[K12OSN] colinux/uml, etc?

[Michael Wescott]

les at futuresource.com said:
> Has anyone tried any of the free 'virtual' linux projects along with
> k12ltsp to get a testbed without needing extra machines? VMWare can do
> it but it isn't free and the alternatives have some interesting
> twists. 

An interesting idea. We had a presentation on UML at our last
LUG meeting and it looks like a reasonable way to try various
types of testing. Your message piqued my interest because I
have been playing with VMWare for the past couple of days and
was just thinking about setting up a 1-server, 1- or 2-client
test bed for K12LTSP on a single machine.

The first hurdle would be to compile a kernel with the UML
hooks. The second would be to put together a minimal root
filesystem to run on the kernel. From that you could install
additional rpms. That would work for the server.

I don't see any way to use UML to look at very early server
installation issues or client boot time problems. It won't
emulate PXE or bootp: you always start up a linux kernel under
UML. But there's nothing to stop you from compiling a client
kernel under the UML architecture and booting it on the same
box as your (virtual) server. But there are probably some
problems getting the Xserver to work for client emulation.

-- 
	Mike Wescott
	Wescott_Mike at EMC.COM