best way to run graphical BT4 from a server

[russo091 at gmail.com (Dmitry Nedospasov)]

On Jul 28, 2009, at 06:12 , Dale Stirling wrote:
> Xen will work for full virtulisation and run Backtrack (haven't  
> tested).

I think this has been a bit understated in the current discussion,  
namely the main advantage of Xen, the paravirtualization. Xen really  
is a server solution where virtualbox is a desktop solution.

What does paravirtualization mean? Well, I run Xen with a not  
noticeable performance hit on my atom subnotebook (Lenovo S10e), where  
virtualbox doesn't run nearly as smoothly.

Unfortunately, at least from my experience, Xen also has a much  
steeper learning curve than virtualbox, which starting with 2.0 really  
is as simple as clicking through some menus. It might help asking  
around in ##xen on freenode when you're starting, the guys there are  
extremely helpful.

I think if you have the time its definately worth trying out Xen  
because its really a great tool, especially since it supports almost  
all hardware supported by the linux kernel, whereas something like  
ESXi limits you much more in terms of hardware.


> Xen delivers it Graphical interface over VNC. though you can set up  
> TLS support for these connections.

Although i have used Xen to install an Ubuntu domU in hvm for example,  
when i moved the hvm to paravirt (since the 9.04 kernel supports it it  
was as simple as changing hvm to pygrub) it broke vnc.

I ended up just setting up vnc on the domu, accepting connections only  
from the localhost, and connecting to it over an ssh tunnel, although  
I'd be curious to here if the guys on the list have a better solution.

This was on Debian Lenny, btw, running the xen-hypervisor and xen  
linux-image from the debian stable repositories. Its too much of a  
hassle for me to compile a custom Xen kernel.

Anyway, just my thoughts, hope it was some good food for thought.

D.
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