Setting up a VM to run XP in an up-to-date F12 box?

[Bill Davidsen]

Greg Woods wrote:
> On Sat, 2009-11-28 at 06:49 -0800, Mike Cloaked wrote:
> 
>> Interesting replies - thank you - but noticeable that the fedora provided
>> facility of kvm has been mentioned by no-one!
> 
> In my opinion, kvm is not quite ready for prime time. First of all, it
> doesn't work at all unless your system has hardware virtualization
> support, in both the BIOS and the CPU. When it does work, it's a little
> rough around the edges. I frequently get Python stack dumps when I try
> to do things like shut down a VM. 
> 
Just to clarify, are you talking about KVM or how it behaves with a layer of 
libvirt added? I have been running this desktop in KVM from command line since 
FC4, when RH8 because a security issue even with strong firewalling. I have 
production FC10 desktops, and web, dns, and mail servers running in VMs, backed 
on CentOS-5.3.

To the extent that ever do anything with Windows, I have both XP and Win7 VMs 
that boot and do browsing and run a few tests. For security I run them off a 
shadow of a naked install, so I can delete the shadow to prevent infection.

I wouldn't hesitate to run production stuff under KVM, but my solid experience 
has all being run from CLI, I developed scripts long before libvirt was written. 
Actually before KVM was in the official kernel, as I recall, it was a patch for 
a while.

> That said, I do use it on a couple of Dell systems with Core Duo
> processors, one desktop at work and one laptop and it works well enough
> for my needs. But I would never try to use it in a production
> environment. At work, we use Xen under CentOS 5 and RHEL 5, and at home
> on a Pentium 4 system without the necessary hardware virtualization, I
> am a happy VirtualBox user.
> 
> One thing I have never been able to do under any VM system is to sync my
> Palm Pilot via an XP VM. It sees the USB device but it never gets a
> connection. This works fine with a native XP boot. Syncing the Palm to
> Evolution works OK but it lacks the conduits to sync to the proprietary
> calendaring system at work so I'm stuck with Windoze for that.
> 
I have not tried direct access to USB other than as a test, and it worked for 
that small task, driving a printer. There may well be evil lurking here.

-- 
Bill Davidsen <davidsen at tmr.com>
   "We have more to fear from the bungling of the incompetent than from
the machinations of the wicked."  - from Slashdot