Posted on 01/17/2005 12:05:20 PM PST by ShadowAce
We are delirious with joy, or maybe it is just that we've spent too long staring at the screen. . . . Whatever, we just found the coolest hack that you just have to check out!
We're playing with Debian Linux running cooperatively with Windows. Yes, you might go back and re-read that sentence. This fascinating system is called coLinux and it allows the Linux kernel to run as a program or service under Windows 2000 or XP without using a commercial PC virtualization system such as User Mode Linux or VMware.
Specifically, coLinux - a port of the 2.6 kernel - is "special driver software on the host operating system [that executes] the coLinux kernel in a privileged mode [known as ring 0 or supervisor mode]," says coLinux development team leader and project originator Dan Aloni.
Aloni goes on: "By constantly switching the machine's state between the host operating system state and the coLinux kernel state, coLinux is given full control of the physical machine's [Memory Management Unit] (such as paging and protection) in its own specially allocated address space, and is able to act just like a native kernel, achieving almost the same performance and functionality that can be expected from a regular Linux which could have ran on the same machine stand-alone."
To share hardware with the host operating system, coLinux does not access I/O devices directly. Aloni says coLinux "interfaces with emulated devices provided by the coLinux drivers in the host operating system. . . . All real hardware interrupts are transparently forwarded to the host operating system, so this way the host operating system's control of the real hardware is not being disturbed and thus it continues to run smoothly." p> The final crucial point is that, "since coLinux uses the same binary format for user-space executables as native Linux, coLinux can load and run an existing unmodified Linux distribution concurrently with the host operating system."
In other words, coLinux is really Linux and thus becomes a remarkably effective platform for learning how Linux works and for running those cool Linux-only applications under Windows.
You can find coLinux at www.colinux.org. Download the installer from the coLinux project's Sourceforge site, and run the install program.
The installation process is simple, but avoid installing coLinux under the "Program Files" subdirectory (or for that matter any other subdirectory with a long name), otherwise you'll need to know the subdirectory's short name when you get around to configuring the system.
Once you have coLinux installed you'll need a Linux distribution root image - an image of an installed distro that's stored in a file. You can download a distro root image file - we used the Debian version.
The root image files in this library have an extension of bz2, as they are compressed with bzip2. You can decompress these files with bzip2 or TUGZip.
You'll need to create a swap file which you can download as a bzip2 compressed root image - choose a version that is the same size as the amount of RAM you plan to allocate for coLinux to run.
You are now ready to edit the configuration file so that the coLinux loader knows where its disk devices are (really Windows files), which swap device to use (again, it's a Windows file), which kernel to use, how much memory to use (by default it is a miserly 64M bytes), and how networking is set up.
To get networking working you have three choices: You can use network address translation, enable Windows Connection Sharing or set up a bridged network connection. We recommend using the Windows Connection Sharing configuration just to get started.
If you have set up everything right, then open a command window in the coLinux subdirectory and enter the command:
colinux-daemon.exe -c d:\progra1\coLinux\colinux.default.xml
You should see the coLinux system initialize and whatever distribution you selected should load. A window titled "Cooperative Linux Console" should open and the rest of the boot process will be displayed until finally you see "colinux login:" to which the answer - if this is the first time you've run coLinux - should be "root" without a password.
If you know Linux, enjoy. If you don't, then next week we'll delve deeper . . . you can shut down your coLinux with "shutdown -h now."
Recycle is empty. I then hit defrag, but it does its "analysis" first. It stops at 97% analysis. Sign comes up that scan has been cancelled because an error occurred in the file that supposedly no longer exists.
I don't know what to do next.
I used this a long time ago. Its pretty cool but I'd still rather use vmware or Qemu.
ping
It's a full Linux kernel running in memory space of WinXP. It gives to Windows the full set of kernel services Linux provides. I'd guess it can even be restricted to run "almost just linux" with a few Windows services now and then. The disadvantage, of course, may be having already payed for (extremly expensive) Windows and not using it enough.
If well marketed this could mean an increase of development of native (commercial, closed, etc) Linux apps, since they would run in already deployed Windows systems without changes and without emulation.
In any case it looks like a good thing for companies looking to get into the business, even if a bit risky.
And my favorite disto is Ubuntu.
http://www.ubuntulinux.org
I'll have to make sure I write that down if I try this.
bump
Is everything this hard? Or worse?
Thanks for this article SA.
My question to you is: Is this easier for most people than putting a Knoppix CD in and booting to Knoppix?
While the co-Linux exe is a small file you still need the image, which makes this hard for dial up users.
Or am I mistaken?
Yeah - why would you want to run Linux under Windows ? A waste of a good operating system.
Again, in your rush to denigrate Linux, you miss the obvious. That command you complained about is a windows command--not Linux.
No, it's not easier. However the benefits are that you get a larger storage capacity from your hard drive, you get the speed improvement of your hard drive over your CD drive, and it's permanent.
The Knoppix, though, it MUCH easier to start up for the end user for the first time. Once you get past the first time, though, it can just be an icon sitting on your desktop that you can run--without having to reboot.
That is the command recommended to install this version of linux. Without linux, commands of that difficulty are not normally required just to install something.
So where are these linux guys from? Looks like Japan? Great, another foreign competitor that gives what was our Unix away for free.
Is everything this hard? Or worse?
No, you could put that in a shortcut or .bat file.
CoLinux was written by an Israeli student.
You then select which Linux distro you want to run. Note: There are a few things that have to be done to the Linux distro before it can run under CoLinux.
My point is it's in no way helping our software sales here in America. Simply another trojan used to move us over to foreign freeware.
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