337 replies to this topic

[SJ_UnderWater]

Because of the myriad formatting issues, and the problems they are causing users this solution has been moved to Tutorials. Please download the files there, making sure to only unzip them, they were zipped to get around the file restrictions here.

(WHSv1)

[Demoman]

Looks very promising.....possible enough for me to hold out on trying to get linux running on my EX490....

[SJ_UnderWater]

demo, if you could do some performance testing for me, that would be great. there are some experimental options that can increase the speed slightly, but at the cost of reliability (using "cnidscheme:cdb" in AppleVolumes.default, for instance). Since nearly everyone will be using this solution exclusively for backups I chose the most robust configuration. On my small Atom machine i clocked about 2MiB/s, I'm sure you'll have a better go.

[Demoman]

Can do

That toporesize link is broken BTW

[Peter ter Haar]

Errormessage: CoLinux can not run on x64
...

[Demoman]

coLinux doesn't run on 64bit windows yet...so we should note that this is for 32bit windows machines only at this stage.

[SJ_UnderWater]

im working on getting ArchLinux working on QEMU for Windows, which is 32/64bit, but should only be used on machines that support hardware virtualization (Intel's VT-x). There are so few virtualization options that I'm trying to make sure they're efficient before I recommend them. coLinux is definitely the fastest I've seen.

--edit
i forgot to mention that most other vm solutions require the TAP option with bridging, meaning network bridging has to be manually reinstalled on the WHS (it's uninstalled by default), they dont use winpcap like colinux

[elangsru]

you seem like smart guys. Can you make an add-in for us beginners?

[SJ_UnderWater]

i don't think it's possible because you're basically setting up a second operating system. I don't think it's even possible to script coLinux itself. The only real possibility would be setting up a finished archlinux image that users could download, but the size would be pretty huge. I'll think about it when I finish QEMU for WHS 2011

[Demoman]

I can confirm that this does work....to a point...

The time machine does show in lion, no mods required, and can connect, however in my case, after writing about 200-400mb, it stops, and then gives a "disk unmounted" error.

From what I can tell, it's like the VM is hard locking....I can't login, can't type anything on the console...

Looks like its usb hdd timemachine for the time being for me......

[skoal74]

I can confirm that this does work....to a point...

The time machine does show in lion, no mods required, and can connect, however in my case, after writing about 200-400mb, it stops, and then gives a "disk unmounted" error.

From what I can tell, it's like the VM is hard locking....I can't login, can't type anything on the console...

Looks like its usb hdd timemachine for the time being for me......

Has anyone gotten this to work and complete a TM backup? Still running 10.6.8 although since I upgraded from 10.6.7 to 10.6.8, I've had nothing but problems with Time Machine. Hoping AFP would solve that. Was hoping to use AFP and then upgrade to Lion.

No experience with Linux, but I'm willing to adventure a bit (my Mac is really a Hackintosh) and the instructions look pretty clear, but don't want to invest the time if this really doesn't work reliably.

[SJ_UnderWater]

demo and I are working out a few edge cases, but we haven't decided the final resting place of the backups folder. The original choice, an unshared folder in D:\shares, didn't turn out so well since that whole folder is indexed for search. I've put the question out to a few experts and they'll get back to me, but the actual file transfer and backup works fine. You don't need TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes, or to manually create an image, and it works smoothly. I'm also making a few small changes to the script for simplicity/speed.

[skoal74]

demo and I are working out a few edge cases, but we haven't decided the final resting place of the backups folder. The original choice, an unshared folder in D:\shares, didn't turn out so well since that whole folder is indexed for search. I've put the question out to a few experts and they'll get back to me, but the actual file transfer and backup works fine. You don't need TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes, or to manually create an image, and it works smoothly. I'm also making a few small changes to the script for simplicity/speed.

Awesome. Looks like this might tax my HP EX-490 celeron cpu running a virtualized os layer. Good excuse to upgrade to E7500 or something + memory upgrade. Keep us posted on your good work.

[SJ_UnderWater]

it probably will tax a celeron, but the RAM usage is only about 9MiB

[Fercho_2006]

Hi everyone, I'm trying this for the second time, but always get stuck at step 8.. After the last command the script runs but says:

Generating locales....
en_US.UTF-8... done
Generation complete.

And just stays there.. Nothing more.. Not asking for password or anything else..

Any idea of what the problem could be?

thanks in advance!

[SJ_UnderWater]

ive made a minor change to the script, but my first impression is that your vm doesn't have an internet connection. when you say it does nothing, do you mean it returns to the prompt? if it _does_ return to the prompt, it exited because of an error (like no internet connection). if it _doesn't_ return to the prompt, it's still working on something. I suggest you open the WHS's task manager (right-click the taskbar) and watch the CPU usage.

[Fercho_2006]

Thanks for the fast reply! It goes back to the prompt.. However, I do have internet connection as I can surf the web using firefox on the WHS.

I think it will help to troubleshoot if I write down in bold what I've done in each step:

• Login to the WHS. I used remote desktop connection from my macbook pro.

• Download coLinux, and install it to C:\coLinux (only FLTK, NDIS, and Root Filesystem are necessary), choosing ArchLinux when prompted. Download the coLinux on my mac, copied it to the WHS, installed it on C:\coLinux as instructed. Archlinux downloads just fine.
• Download and expand the 64MB swap file, and toporesize. Make sure the ArchLinux image (.fs) is named "arch.fs", the swap file is named "arch.swap", and both are in C:\coLinux. You may unzip toporesize to a subdirectory. Downloaded the swap file and toporesize on the mac. Extracted both using the unarchiver and named them according to instructions. Once extracted, I add the extension .swap to the swap file. Move both files to the WHS and to the coLinux folder. Copied the ArchLinux.7z from the coLinux folder to the mac in order to extract it using the unarchiver. Copied it back and named arch.fs.
• Save both scripts below (fixarch.sh, colinux.bat) and the netatalk package to C:\coLinux. Using notepad, pasted the scripts and saved them using the corresponding extensions. Downloaded the netatalk package and moved it as is to the coLinux folder.
• Run toporesize from "toporesize.bat", choose find file and navigate to arch.fs, and resize to 384MiB or greater (the finished distribution is ~278MiB but needs more in between). Done exactly this, resized to about 540.
• With all of the files in place, create a shortcut to colinux-daemon.exe, and change it to the shortcut below. Done this, no problem here.
• Run the shortcut you created. ArchLinux will start, but in an unfinished state. Archlinux runs, all fine.
• Run each of the following commands (separated by semicolons): root; mount /mnt/win; cat /mnt/win/coLinux/fixarch.sh | tr -d "\r" >/tmp/fixarch.sh; chmod u+x /tmp/fixarch.sh; /tmp/fixarch.sh Run every single command, but like I explained in the previous command, it returns to the prompt.

Thanks for the help!

[SJ_UnderWater]

have you tried the modified script yet?

[Fercho_2006]

Just tried it with the new script.. It gives me an error saying "no internet connection!"

I can confirm I do have internet connection as like I said i'm connecting to the web using firefox.

However, could it be that the problem is with how I have configured my network adapters? I'm using a 680i motherboard with two network adapters that are teamed up (NIC teaming) in order to provide a 2gbps connection. The connection that i'm using is Local Area Connection 4.

Just to try, I changed the shortcut to reflect the Local Area Connection 4 but with no success..

Any recommendations?

[SJ_UnderWater]

i don't know that NDIS supports bonding, but since you changed the shortcut to "Local Area Connection 4" (what are the other 3?) and it still didn't work, you could try deleting the arch.fs image and try again, but I don't know that that will fix anything, coLinux is prepared to support different configurations at each boot.

You could try the other semi-fast connection option WinPCAP (install first!) with the following code:

eth0=pcap-bridge,"Local Area Connection 4"

for reference the speeds are:
NDIS > WinPCAP > TUNTAP > SLIRP