[PLUG] help for setup of virtual machine

[Pranav Peshwe]

On Wed, Aug 19, 2009 at 8:24 PM, Aditya Godbole <aag.lists at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sat, Aug 15, 2009 at 8:34 PM, mihir tailor<tailor.mihir at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > Hi PLUG members !
> > One of my friends has recently started classes for teaching C.
> > He has a pretty decent rig and now he wants to use that pc
> > for setting up a lab for his students to practice C programs on.
> > he is on a very tight budget and cannot afford to setup multiple pcs, so
> > he know wants to know whether he can use Virtualization on fedora 11
> > and setup multiple systems using KVM.
> >
> > His Configuration is as follows :
> > AMD Athlon 64 x2 64 bit Dual Core Processor @ 2.6 GHz
> > 2.00 Gb RAM (1.87 Gb usable due to onboard graphics card.)
> > 160Gb Sata Hdd + 80 Gb Pata Hdd.
>
> Here is an option:
> 1. Get hold of some scrapped (old) machines. 16 MB ram would be more
> than sufficient.
> 2. Install Debian Woody, or some old slackware or RH 7.1.
> 3. Connect them via ethernet to his AMD athlon machine.


I agree with Aditya.

Is your friend sure he needs virtualization ? If all that his students want
to do is to develop C programs then, virtualization might be an overkill. In
fact, using virtualization for this task defeats the whole purpose of using
a multi-user system like Linux!
Instead of virtualization, create accounts for the students on the AMD box
and, let them work on it remotely using (almost) dumb terminals as already
suggested.


> 4. Access using SSH or telnet. With 2 GB, he should be able to support
> quite a few ssh+vim+gcc+gdb connections.
>

True. Also, the number would definitely be much more than the number of VMs
that can be run. Would at least be twice as much, I conservatively guess.

CMIIW...

- P
http://pranavsbrain.peshwe.com