[ale] run scripts - archlinux inside virtualbox

[Michael H. Warfield]

On Sun, 2013-06-02 at 07:15 -0400, JD wrote:
> Either cron or a shell script called during startup can do this.
> Running something every Thursday, once, is possible. The list archives
> cover that.

> Just an observation, but you seem to be running a bunch of different
> Linux flavors. It might be better to concentrate on 1 until you're
> able to handle stuff like this?

> As a very experienced software developer, you know that developing on
> a different platform than will be used in production complicates
> things unnecessarily. This complexity is compounded by using
> non-distro provided tools across the board. Being on the bleeding edge
> is hard. Determining whether all that extra effort is worth it is
> something that only you, your team, and your management can determine.
> I've been there and I've been grateful when the default tool/libs met
> the project needs. The effort and costs increase throughout the sdlc
> across the board. 

But...  If you are a developer, this is exactly what you need.  If your
production environment is development, you need this sort of
heterogeneous environment so you can develop and test in those
environments while minimizing your resources.

Toward that end, the paravirts and hardware virts like VMWare,
VirtualBox, and KVM are kinda end game for me (testing Linux varients).
I do a LOT of testing under LXC containers where you can do just about
anything that's not kernel version dependent under that.  I run
VirtualBox for Windows guests but wouldn't even consider it for a Linux
guest unless there were a specific reason for full virt over container
virt.

Arch is interesting.  I haven't been able to create an Arch container
under LXC yet (they don't seem to have the cross-platform install tools
like feboot (bootstrap Fedora on Ubuntu/Debian) or deboot (bootstrap
Debian or Ubuntu on Fedora/RedHat/CentOS/SL etc).

Arch is another systemd based distro that's an interesting challenge for
me.

> Linux is very similar, but different releases and different distros
> are just different enough to cause issues.

Yup...  Particularly with startup scripts and system configs.  But those
are the sorts of things that developers need to be aware of.

Sometimes, our clients (guests) have peculiar requirements.  I have an
Ubuntu guest on one of my Fedora hosts just because Oregano (Electronic
Schematic Capture package) doesn't run on Fedora (library requirement
conflicts).

> I'm positive you know all this, so consider this as a message for any
> lurkers.

Concur.

Regards,
Mike

> Narahari 'n' Savitha <savithari at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> >Friends:
> >
> >My dev env is archlinux inside virtualbox. I chose arch after coming
> >from
> >ubuntu.
> >
> >Since arch is a rolling update OS, the upgrades/updates are minimal
> >risk
> >and apparently a natural progression from ubuntu.
> >
> >The issue I face is to run packman -Syu on Thu nights when I am not
> >around.
> >
> >I use vboxmanage on Windoze to clone the vm.
> >
> >What I would like to do after above step is to
> >
> >start vm (this can be done with vboxmanage)
> >==> run pacman as root as soon as vm starts so I can auto update the
> OS
> ><==
> >
> >The above step is what I am looking for a solution.
> >
> >Kindly help.
> >
> >-Narahari
> >
> > 
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