Drive hacks (Was:Re: [Pc_Support] Re: VMware pre-made virtual guests)

[Bryan J. Smith]

Carter Manucy <carter at carter.cc> wrote:
> What if you don't bind TCP/IP to the host?  I do this routinely... 
> either that, or just give the host some kind of bogus IP on the
> NIC, then let the guest actually assign the 'correct' IP. 

First off, you don't have to bind TCP/IP on the host so the guest can
use it?  If that is the case, great!  I guess that makes sense --
just never put it together.

Secondly, even if TCP/IP isn't bound, the Ethernet link is up.  That
still bothers me, but I guess since Linux doesn't do bridging by
default, it's tolerable.

I'm going to be running CentOS, so I'll get updates for a long time. 
The guest OSes can be Fedora Core or something more fast-moving.

> Obviously if you don't have individual cards for the different
> interface or if you're not able to VLANs,

VLANs?  Is that the proper term?  I don't think so.  ;->

With that said, what mode should the NIC be in?  Bridged to host I
assume so it has full layer-2 control?

> this could be a bigger issue... but I don't think there's really
> anything you can do if the host isn't bound to the same NIC.

Right.  That's what I don't like.

I was hoping there was a way to directly use hardware -- kinda like
VMWare does allow a hard disk slice -- but I guess that's still not
the same.

> I've yet to see even a hint of someone being able to break out
> of a VM... and although VMWare is no IBM, the IBM "VM's" on 
> their AS/400's have been around for a long, long time, with
> nary a worry  (so far as I know) about being able to break out
> of one VM and either get to the host or get to another VM.
> As a side note, in ESX, you get your own Layer-2 virtual switch
> 'built in' to the OS that handles all of the traffic.

Right, because the host OS is VMWare's Linux-based OS.
Yes, I know, I've deployed it.

Just not too familiar with VMWare Server until it became free.


-- 
Bryan J. Smith   Professional, Technical Annoyance
b.j.smith at ieee.org    http://thebs413.blogspot.com
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