VM too [Re: [Live-demo] 5.0 Beta1 logs up]

[Alex Mandel]

On 07/17/2011 09:53 PM, maplabs at light42.com wrote:
> ...
>   I havent tried KVM - I can tell you that as a VirtualBox user on
> Linux, this current setup is working very well for me. 
> Why change?
> 
>   On another note, its doesnt make sense to me to wait an additional day
> for a VM build, afte rthe DVD run is finished.
>   Lastly, and as always, I appreciate Alex's work as build master, and
> basically, things look good for the countdown
> 
>   best regards 
> 
> ==
> Brian Hamlin
> GeoCal 
> OSGEo California Chapter
> 4150717-4462 cell

The current builds are actually VMware not VirtualBox (VirtualBox is
much trickier on a headless server). KVM is what I use on my other
servers and is what will also be on all my new servers in the near
future. It doesn't matter to the end users at all since the question
here is do we continue to use the vmdk (Vmware) format or switch to vdi
(VirtualBox) format. KVM reads and writes all of them, the problem comes
about when trying to shrink the disc images.

Essentially unless I keep an old server around just for running vmware
shrink tools (because vmware doesn't run on newer Ubuntu) then I have to
switch to the Vbox tools which only work on vdi. I could still release
as vmdk but that seems like an extra step to convert after shrinking the
vdi. We're talking about an extra 1 GB+ on the compressed 7z and 3-4 GB
of the uncompressed image file. So it's an important step that shouldn't
be skipped.

Were you expecting a DVD with the Beta run? or are you talking about the
final release.

The VM builds are much smaller downloads in the end and make up between
10-30% of all downloads (rough guess while I work on ways to get more
exact numbers). Also happens to be the way I most commonly use the
product in a GIS lab of 32 computers.

Thanks,
Alex