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Running VirtualBox VM host on ReadyNAS Pro
What is VirtualBox?
So, I got bored while laundry was going... and decided to see how well a virtual OS would run on the Pro. My first choice of VM was VirtualBox, just cause I'm familiar with it after using it for ages, plus its open and free :) Eventually, I may look into VMWare as well.
After a bit of messing around, got it installed. Since the system is based off of Debian, was easy to get VirtualBox itself there (deb package). The trickiest part was getting the kernel modules required installed (see end of post).
In the end, I've got Windows 2003 R2 running on my Pro, interacting with it via RDP, and I am happy with the performance. I've added an extra 1GB memory (for a total of 2GB). I assigned 1GB of ram to my virtual OS, which still leaves the default configuration of 1GB for the NAS itself (which is more than enough still, 800MB+ is always cached).
I made a 10GB virtual disk to install the OS on. If I need more space later for extra applications, I can just add another virtual drive to that installation. And since I always like a bit extra security, I went a bit beyond the usual, and also have TrueCrypt running full disk encryption in the virtual OS. So no one can even boot and read the data in that OS without my bootup password.
I don't really have any screenshots to show, just a standard Windows installation. Here is a few of the steps I used while creating the VM on the console:
VirtualBox 3.1 has changed the CLI configuration. Until I update this how-to, please reference this: http://www.uhleeka.com/blog/2009/12/vir ... 9-04-host/
With the OS booted up and just sitting at the desktop, top reports:
Ad-hoc installation of VirtualBox. Should work for RAIDiator 4.2.4. Download links for the kernel modules, for those who don't want to go through the mess of compiling them.
So, I got bored while laundry was going... and decided to see how well a virtual OS would run on the Pro. My first choice of VM was VirtualBox, just cause I'm familiar with it after using it for ages, plus its open and free :) Eventually, I may look into VMWare as well.
After a bit of messing around, got it installed. Since the system is based off of Debian, was easy to get VirtualBox itself there (deb package). The trickiest part was getting the kernel modules required installed (see end of post).
In the end, I've got Windows 2003 R2 running on my Pro, interacting with it via RDP, and I am happy with the performance. I've added an extra 1GB memory (for a total of 2GB). I assigned 1GB of ram to my virtual OS, which still leaves the default configuration of 1GB for the NAS itself (which is more than enough still, 800MB+ is always cached).
I made a 10GB virtual disk to install the OS on. If I need more space later for extra applications, I can just add another virtual drive to that installation. And since I always like a bit extra security, I went a bit beyond the usual, and also have TrueCrypt running full disk encryption in the virtual OS. So no one can even boot and read the data in that OS without my bootup password.
I don't really have any screenshots to show, just a standard Windows installation. Here is a few of the steps I used while creating the VM on the console:
VirtualBox 3.1 has changed the CLI configuration. Until I update this how-to, please reference this: http://www.uhleeka.com/blog/2009/12/vir ... 9-04-host/
# Creating the Virtual Machine.
$ VBoxManage createvm -name "Windows2003" -register
$ VBoxManage modifyvm "Windows2003" -memory "1024MB" -acpi on -boot1 dvd -nic1 nat
$ VBoxManage createvdi -filename "/c/backup/VirtualBox/Windows2003.vdi" -size 10000 -register
$ VBoxManage modifyvm "Windows2003" -hda "/c/backup/VirtualBox/Windows2003.vdi"
$ VBoxManage registerimage dvd /c/backup/VirtualBox/Windows2003Ent.iso
$ VBoxManage modifyvm "Windows2003" -dvd /c/backup/VirtualBox/Windows2003Ent.iso
$ VBoxHeadless -startvm "Windows2003" &
# Connected via Remote Desktop at this point.
# After the installation, first page requires Ctrl-Alt-Del, so I sent the keycodes.
$ VBoxManage controlvm "Windows2003" keyboardputscancode 1d 38 53
# System is up and running, time to install GuestAdditions for better video, etc.
$ wget http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/2.2.2/VBoxGuestAdditions_2.2.2.iso
$ VBoxManage registerimage dvd /c/backup/VirtualBox/VBoxGuestAdditions_2.2.2.iso
$ VBoxManage controlvm "Windows2003" dvdattach /c/backup/VirtualBox/VBoxGuestAdditions_2.2.2.iso
With the OS booted up and just sitting at the desktop, top reports:
top - 16:17:10 up 1 day, 17:58, 1 user, load average: 0.00, 0.01, 0.00
Tasks: 93 total, 1 running, 92 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu(s): 0.7%us, 0.2%sy, 0.0%ni, 99.2%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st
Mem: 2072432k total, 2020100k used, 52332k free, 6120k buffers
Swap: 1048536k total, 144k used, 1048392k free, 784620k cached
PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
10297 root 20 0 1104m 1.0g 4720 S 4 52.5 57:31.53 VBoxHeadless
12792 root 20 0 46092 9520 1720 S 1 0.5 59:54.51 motion
12196 root 20 0 9196 7688 980 S 0 0.4 0:57.72 wastesrv
1 root 20 0 1948 600 508 S 0 0.0 0:01.30 init
Ad-hoc installation of VirtualBox. Should work for RAIDiator 4.2.4. Download links for the kernel modules, for those who don't want to go through the mess of compiling them.
$ mkdir /lib/modules/`uname -r`/miscOr, if you want to compile the kernel modules yourself:
$ cd /lib/modules/`uname -r`/misc
$ wget http://www.readynas.com/contributed/chirpa/modules/virtualbox/pro/vboxdrv.ko
$ wget http://www.readynas.com/contributed/chirpa/modules/virtualbox/pro/vboxnetflt.ko
$ echo "deb http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian etch non-free" >> /etc/apt/sources.list
$ wget -q http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian/sun_vbox.asc -O- | apt-key add -
$ apt-get update
$ apt-get install virtualbox-2.1
$ /etc/init.d/vboxdrv start
envyious:/c/backup# echo "deb http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian etch non-free" >> /etc/apt/sources.listInstall of VirtualBox 2.2.2, before Sun updates the Debian Repository...
envyious:/c/backup# wget -q http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian/sun_vbox.asc -O- | apt-key add -
envyious:/c/backup# apt-get update && apt-get install build-essential
...
Setting up build-essential (11.3) ...
envyious:/c/backup# wget -q http://www.readynas.com/download/GPL/RNDP6xxx_4.2.4_WW_src.zip
envyious:/c/backup# unzip -q RNDP6xxx_4.2.4_WW_src.zip -d ./GPL
envyious:/c/backup# cd GPL/linux-x86-2.6/
envyious:/c/backup/GPL/linux-x86-2.6# make && make prepare
...
envyious:/c/backup/GPL/linux-x86-2.6# ln -s /c/backup/GPL/linux-x86-2.6/ /usr/src/linux
envyious:/c/backup/GPL/linux-x86-2.6# KERN_DIR=/usr/src/linux
envyious:/c/backup/GPL/linux-x86-2.6# apt-get install virtualbox-2.1
...
Setting up virtualbox-2.1 (2.1.4-42893_Debian_etch) ...
Adding group `vboxusers' (GID 101) ...
Done.
Messages emitted during module compilation will be logged to /var/log/vbox-install.log.
Success!
Starting VirtualBox kernel module: done.
envyious:/c/backup/GPL/linux-x86-2.6# cd
envyious:/c/backup/GPL/linux-x86-2.6# VBoxManage list vms
VirtualBox Command Line Management Interface Version 2.1.4
(C) 2005-2009 Sun Microsystems, Inc.
All rights reserved.
# wget -q http://www.readynas.com/download/GPL/RNDP6xxx_4.2.4_WW_src.zip
# unzip -q RNDP6xxx_4.2.4_WW_src.zip -d ./GPL
# cd GPL/linux-x86-2.6/
# make && make prepare
# ln -s /c/backup/GPL/linux-x86-2.6/ /usr/src/linux
# export KERN_DIR=/usr/src/linux
# apt-get install libfontconfig1 libglib2.0-0 libice6 libsdl1.2debian libsm6 libx11-6 libxcursor1 libxext6 libxi6 libxmu6 libxrandr2 libxrender1 libxslt1.1 libxt6 python2.4
# wget -q http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/2.2.2/virtualbox-2.2_2.2.2-46594_Debian_etch_i386.deb
# dpkg -i virtualbox-2.2_2.2.2-46594_Debian_etch_i386.deb
Setting up virtualbox-2.2 (2.2.2-46594_Debian_etch) ...
Recompiling VirtualBox kernel module: done.
Starting VirtualBox kernel module: done.
441 Replies
Replies have been turned off for this discussion
chirpa wrote: I should be able to verify this tomorrow, going to be testing some other CPUs in the Pro.
Is this a precaution in case Intel discontinues the CPU currently shipped in the Pro? or just for fun?... Or is there a new more advanced Pro in the works, a bit like the 4200 over the 3200... (that would be great!)?- is there a solution for this?
sauron:~# apt-get update
Get:1 http://download.virtualbox.org etch Release.gpg [197B]
Hit http://download.virtualbox.org etch Release
Ign http://www.readynas.com 4.2.7/ Release.gpg
Ign http://download.virtualbox.org etch/non-free Packages/DiffIndex
Get:2 http://ftp.debian.org etch Release.gpg [1032B]
Hit http://download.virtualbox.org etch/non-free Packages
Ign http://www.readynas.com 4.2.7/ Release
Hit http://ftp.debian.org etch Release
Ign http://www.readynas.com 4.2.7/ Packages/DiffIndex
Ign http://ftp.debian.org etch/main Packages/DiffIndex
Hit http://www.readynas.com 4.2.7/ Packages
Hit http://ftp.debian.org etch/main Packages
Fetched 2B in 1s (1B/s)
Reading package lists... Done
sauron:~# apt-get install virtualbox-3.1
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Recommended packages:
libpulse0 libsdl-ttf2.0-0 linux-headers libhal1 pdf-viewer python-central
The following NEW packages will be installed:
virtualbox-3.1
0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 24 not upgraded.
Need to get 51.8MB of archives.
After unpacking 104MB of additional disk space will be used.
Err http://download.virtualbox.org etch/non-free virtualbox-3.1 3.1.4-57640_Debi an_etch
302 Moved Temporarily
Failed to fetch http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian/pool/non-free/v /virtualbox-3.1/virtualbox-3.1_3.1.4-57640_Debian_etch_i386.deb 302 Moved Tempo rarily
E: Unable to fetch some archives, maybe run apt-get update or try with --fix-mis sing?
sauron:~#
Also, is it safe to run apt-get upgrade? when I tried on the original install (before I defaulted to get x-raid2 dr) it said something about mysql server errors. TeknoJnky wrote: is there a solution for this? sauron:~# apt-get update
Get:1 http://download.virtualbox.org etch Release.gpg [197B]
Hit http://download.virtualbox.org etch Release
Ign http://www.readynas.com 4.2.7/ Release.gpg
Ign http://download.virtualbox.org etch/non-free Packages/DiffIndex
Get:2 http://ftp.debian.org etch Release.gpg [1032B]
Hit http://download.virtualbox.org etch/non-free Packages
Ign http://www.readynas.com 4.2.7/ Release
Hit http://ftp.debian.org etch Release
Ign http://www.readynas.com 4.2.7/ Packages/DiffIndex
Ign http://ftp.debian.org etch/main Packages/DiffIndex
Hit http://www.readynas.com 4.2.7/ Packages
Hit http://ftp.debian.org etch/main Packages
Fetched 2B in 1s (1B/s)
Reading package lists... Done
sauron:~# apt-get install virtualbox-3.1
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Recommended packages:
libpulse0 libsdl-ttf2.0-0 linux-headers libhal1 pdf-viewer python-central
The following NEW packages will be installed:
virtualbox-3.1
0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 24 not upgraded.
Need to get 51.8MB of archives.
After unpacking 104MB of additional disk space will be used.
Err http://download.virtualbox.org etch/non-free virtualbox-3.1 3.1.4-57640_Debi an_etch
302 Moved Temporarily
Failed to fetch http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian/pool/non-free/v /virtualbox-3.1/virtualbox-3.1_3.1.4-57640_Debian_etch_i386.deb 302 Moved Tempo rarily
E: Unable to fetch some archives, maybe run apt-get update or try with --fix-mis sing?
sauron:~#
Also, is it safe to run apt-get upgrade? when I tried on the original install (before I defaulted to get x-raid2 dr) it said something about mysql server errors.
no do not do an apt-get upgrade
Confirmed, the BIOS has VT-x enabled by default.chirpa wrote:
I should be able to verify this tomorrow, going to be testing some other CPUs in the Pro.MikeMcr wrote: Does this mean VT-x support is enabled by default in the ReadyNAS BIOS (which we don't have access to)? I know with some motherboards you actually have to enable it when swapping in a compatible CPU. - Yeehaw! I got it running on my box, too!
nas:~# VBoxManage list hostinfo
Sun VirtualBox Command Line Management Interface Version 3.1.6
(C) 2005-2010 Sun Microsystems, Inc.
All rights reserved.
Host Information:
Host time: 2010-04-01T21:44:19.030000000Z
Processor online count: 2
Processor count: 2
Processor#0 speed: 2394 MHz
Processor#0 description: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU 6600 @ 2.40GHz
Processor#1 speed: 2394 MHz
Processor#1 description: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU 6600 @ 2.40GHz
Memory size: 3942 MByte
Memory available: 3569 MByte
Operating system: Linux
Operating system version: 2.6.30.9.RNx86_64.2.2 - Now I need to get a faster CPU in mine heh, 1.8Ghz isn't fast enough.
chirpa wrote: Now I need to get a faster CPU in mine heh, 1.8Ghz isn't fast enough.
Just don't break a stupid CPU mounting screw. :neener: hehehe *forehead slap*
I was impressed how fast Server 2008 R2 installed. It was lightning quick - probably helped that the ISO was on the array vs a single disk. Woo 64bit VMs!- When I try to install VBox 3.1.6 with GPL 4.2.11t6, I've this message :
Please install the build and header files for your current Linux kernel.
The current kernel version is 2.6.33.2.RNx86_64.2.1
any idea? - I'll get a Pro up and running with T6 and try and post an updated 'how to' shortly.
- before my previous message, I've this one :
gcc: arch/x86/boot/compressed/piggy.S: No such file or directory
gcc: no input files
make[2]: *** [arch/x86/boot/compressed/piggy.o] Error 1
make[1]: *** [arch/x86/boot/compressed/vmlinux] Error 2
make: *** [bzImage] Error 2
regards
Laurent
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