VM to Demo LPC Muds

[saquivor]

As part of getting ready to actually getting restarted on my GUI tool, I decided to build a VM to run DS2 so that I can easily manage a DS2 setup via my Windows machine.

Anyway it got me thinking that it might be a good idea to create a VM image for all public lp mudlibs. I use VM images a lot at work and they can be very handy from everything to developing, testing, playing and even live usage.

I would like to briefly outline what I have in mind :-

VM creation tool:-
Virtualbox 1.6.4 OSE. Not sure of implication of using and distributing non OSE version. The non OSE version ships as a binary, I am assuming my OSE VM will work on both versions of VirtualBox.
Virtualbox allows VMs to make outbound connections be default so intermud would work, but nobody could connect to the mud, unless a route was setup between the host and the VM.

Consider VMWARE at a later date, if enough demand.

I will publish how I built the VM so that people can verify there is no back doors etc.

Linux Version:-
Ubuntu server LTS support until 2013, vast selection of s/w. Ubuntu now happens to be my favoured *nix. Unless IBM ever release openAIX There is no X  front end with this release ie Gnome etc, but can be added by the user fairly easily.
Will include nano/pico for users that have not used vi/emacs.

VMSize:-
The current VM I am working should be less than 300MB when compacted

LPMUDS:-

Any that are listed on the downloads section of lpmuds.net

Client(s):
Tiny Fugue

As Ubuntu server does not ship with X/Gnome/KDE I plan to  write a basic Ncurses front end that will list all muds available, as well as the comments about them from the lpmuds site. Connections to chosen mud could be made via ncurses front end as it would invoke tf to connect to the mud on the correct port. As stated earlier it would not be possible to connect to VM via a remote client, unless end user specifically allowed it.

If anyone has any comments/views on this then please let me know.

I hope to have an alpha release available in the next couple of days.

Saquivor

[cratylus]

I really dunno how this virtual player stuff works, but it
sure sounds like a neat idea. You have my sincerest
wishes for success.

I would mention though, that including all the libs takes up
more room than you might expect...uncompressed, they
are a tad big:

omega: /tmp/muds $ du -ksh .
 268M   .
omega: /tmp/muds $ du -ks *|sort -n
9584    merentha_fluffos_v2
9588    lil_0.3
10424   foundationI_fluffos_v1
10832   lpuni_fluffos_v1
11048   dsI
11948   foundation2_fluffos_v1
13664   nightmare4_fluffos_v1
14212   nightmare3_fluffos_v2
16600   lima_patch_v1
16948   tmi2_fluffos_v2
29576   ds2.8.4
34700   final_realms_fluffos_v1
35988   skylib_fluffos_v3
49052   dw_fluffos_v2
omega: /tmp/muds $

I'm told there are "very small" Linux distributions that run as small as 50m.
I can't vouch for them, but should size start to become an issue, perhaps
they're a possible contingency plan.

-Crat

[saquivor]

omega: /tmp/muds $ du -ksh .
 268M   .

I had not reallised they would take up quite so much room.

I am looking at damn small linux and puppy linux as alternatives, to keep down size.

So far puppy looks slightly better, but both give a graphical X server, which maybe a plus to some.

[saquivor]

Following a little more work today, got puppy linux working nicely under a VM, even got ggmud running from a Xserver with no gnome or kde.

VM is now well under 150 MB with 3 muds running.

I have decided not to ship VM with developer tools for security reasons. SO users will not be able to recompile driver etc. But if they are getting to that level, then hopefully they will no longer need the VM demo

I want to do a little more checking on Puppy Linux and will then upload tomorrow.

One thing I do not like is that by default seem to run as root, so will read up on this and see if I can drop down from root, to run muds etc.

Anyone any views on using PuppyLinux then please let me know, as I never used it before today. I chose it over Damn Small Linux as it seems to have better community support. (which is also why I run Ubuntu )

[saquivor]

Ok first release is available for testing. VM will run Puppy Linux 4.0, and currently has ds2 and tmi2 installed.

If anyone is interested in this project can you please test this initial VM and rushed instructions and let me know if you have any feedback.
The quick instructions
I have tested the Disk image on VirtualBox Linux 1.6.4 OSE and VirtualBox  Windows 1.5.2
 
Install VirtualBox http://www.virtualbox.org/
(getting the OSE version to install from source took some fiddling, I tracked down some posts about this if anyone needs them)
 

Download the disk image http://www.stdbs.co.uk/lpVM.7z or http://stdbs.co.uk/lpVM.zip  . The 7 zip version takes less time (download from here). http://www.7-zip.org/
 
Uncompress the downloaded file. Recommended save locations are as follows:-
On Windows:
C:\Documents and Settings\you user name\.VirtualBox\VDI
 
On Linux
/home/your user name/.VirtualBox/VDI
 
Create a new machine (Linux 2.6 with 256mb ram)
Add disk image.
Start Machine
Click on either startds2 or starttmi2. This will run ds2 or tmi2 as a background task, but will not restart automatically if the driver is killed/shutdown.
Connect to the mud via the installed ggmud client, the muds available are listed under connection wizard.
 
if X windows does not:-
startx
then select ignore at next prompt
 
To Do
 
Add remaining lpmuds
Tidy up startup/shutdown for muds.
Add client tools, so that X server under Xorg, rather then vesa.
tidy up file system on final version to further reduce disc space.

Fuller Instructions can be found here http://www.stdbs.co.uk/VM Instructions.pdf

[wodan]

i got a 404 on the 7zip version

[saquivor]

I just f**kin* love IIS, having to use it as is best public facing server I have to allow download of large files at reasonable rate.

7z is now registered MIME type!

The PDF is also broken, but this should work http://www.stdbs.co.uk/vminstructions.pdf

[Tricky]

Apache?

Tricky

[saquivor]

After some feedback on first image, it appears that ds2 has stopped working in the VM.

So I have re installed ds2 and it seems to be ok now.

RE Apache (I do not have that level of control over server to install it)

[daelaskai]

I like this.  It works well and seems faster and easier than the VMWare and Microsoft Virtual PC.

Daelas

[saquivor]

I have upload another version of lpmud VM. See links above for downloads.

Added discworld and also changed how the muds are started. In that I have written an ncurses menu front end to control starting the muds and connecting. (It will pkill any running copies of driver and then start your selected mud.) I still think having ncurses in a mud would be very cool, but after working on ncurses again it has made reallise that it would be a big job. Maybe if a new driver is being coded/designed then it could be designed in to allow a cleaner interface to terminal/screen modes


Hopefully will be a case of adding further muds from here and tidying up filesystem to reduce image size. May also look to dd/rysnc a copy of this machine to VMware, once it is finished.

[Raudhrskal]

Ncurses is cool. SLang-screen even more. But please note that most people use clients. And all mud clients i know are a) line-based and b) not supporting cursor positioning. So, you'd have to add some kind of additioanl API to make triggers etc on the SERVER side, AND make clients use it ;(

[daelaskai]

The only problem for me that I noticed was the keyboard was set to UK and not
US like I'm used to.

Daelas

[wodan]

UK keyboard mapping is evil! (I should know, I live there!)

[quixadhal]

Ncurses is cool. SLang-screen even more. But please note that most people use clients. And all mud clients i know are a) line-based and b) not supporting cursor positioning. So, you'd have to add some kind of additioanl API to make triggers etc on the SERVER side, AND make clients use it ;(

I think, in this day and age, if I were to write something text mode that did more than just ANSI color, I'd just require a custom client, and disallow plain telnet.  There are just too many flaky implementations, and too many people who can't follow standards.