I've been busy installing a linux cluster for a university. Sorry for the late ping.
Posted on 07/23/2008 5:54:47 AM PDT by twntaipan
Oooooh, one year of difference. Except that it's not. Windows XP SP2 is not from 2001. It's from April 2008.
Hey you’re the one claiming to be MS free for 10 years. Not my fault you don’t actually mean it.
I don't buy Microsoft products. I have access to them through my job, just like any IT person in a sysadmin role would. But I don't buy them, I don't personally use them and I won't recommend them.
ANY device that is not recognized will pop up the New Hardware wizard. That’s what the wizard is for, if XP recognizes it
There you go with your assumptions again. Apparently, XP won't even recognize it.
And that’s why we don’t do hardware testing on virtual machines
I only used the virtual machine as an additional reference to the article (where real hardware was used) and to numerous web forums where users (using real hardware) registered complaints just like his.
Linux Mint - 2008
Windows XP Service Pack 3 - 2008
Windows service packs have never included drivers as standard issue. They might have new drivers and you can get them through the update site but they’re not in the SP unless the shipping drivers actually cause crashes, and that would only be a replacement not adding new. And there’s a good reason for that, people already whine the SPs are too big, how much bigger would they get if they added a bunch of possibly not needed drivers.
Windows XP drivers, regardless of SP - 2001
Not an assumption EXPERIENCE. If XP can see it, and it can’t automatically install drivers for it, and it hasn’t been told to ignore the fact that it doesn’t know what it is, then there will ALWAYS be a New Hardware wizard. 100% of the time ZERO exceptions. That’s what the New Hardware wizard is for ALL hardware that it can’t recognize.
Now if it can’t see it, like with your virtual machine, that’s a completely different situation. It can’t fail to recognize what it can’t see.
Gee, someone needs to tell Microsoft that. They seem to be under the impression that there are drivers on the SP CD.
On the other hand, they seem to like to delete drivers during the SP install, so that could be the cause of the article writer's problems.
Although, why Microsoft would just quietly delete the network driver for a widely used network card without warning the user is beyond me.
Now if it can’t see it, like with your virtual machine, that’s a completely different situation. It can’t fail to recognize what it can’t see.
No it's not. Windows has no idea whether it's running on real hardware or virtual hardware. The hardware is presented exactly the same.
It can’t fail to recognize what it can’t see.
Well, that part is true enough. Of course, it happens with real hardware too, just like it did to the writer of the article.
Bother to read the next sentence? Guess not.
Didn’t bother to actually read the article you linked to huh. It’s all about getting the OS to see the hardware. Like I said, if it can’t see it it can’t not recognize it.
Windows doesn’t know if it’s running virtual or real. But depending on your virtualization that’s going to keep a lot of hardware away from it. I work everyday with faxboards that Windows cannot see in any virtual environment, tried them all and none of them pass the existence of those boards through to a virtual Windows.
The faxboard issue is well documented on the VMWare and VirtualBox forums. Basically, it's not really a modem, it's a winmodem and the expects the host OS to provide most of the processing power. The guest OS tries to load it up and starts contention with the host OS.
Network adapters are not the same. To my knowledge there are no Windows network cards. They all work the same, thus they are presented to a real OS and a guest OS exactly the same.
If one OS can't see the hardware, but another OS can, then it's the OS that's the problem.
Nope it’s not a winmodem, and the faxboards I’m working with provide most of their own processing power, heck some of them even have cooling fans. Problem is the virtual software doesn’t actually pass all hardware through to the virtualized OS.
Never ever under any circumstances test hardware in virtual and think the test has even the slightest meaning. Simple rule, virtualization makes hardware access just different enough to completely invalidate the testing.
I've been busy installing a linux cluster for a university. Sorry for the late ping.
Cool. I've got a script running around here somewhere that allows me to multi-boot many different Live CD's off of one DVD. The disc boots up to GRUB, and you just choose which distro you want--boom--and it boots up.
I've installed up to 15 Live CD versions on one disc before.
There is a great deal of similarity in how the hardware is presented to the OS. The driver interfaces with the hardware at a very low level. This precludes accessing it from the guest OS since you can't have two operating systems accessing the hardware at the same time.
Never ever under any circumstances test hardware in virtual and think the test has even the slightest meaning.
Somewhat true. It depends on the hardware. Though I agree that testing using a virtual machine isn't sufficient.
For proper hardware testing, a real OS is required. Virtual machine access can identify other problems where the state of the real hardware is not properly passed to the guest OS, such as with the faxboards. Some USB devices have a similar problem.
However, Ethernet is a known quantity. The virtual Intel EtherPro passed to a guest OS is identical to a real Intel card as far as the guest OS is concerned. This makes it a good candidate for certain kinds of testing.
When I was considering replacing some older gigabit cards with new Intel cards I tested setting up VLANs and jumbo frames on the virtual cards first to determine proper syntax of the startup commands.
When I installed real cards with a real OS, the hardware probing results were identical.
Sweet!
Share?
:)
Even when the root OS isn’t doing anything with the hardware, even when the root OS doesn’t have the drivers installed so it CAN’T do anything with the hardware, it doesn’t get passed through to the virtual. The virtual never finds out they exist.
Nope always true. One of the first rules of testing: anything that sometimes invalidates the test ALWAYS invalidates the test. Is there hardware that works identically under virtual? Of course. But for the testing to be valid you have to prove that the hardware you’re working with does, which means you have to do at least one identical pass under virtual and real and get 100% identical results. Of course if you’re going to be doing real machine testing anyway there’s not much reason to do virtual.
There you go again assuming the hardware is identical to the function. Ethernet is a known quantity, Dell’s specific implementation of ethernet is NOT.
I’m Linux illiterate, and I’ve been getting by beautifully with Kubuntu for 3 years. Anything I have a question about, I head to a forum to look for the answer. I always come out having learned something new.
sono,
when is the last time you used linux and which distro? many of them now are as intuitive as XP
To broad a question...
After all if I said ‘is Unix for the masses?’ the first answer would be no way... but then you look at OS-X and its pretty clear some Unix is for the masses and some is not..
Linux is not all that dissimilar, I would not push some of the more tachie driven Linux distributions (like Damn Small Linux) on the masses but Ubuntu is as easy to use as windows..
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