Sandbox time
The spillover from work to play means that I’m busily trying virtual computers this evening. In better economic times, a real beige box could be allocated to “research and development”, but this time around free rules. I’ve emulated airplanes and powerful locomotives. I’ve played in Colossal Caves. That’s entertainment in geek terms. Now it’s time to pretend that I can afford the kind of computing power we only used to dream about. Thanks to the friendly folks over at VMWare, the world is my (slimefree) oyster.
About a year ago, while awaiting the shipment of our XO from OLPC, I downloaded the free VMWare Player and gave myself a chance to try Sugar long before my box arrived. The Player was eminently suited to running appliance packages, and there was no need to learn about the world of virtual servers. However, my office has invested heavily in new blade servers and virtual machines, so it’s time to get on board. When the offer of a free copy of Server 2.0 came in, I was ready to try my hand.
After completing the usual customer screen (I hate to think how many people know my name and email address and just don’t care enough to get in touch), I was provided with a free licence key and a link to the download. This one runs about 550 MB, which means forget dialup. I have forgotten dialup… My first install effort went nowhere; the web interface simply died. After a helpful hint from another tech in the office, I created an “exception for the certificate” in Firefox and suddenly my sandbox had sand. Until I decided to change the “FQDN” of my machine and everything went away.
A reinstall has my server console purring along nicely. I’ve not tried to install anything from scratch, but there is an older version of the XO available, as well as the skeleton of a M*c. No mouse on that one, and methinks that is too painful to endure. I’ve also not found how to get to the web, but that’s half the fun of life in a simulator. Nothing is too self-evident. Geek fun.
