VMs in the space...?

[Dave Durant]

I was having a look at the list of servers in the space (http://
wiki.hackspace.org.uk/wiki/System_naming). There doesn't appear to be
any kit running a VM server for people who would like to set up their
own projects running on kit in the space (so that if they kill the
virtual machine it doesn't bring the whole box down).

Would there be any interest in setting one up? I'm sure we could dig
up an another old desktop box (or just use one of the donated rack-
mount servers).

For myself I'm interested in playing with Asterisk and VoiceGlue
(http://www.voiceglue.org/) to see if we can hook that into some of
the stuff in the space (IRC, etc).

[Russ Garrett]

On 15 April 2011 15:55, Dave Durant <chol...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Would there be any interest in setting one up? I'm sure we could dig
> up an another old desktop box (or just use one of the donated rack-
> mount servers).

I have no particular objections to this, but bear in mind that running
a computer constantly costs us ~£15/month in electricity, so we should
consider if it's worth it.

I wonder if it would be worth finding the most powerful server
possible and running what's currently on Babbage as a VM on that. Then
you haven't really got a net increase in power usage.

--
Russ Garrett
ru...@garrett.co.uk

[Mark Steward]

If you just want to tinker for now, we've got VirtualBox running on Lovelace.

Mark

[David Durant]

> If you just want to tinker for now, we've got VirtualBox running on Lovelace.

Cool :-)

Questions:

1) Can anyone just trundle up and create a new VM or is there some kind of dragon to fight to get permission...?

2) Is there a wiki page of current VMs (so we don't end up with lots of ones running that no-ones updated for months)...?

3) Can people log in remotely (via ssh)...?

[Mark Steward]

On Fri, Apr 15, 2011 at 4:32 PM, David Durant <da...@bowsy.co.uk> wrote:

> If you just want to tinker for now, we've got VirtualBox running on Lovelace.

Cool :-)

Questions:

1) Can anyone just trundle up and create a new VM or is there some kind of dragon to fight to get permission...?

Creating a VM is fine at the moment - we've currently got loads of space.  However, after a few 20GB VMs this may not be the case, so I'd suggest always mailing the list when you add one, or at least updating the wiki.

 

2) Is there a wiki page of current VMs (so we don't end up with lots of ones running that no-ones updated for months)...?

Good plan - well volunteered!  The only existing VM is a Windows XP app-compat image with IE7 (around 2GB).

 

3) Can people log in remotely (via ssh)...?

Yes, although Lovelace isn't always on.  I guess that implies we should put VirtualBox on Babbage, although I'm conscious that we don't want to push Babbage's load up too high.  Anyone else got any suggestions for this?

Mark

[David Durant]

> Good plan - well volunteered! 

Sure, no problem. 

Guess we need a list of real and virtual servers addresses easily available to folks for SSH / Remote-Desktop. Do we run our own DNS server so that we can hang the VMs off the hackspace.org.uk for named external access? Easiest way I guess would be to set up something like tomcat so that a page can be auto-generated with all the information and linked off the front of the wiki (with bonus points for uptime, etc)...

Oh, and the same via IRC...

> I guess that implies we should put VirtualBox on Babbage, although I'm conscious that we don't want to push Babbage's load up too high.

 

Well, let me know which is preferred.

>  The only existing VM is a Windows XP app-compat image with IE7 (around 2GB).

I guess we can shift that if needed.

Please bare in mind that while I've used VirtualBox a bit I'm far from an expert so it might be a bit of a learning experience (but isn't that what Hackspace is all about) ;-)

--
Omnes homines natura scire desiderant
Twitter : @cholten99