMWare is available for Fedora 12 but I can not find it ... is this true or have I been misled?

Free-beer licenses can be had for VMWare Server but VMWare Workstation is paid software. If you use a free license for VMWare Server you're not entitled to any support straight from VMWare and will have to get support from third parties (sort of like the situation with Fedora). VMware ESXi, a bare-metal install, is also free-beer I hear.

Sign up for a license on the site.
https://www.vmware.com/tryvmware/?p=server20&lp=1

CSchwangler · #5 30th November 2009, 02:57 PM

VirtualBox would be a good choice for you, since it supports most of the guests you intend to use and provides guest extensions for them, see:

http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Guest_OSes

shaolin · #6 30th November 2009, 04:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by CSchwangler

VirtualBox would be a good choice for you, since it supports most of the guests you intend to use and provides guest extensions for them, see:

http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Guest_OSes

Yes, VirtualBox would be definitely be a good choice. If your planning on using any USB devices within your Guest OS....make sure you get VirtualBox PUEL. VirtualBox OSE does not have USB Support.

If you download directly from VirtualBox.org you will get the PUEL (Personal Use and Evaulation License).

If your running Fedora 12, make sure you install the DKMS

yum install DKMS

and you maybe required to install GCC

yum install GCC

Before installing VirtualBox.

However I would highly recommend your read the VirtualBox documentation on how to install to get a better understanding of VirtualBox

ttoth · #7 16th December 2009, 12:18 AM

Shaolin is correct, VirtualBox is a good choice. I've just got it working on Fedora 12 and I must admit, I like to better then VMWare. Indeed, if you would like to use USB with your guest OS then you need the VBox PUEL. You can download it directly from the website or create a repo file under /etc/yum.repos.d/ and then install the rpm through yum.

[virtualbox]
name=Fedora $releasever - $basearch - VirtualBox
baseurl=http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/rpm/fedora/$releasever/$basearch
enabled=1
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian/sun_vbox.asc

Some observation on VMware server. First, it is really free and available for Linux however Fedora is not a supported OS for VMWare therefore you will not find any VMWare server package created directly for Fedora. You can download binary for Linux and install it on Fedora but if you run into problem then you will not receive any "official" support.
I've been using VMWare Server 2 for awhile on Fedora 9 and it was running flawless. Since I've upgraded to F12 I had several issues with it even though I've patched it. The VMWare server is not prepared for the latest kernel on F12 (2.6.31.x) therefore when you comply the modules it will error out. You can find patch for 2.6.30.x kernel version which is working for the 2.6.31.x. All in all I recommend you to use the VirtualBox over VMware if you are a Fedora user.

MercuryShadow · #8 16th December 2009, 01:54 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by shaolin

and you maybe required to install GCC

yum install GCC

Before installing VirtualBox.

However I would highly recommend your read the VirtualBox documentation on how to install to get a better understanding of VirtualBox

I think you need more than just gcc, as VirtualBox will need the kernel-devel package to build the VirtualBox kernel module. To be safe, you should run the following:

su -c 'gcc gcc-c++ make automake autoconf kernel-devel'