[Live-demo] Chat Cameron/FrankW re using OSGeo Blade Server and Windows Installers

[Hamish]

> <FrankW> The telascience blades are generally underpowered to run
> an actual virtual machine if that is what you were thinking.
....
> <CameronShorter> The alternative, might be to have the VM mounted
> as a directory, so that we can access the VM directory for
> synchronisation.
....
> <FrankW> I guess I'm not familiar with how that would work - just
> mounting the iso as a file system?

If you mount an ISO as a filesystem on the server you will probably
want to do it as a normal user. The "mount -t iso9660 -o loop"
method requires you to be root. To mount as a normal user you should
install "fuseiso", then add the user to the "fuse" group and run:
  fuseiso -p file.iso mntpoint.$$

to unmount do:
  fusermount -u mntpoint.$$

(someone on the SAC would need to make sure fuse was installed and
whoever's user account was added to the fuse group)


Note that a ISO9660 is a complete filesystem and as such can not be
modified inline (readonly). To make changes to one you have to unpack
it somewhere (fuseiso mount + cp -r), make your changes, then mkisofs
or eqiv. to pack it back up.

No idea about mounting VM images. but,

[
Alex Mandel wrote:
http://www.jameslittle.me.uk/how-to-mount-vmdk-files-in-linux/
>
> I'll try it out at work tomorrow and see how it goes. Note it requires
> that you have the vmware software to do this and the vm must be off.
>
> This method looks a little more recent and seems compatible with VMware
> and VirtualBox and relies on VirtualBox.
> http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=17574
]


One thing I am concerned about is how to avoid colisions? AFAIK rync/
unison are not really peer-to-peer setups and I can picuture the
situation closer to the deadline when two people are working on the
image at the same time and the binary gets out of sync / corrupted.

As this is not under any sort of revision control I'm not sure how a
manual checkout/checkin status system could be maintained. As long as
it is a small group of people that might happen over email+ lots of
discipline.

so keep daily backups locally, eh?

anyone wishing to edit(rsync) the file will need user-level access
to the host server, it would not be a good idea to leave that open
for any 3rd party on the internet to modify. (again no easy rev.
history to check)

and I guess we only assume rsync won't mind file sizes which push the
limits of 32bit integers, and will keep req'd transfers to a minimum.
oh well, only one way to find out!


> <CameronShorter> We can include a directory of Windows Installers
> on it, or whatever else you suggest.

AFAICT the disk needs a D:\osgeo4w_installers\ (or so) directory off the
root dir -of the disk-.  Depending on how you do it, the root dir a
liveDVD 'may' exist in a compressed subdir of the ISO filesystem, only
viewable once booted -- no good for a combined MS-Windows installer
handout.  when we get to the point of burning DVDs we need to double
check that goes in the right place :)


within that we'd need the main osgeo4w_setup.exe and a pool/ subdir
with all the binary packages. We either need to cut a custom setup.exe
which knows where to look on the disc by default (instead of net downloads),
a wrapper script that sets the local pool dir as a command line option to
the installer (Install_from_disc.bat), or just a well placed README.html
with step by step instructions on how to tell the installer to look on
the disc for the packages instead of the internet.


best,
Hamish