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Host operating system reinstall

Posted January 3rd, 2008 in Linux/Unix/BSD and VMWare

I currently run VMWare Workstation on my desktop computer, using the Linux host operating system to mainly just run the VMWare sessions; I run two main desktop environments (Linux and Windows XP) and one development webserver (CentOS) in Virtual Machines. Just over a month ago I was using SUSE Linux as my main desktop computer, and just using a Windows XP virtual machine, but after upgrading from 10.2 to 10.3 things started to go wrong so I changed to running my desktops on VMWare instead, with a fresh install of Kubuntu 7.10 as my primary Linux desktop / virtual machine.

On Saturday night, I'd finally had enough of my sluggish and broken SUSE host operating system, so set about reinstalling the base operating system. It needed to be a fairly lean install because I need very little actually running on the host, other than a GUI and VMWare Workstation itself.

I had wanted to install Xubuntu as the host operating system, because I like the Ubuntu derived Linux distributions, and Xubuntu is supposed to be pretty low on system resources. However, the live CD just didn't want to start up, even after adding "acpi=off" to the grub boot line, which is usually required for Linux distros to boot on my machine.

Trying various other options didn't work either, so I gave up on Xubuntu and decided to try Ubuntu instead, because I happened to have a 64 bit alternate install CD already created and ready to go. The alternate installer doesn't attempt to run a GUI, so I was able to run that OK and it install all OK. However, when I went to boot into Ubuntu I had the same blank screen issue that I'd had with Xubuntu.

After fiddling around with various boot options, I finally tried the recovery mode (or safe mode or whatever it's called) boot option and was able to boot into Ubuntu, play around with the X settings and get a GUI running. I then made the normal boot options fairly similar to the recovery mode and was able to reboot but it wouldn't start a GUI normally. More fiddling required and manually having to "startx" on each boot.

This was all going to be too much of a pain and I'd already spent a bit of time trying to get this running. I remembered now that when I set this machine up a year ago I'd also tried getting Xubuntu and then Kubuntu installed on it, but had had similar issues: for some reason the Ubuntu based distros simply don't like the combination of hardware in this box, and two releases further along they still don't. In the end I installed SUSE simply because it did actually work.

I wasn't interested in installing SUSE again, so decided to give Fedora a go. I was pleasantly surprised when it booted into a graphical installer without having to modify the boot options, and was able to install smoothly. The only exception is that it could see I had a LVM set up but for some reason thought there was an issue with the discs using in it and wanted to delete the contents. Naturally I didnt let it do this...

After the install completed, I booted into a nice, fast and extremely responsive system. It had initialised the LVM but there was no reference to it in the /etc/fstab file so I copied over the line from the old SUSE install and was able to mount it with no issues. If I'd stuck with the Ubuntu install I would have had to figure out how to install LVM support on Ubuntu because it's not installed by default, whereas it is with Fedora.

The other good thing with the Fedora installer is that it lets you customise the package selection down to a fine level of detail, so I was able to exclude most of the stuff that normally gets installed and which I knew I wasn't going to need. Ubuntu, on the other hand, installs a default set with no customisation. This is good for most desktop uses but wasn't for mine, and I would have had to uninstall a lot of packages after the install.

Anyway, in summary, my machine which had been running sluggishly with the upgraded from 10.2 to 10.3 version of openSUSE is now nice and snappy with Fedora 8. It boots up fast, and shuts down quickly. VMWare Workstation starts up faster and everything on the whole "feels" faster and better.