2007-06-21
Linux Boots!
What was that, Satan? You want another log for the fire? No! Bad Satan, bad! No more logs for you, I don’t care how cold it is.
EDIT: Oh, it’s not as bad as I feared. Hell hasn’t frozen over, Linux is still a pain in the backside.
Now it appears that VMWare Server won’t run on Ubuntu unless you install the kernel headers, patch the “VMMon” file (whatever that is) part-way through the installation process, recompile things, edit a load of config files in a text editor, then run a few (seemingly non-existent) Perl scripts.
That’s the Linux I’m used to - completely arse-about-face way of doing everything. And yet no-one can see a problem with this. I need to uninstall VMWare to re-install it again so that I can do all of the manual stuff. Except I’ve got better things to do. So long, VMWare. Let’s give Parallels a go instead.
EDIT EDIT: And Parallels is not much better. Steps so far:
- Download DEB file
- Run DEB file
- Run Parallels - complains libqt3-mt is missing
- Look around for solution on internet
- Install libqt3-mt with Synaptic
- Run Parallels - complains parallels-config has not been run
- Run parallels-config - complains about unexpected operators and tells me to check the installation log
- Installation log complains that it can’t find /bin/sh
- Look around for solution on internet
- Discover that Ubuntu doesn’t have “sh” set up as an alias for “bash”; edit three config files (“/usr/lib/parallels/autostart/drivers_start”, “/usr/lib/parallels/autostart/drivers_stop” and “/usr/bin/parallels-config”), changing the first line to “#!/bin/bash”
- Run parallels-config - complains that it cannot compile or install link drivers and tells me to check the installation log
- Looks like “sh” is called somewhere else in the make script that “parallels-config” is running
Search on the internet and come up with a solution to make a symlink to sh (I think that’s what it does):
sudo mv /bin/sh /bin/sh.bak sudo ln -s /bin/bash /bin/sh sudo parallels-config
Run parallels-config again; discover that it now wants prlnet.o
Find that I need to install “compat-libstdc++”, which doesn’t exist in any of the Ubuntu repositories
Find another kernel to install, which I’m now about to do.
What are the chances of this working? Zero, probably. This might be the last time I use Firefox in Ubuntu 7.04… Just for the purposes of comparison, here’s the installation method for getting Parallels running on a MacBook:
- Download Parallels;
- Run installer.
EDIT EDIT EDIT: It wasn’t a new kernel (despite being billed as such), it was a new build of Parallels. And - shock - it works! Windows XP is now installing under Parallels in Ubuntu. If I couldn’t see it with my own eyes I’d never have thought it possible. Well, obviously I’d have thought it possible yesterday; that’s why I’m in this mess in the first place. An hour or so ago, though, when I was fighting with VMWare; that’s different.