[Cialug] thanks and one more question

[Nathan Stien]

On 4/20/07, Aaron Porter <atporter at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 4/20/07, Cooper, Aaron L. <alcooper1 at dmacc.edu> wrote:
> > Thanks for all the help and where can i find information about a using a virtual machine or
> > using user mode linux?  Never used eiather of those before very new to the linux stuff.  I
> > figure i'll get a computer i don't care about hurting and try using another safegaurd so i
> > don't hurt a computer but if i do it won't be a big deal.
>
> I'd ether look into Xen
> (http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/research/srg/netos/xen/readmes/user/user.html)
> or VMWare. The VMWare player is free, and they have disk images for a
> ton of distributions (Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, Slackware):
> http://www.vmware.com/vmtn/appliances/directory/cat/45

Xen and VMWare definitely have their uses, and are very powerful tools.

However, for kernel hacking, I personally like User Mode Linux
(http://user-mode-linux.sourceforge.net/) because I find it the
easiest to work with.  You run a Linux kernel as a normal process
(user mode) underneath your real kernel that runs the system.  Your
user mode kernel then can't do anything to screw your computer up.
The best part is that you can use normal user mode debugging tools
(like good old gdb!) to see what's going on, whereas I've never
figured out how to get that level of introspection under VMWare or
Xen.


-- 
Nathan P. Stien
Consulting Engineer / Software Developer
Embedded Systems Electronics and Software
http://linkedin.com/in/nathanstien
Mobile: 309.241.2581