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Re: UEFI question

From crankypuss <invalid@invalid.invalid>
Newsgroups alt.os.linux
Subject Re: UEFI question
Date 2016-01-02 02:16 -0700
Organization A noiseless patient Spider
Message-ID <n684df$ag6$1@dont-email.me> (permalink)
References (3 earlier) <jf0ilc-fk8.ln1@psd.motzarella.org> <n65q35$51q$1@dont-email.me> <n66osl$16ho$1@saria.nerim.net> <n66tp4$6q5$1@dont-email.me> <slrnn8e1pa.87u.BitTwister@wb.home.test>

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Bit Twister wrote:

> On Fri, 01 Jan 2016 15:17:36 -0700, crankypuss wrote:
>>
>> I could just try a bunch of stuff, but testing it for bootability on
>> 3 different systems makes pure trial-and-error a bit too
>> time-consuming.
> 
> Oh woe is you.

Life is tough. <g>

> If only there was some virtual box thingy where you
> could install/boot several different Operating Systems/releases for
> research/regression/backup/restore/upgrade testing and whatnot.

I tried virtualbox about 3 years ago and I thought it was crap, but a 
lot can change in that length of time, and this XPS13 has more oomph 
than the Acer AOD257 that I was using then.  It might run decently on 
this system, but until I have bootable backups that boot on all my 
systems, I'm not going to install a bunch of stuff like virtualbox, 
android studio, etc etc.  Later on maybe I'll try it just to see what 
the latest version is like, those are hours useless for anything else, 
right?  Nah, maybe I'll write some code instead, that's at least 
potentially useful, I have more coding projects than I can shake a stick 
at.  Or most times, even remember.

> I know on my bloated KDE Desktop Environment,

I tried the KDE DE in Mageia-5.  Run it on something with a slow 
processor and not much storage sometime.  It takes longer to come up 
than linux takes to boot.  But then so do most of the DE's if you run 
them on slow hardware.  Why run them on slow hardware?  To find out 
which busted places need fixed, is why.  Granted KDE is pretty, but more 
useful than something you don't have to wait for while it does fancy 
fades?  I kinda think not, really.

> I click my vbox desktop
> shortcut icon which flips to virtual desktop 6 launches VirtualBox and
> about 1.5 seconds later

A second and a half for it to start up?  I'll bet 90% of that time is 
wasted by GUI libraries.

> up pops a menu showing
>     $ ls -1 | wc -l
>      26
> different virtual machines I have installed.
> 
> I double click any one of them and about 8 seconds later I am at the
> exact same place I was when I saved the virtual machine state.

You're a patient man.  I recently fibbed and said that I wasn't a speed 
addict, but I believed that at the time.  Even on my slowest system 
there are few things that take 8 seconds.  Whatever, we are all 
different folks in different situations, most people would probably 
consider my setup hopelessly crude just because it doesn't run videos or 
tell me if I've flipped it upside-down.

> If I feel whatever I am about to do may be lethal for that machine, I
> can spend ~5 minutes creating a clone of the virtual machine or if
> really pressed for time, create a snapshot which can be rolled back to
> previous state.

Yeah, it takes something like 5 minutes to rsync jessie onto a new USB 
stick on this XPS13, it may be a bit funky in ways but to me it seems 
very fast.  About as fast as response seemed when I was sharing a 
mainframe with 600 other people back in the '80s.  But our perspectives 
change over time, it seems.

Thing is, I live in a forest, there are 150-year-old trees here, which 
means the odds of a forest fire are creeping up year by year.  I have 
all my work in my pocket, and I can buy some used laptop for $100 or 
less and keep on truckin' while the insurance company tries to remember 
that we've paid their premiums.

I have code that I've been working on since 2002... for that matter I 
have some code for a project I sold the rights to in... sometime in the 
'90s, you know how time is for old people, right?  Getting old to the 
point where you want to avoid starting over because of a forest fire or 
even a simple brainfart.

> Oh, wait, I remember now, you indicated you could not see any value in
> that when you could just create another install on your hardware and
> boot it.
> 
> Let's look at that, 26 virtual machines, about 40 gig drive assigned
> to each, comes out to around 1,040G of disk space.
> Actual space needed for all that works out to
>    $ df -h /vmguest
>    Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
>    /dev/sda9       357G  278G   76G  79% /vmguest
> 
> Hmmmm, not bad, not bad at all. Well, to each their own, I guess.
> 
> If it were me, I would install a 64 bit OS on the UEFI system, then
> VirtualBox where I could create UEFI/legacy 64 or 32 bit installs
> which would allow me to test ~95% of everything I might want to do.
> 
> Only thing missing would be the actual hardware of a/the real machine.

How much space does your root partition take?  Just curious.

-- 
http://totally-portable-software.blogspot.com
  [Sun Nov 22: "Total Portability is not binary"]

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Thread

UEFI question crankypuss <invalid@invalid.invalid> - 2015-12-30 05:11 -0700
  Re: UEFI question Pascal Hambourg <boite-a-spam@plouf.fr.eu.org> - 2015-12-30 13:35 +0100
    Re: UEFI question crankypuss <invalid@invalid.invalid> - 2015-12-30 06:03 -0700
      Re: UEFI question Bit Twister <BitTwister@mouse-potato.com> - 2015-12-30 13:48 +0000
        Re: UEFI question crankypuss <invalid@invalid.invalid> - 2015-12-30 14:10 -0700
          Re: UEFI question "David W. Hodgins" <dwhodgins@nomail.afraid.org> - 2015-12-30 16:26 -0500
            Re: UEFI question Pascal Hambourg <boite-a-spam@plouf.fr.eu.org> - 2015-12-31 10:21 +0100
              Re: UEFI question "David W. Hodgins" <dwhodgins@nomail.afraid.org> - 2015-12-31 08:50 -0500
                Re: UEFI question Pascal Hambourg <boite-a-spam@plouf.fr.eu.org> - 2015-12-31 16:19 +0100
                Re: UEFI question crankypuss <invalid@invalid.invalid> - 2015-12-31 11:51 -0700
                Re: UEFI question Bit Twister <BitTwister@mouse-potato.com> - 2015-12-31 19:34 +0000
                Re: UEFI question Pascal Hambourg <boite-a-spam@plouf.fr.eu.org> - 2015-12-31 21:52 +0100
                Re: UEFI question "David W. Hodgins" <dwhodgins@nomail.afraid.org> - 2016-01-01 18:58 -0500
                Re: UEFI question Pascal Hambourg <boite-a-spam@plouf.fr.eu.org> - 2016-01-02 02:19 +0100
                Re: UEFI question blind Pete <0123peter@gmail.com> - 2016-01-03 16:30 +1100
                Re: UEFI question Pascal Hambourg <boite-a-spam@plouf.fr.eu.org> - 2016-01-03 11:12 +0100
                Re: UEFI question Eef Hartman <E.J.M.Hartman@gmail.com> - 2016-01-03 12:44 +0000
                Re: UEFI question Pascal Hambourg <boite-a-spam@plouf.fr.eu.org> - 2016-01-03 15:16 +0100
                Re: UEFI question blind Pete <0123peter@gmail.com> - 2016-01-03 23:12 +1100
                Re: UEFI question Pascal Hambourg <boite-a-spam@plouf.fr.eu.org> - 2016-01-03 15:22 +0100
                Re: UEFI question crankypuss <invalid@invalid.invalid> - 2016-01-02 01:53 -0700
                Re: UEFI question Pascal Hambourg <boite-a-spam@plouf.fr.eu.org> - 2016-01-02 12:08 +0100
                Re: UEFI question crankypuss <invalid@invalid.invalid> - 2016-01-02 10:47 -0700
            Re: UEFI question crankypuss <invalid@invalid.invalid> - 2015-12-31 02:37 -0700
          Re: UEFI question Bit Twister <BitTwister@mouse-potato.com> - 2015-12-30 22:18 +0000
      Re: UEFI question Pascal Hambourg <boite-a-spam@plouf.fr.eu.org> - 2015-12-31 10:16 +0100
        Re: UEFI question crankypuss <invalid@invalid.invalid> - 2015-12-31 02:46 -0700
      Re: UEFI question blind Pete <0123peter@gmail.com> - 2016-01-01 21:20 +1100
        Re: UEFI question crankypuss <invalid@invalid.invalid> - 2016-01-01 05:08 -0700
          Re: UEFI question Pascal Hambourg <boite-a-spam@plouf.fr.eu.org> - 2016-01-01 21:51 +0100
            Re: UEFI question crankypuss <invalid@invalid.invalid> - 2016-01-01 15:17 -0700
              Re: UEFI question Bit Twister <BitTwister@mouse-potato.com> - 2016-01-01 23:06 +0000
                Re: UEFI question crankypuss <invalid@invalid.invalid> - 2016-01-02 02:16 -0700
                Re: UEFI question Bit Twister <BitTwister@mouse-potato.com> - 2016-01-02 10:04 +0000
                Re: UEFI question crankypuss <invalid@invalid.invalid> - 2016-01-02 03:39 -0700
                Re: UEFI question blind Pete <0123peter@gmail.com> - 2016-01-03 15:20 +1100
          Re: UEFI question blind Pete <0123peter@gmail.com> - 2016-01-03 15:14 +1100

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