polywogsys

OK... so I am trying to figure out how to get Linux to boot off of a software raid device. Why, you may ask? Because apparently the nVidia Nforce4 Raid (in the BIOS) is half hardware, and half software... which means it'll never really properly work under Linux.
I decided, after trying all night on the actual hardware, to use VMware. The problem is that VMware crashes every time it tries to load Fedora 9... it doesn't just CRASH... it crashes my entire system.
In researching this problem, someone said to someone else "try Virtual Box". I was like good grief, ANOTHER shitty open source virtual machine...
OMG
OMG
This is not only NOT shitty, it's freaking cool!
Virtual Box is supported by Sun, its official name is Sun xVM VirtualBox. I am LOVING it. They have builds for all sorts of distros and kernel version. No more any-any updates for me! I just downloaded virtual box for Fedora 7 x86_64 RPM, and it installed perfectly. I ran the kernel driver setup /etc/init.d/vboxdrv setup, and there were NO errors! I just found my new virtualization environment.
Fedora 9 just booted and I can start to putz around with md raid!

So I found out that a google group has been started (for a while already) where the any-any updates are posted. http://groups.google.com/group/vmkernelnewbies/files I upgraded the Kernel to 2.6.24.3-34.fc8 and it broked vmware, so the vmware-any-any-116 seems to have done the trick (NOT the any-any-116-bridge-wireless).

Three autogenerated Mac Addresses I should reuse even if I rm -rf the VMs are:

ethernet0.addressType = "generated"
ethernet1.addressType = "generated"
ethernet2.addressType = "generated"
ethernet0.generatedAddress = "00:0c:29:6a:0f:ba"
ethernet0.generatedAddressOffset = "0"
ethernet1.generatedAddress = "00:0c:29:6a:0f:c4"
ethernet1.generatedAddressOffset = "10"
ethernet2.generatedAddress = "00:0c:29:6a:0f:ce"
ethernet2.generatedAddressOffset = "20"
ethernet0.addressType = "generated"
ethernet0.generatedAddress = "00:0c:29:a4:af:ca"
ethernet0.generatedAddressOffset = "0"
ethernet0.generatedAddress = "00:0c:29:71:75:81"
ethernet0.generatedAddressOffset = "0"

So I was getting the following errors:

$ vmware
/usr/lib/vmware/bin/vmware: libpng12.so.0: no version information available (required by /usr/lib/libcairo.so.2)
process 22187: Attempt to remove filter function 0xbb9170 user data 0x930b0a0, but no such filter has been added
D-Bus not built with -rdynamic so unable to print a backtrace
/usr/lib/vmware/bin/vmware: /usr/lib/vmware/lib/libpng12.so.0/libpng12.so.0: no version information available (required by /usr/lib/libcairo.so.2)
/usr/lib/vmware/bin/vmware: /usr/lib/vmware/lib/libpng12.so.0/libpng12.so.0: no version information available (required by /usr/lib/libcairo.so.2)
process 22200: Attempt to remove filter function 0xbd3170 user data 0x8ff1750, but no such filter has been added
D-Bus not built with -rdynamic so unable to print a backtrace

Strangely enough, what fixed it was starting haldaemon. Apparently, running vmware with dbus without haldaemon breaks everything. :-\ See http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=251464#p251464

VMware Workstation does not allow the virtual Ethernet adapter to go into promiscuous mode unless the user running VMware Workstation has permission to make that setting.

chmod a+rw /dev/vmnet0

To get VMware VMware workstation 5.5.4 Build 44386 (VMware-workstation-5.5.4-44386.tar.gz) just released on VMware's website, to run on Fedora 7, you will need the vmware-any-any-113 update located at http://knihovny.cvut.cz/ftp/pub/vmware/

I noticed obscure slowness with VMWare when using the NIC in bridged mode, AND talking back to the server (or most other things on the local network)... and here I thought it was samba, because the Internet was blazing.

Because I am using a virtual machine to test, when the windows virtual machine was attempting to talk to its host, the linux box hosting it, there was an option I had to turn on.

http://www.vmware.com/community/message.jspa?messageID=415551

'ethtool -k eth0 tso off'