As Chris will attest, I'm a little slow sometimes.

So I'm JUST now getting around to working w/ the VirtualBox edition of MCNL.

Since my earlier attempts at using it were completely Fubar'd (ok, maybe a laptop wasnt the BEST place to start), I decided I'd wait until I understood a little more about what MCNL had under the hood before I tried again.

Now I am FAR from being even a moderate user, but I have a few questions for anyone who has/is using VirtualBox/VirtualCity.

I have used vmware, but NEVERried anything like what MCNL as me thinking about. I also realize that this thought path will make the whole thing DVD size, and I'm ok w/ that. (or just a BIG usb key)

1) I am reading the DOC's for VBX from the begining and just havent gotten deep enough to find this answer yet. But for space requirements. I tell VBX that out of the 1GB of ram I have I'm devoting 512MB to my guest OS, lets say a laptop spare installation of Win2K, then I need to tell it how much and WHERE the virtual Drive is going to be.
I regards to that, if I say that this guest OS needs 2GB of space.
Am I better off making THAT virtual drive static or dynamic?
If I make it static it "seems" as though I have just upped my MCNL requirements to 2.5GB, is that right? but IT WILL RUN FASTER?

2) Again, lets say I'm using a guest OS of Win2k, with a VERY sparse installation, am I better off/Can I use a Win2K Install disk? Or would I be better off copying an ISO of that install disk to my drive somewhere? AND if I do THAT is THAT going to be rolled into a remaster of MCNL?

As some folks may have read, I have finally succeeded in installing my own MDV spring and using the MCNL tooste to remaster and "roll my own", however I found that in order to remaster the OS I have to UNmount the 280GB second partition that I created out of the rest of my HD. Otherwise my image goes up to 2.5gb and the dvd wont load.

My current remaster is 1.2GB and loads on everything I've plugged it into (no I havent tried a USB stick but I will), and I dont want to endanger the validity of the rest of the system.

I know this is a LOT of simple questions that will probably be answered by TRYING, but with a 15 month old at home, my TRYING time is rather limited.

Thanks to any and all who reply!

j

i too was using VMWare and have recently replaced it by VirtualBox. i am amazed by it's simplicity and speed. it's very easy to create and use a virtual machine and you can change it's configuration at will.

however, one thing i can't do with VB is recording a CDROM, which i did using VMWare Player...

IMHO:

i think it's better to use a win2k ISO image in the HD instead of the actual win2k CD. it runs much faster (at least for me...). and later you can change VB config in order to use your actual host DVD drive.

if you install your virtual win2k in your home partition it will be included in the remaster and the resulting DVD will be huge...

It's not that difficult, and included in the manual:

(replace "win_2000" with the actual guest name). It should work with version 1.4.0, at least.
You just may not be able to burn audioCD's, and flashing a drive firmware. This is because VirtualBox uses an all-virtual CD-ROM device, while VMWare is using a real CD-ROM on a virtual device controller...
VirtualBox is nice, but it still has some limitations. I still prefer/use VMWare, but this may change in the future.
Oh, and if your VMWare does not have silly cairo issues and is forced to use the embedded GTK libraries, then it is both lighter and just a little bit faster than VirtualBox. It's just the VB interface which is much snappier, and creates the placebo impression that the virtual machine is "faster".

ok, I got VBOX up and running.

unfortunately the only thing i KNOW I dud, was uninstall vbox, install the dkms, reboot and re install vbox.

but now I have win2k running just fine.

UNFORTUNATELY the livedd I made says it cant find several files that I KNOW are there, and bombs out.

so nak to that.

I wonder if its because the image is over 2gb????

It's silly, but I NEVER managed to make a successful win2k installation in Virtualbox using NAT networking. The installation would ALWAYS bomb out/reboot and start again at the last stage.
Instead, I could install win2k without networking and add it after finishing the basic installation... go figure.
I never, ever had this problem with windowsXP, nor with windows2000 under VMWare (there using bridged networking).

that is strange. I never even considered the networking thing, it just worked.

of course now i realize i should have gone straight to XP, I thouht 2k would have been dramatically small, but not so much