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Installation of the vserver packages is simple in F8:

yum install util-vserver util-vserver-build

However, for anything to actually work you need to build a custom kernel. Once the custom kernel is installed you also need to update the distributions to include F8:

1. cd /usr/lib64/util-vserver/distributions/
2. svn export http://svn.linux-vserver.org/svn/util-vserver/trunk/distrib/f8 f8

Once the distribution is installed you can build the new vserver using the vserver build command, e.g.:

vserver myvserver build -m yum --interface eth0 --interface lo -- -d f8

Where myvserver is the name of your new vserver. Once the build completes you can start your vserver with "vserver myvserver start".

To install additional software packages use vyum:

vyum myvserver -- install packagename

where packagename is the name of the package to install.

Information on getting linux-vserver working on Fedora 8 (F8) seems a bit lacking. While the packages are available (util-vserver), a custom kernel with the appropriate vserver patches must be built or a cryptic "Function not implemented" error will show up when trying to build the vserver guest.

To build the custom kernel, obtain the kernel and corresponding patch from the links provided at the linux-vserver web site. Then bunzip2 and untar the kernel to some appropriate location (I use /usr/src/kernels), e.g.:

1. cd /usr/src/kernels
2. bunzip2 linux-2.6.22.14.tar.bz2
3. tar xvf linux-2.6.22.14.tar
4. cd xvf linux-2.6.22.14
5. patch -p1 ../patch-2.6.22.10-vs2.2.0.5.diff

The patch will give you an initial error, but that can be ignored since it corresponds to a mismatch in the kernel version (...14 vs the expected ...10). Edit the Makefile to change the EXTRAVERSION so it has your own string, I used ".14-vs" to remember it was for vserver.

Fedora 8 looks and works great overall. I've been running it on my laptop for about two weeks. However, I discovered today a problem between its virtualization packages and VMware Workstation.

I installed the latest F8 software and updates on what will be my new server and, after trying to set up the F8 virtualization packages to see if they were needed for vserver, I noticed that VMware would install and configure correctly but would hang the entire system on start of a guest. I eventually narrowed this down to an incompatibility between the current version of VMware Workstation (6.0.2) and the virtualization packages in F8 rather than any updates to the regular packages.

If your VMware Workstation hangs on guest startup, remove all the F8 virtualization packages and reboot. VMware will then work correctly. Hopefully this will save others some troubleshooting time...

VMware tools from the latest versions of VMware will run fine on Solaris 10 and fix an annoying virtual network adapter glitch that ruins network performance on large transfers.  To install VMware tools on Solaris 10:

1. From the VMware console's VM menu select Install VMware tools.  This will modify the CD device to contain a virtual CD that has the tools package.
2. If the CD does not mount by itself then create a mount point (in my case I created /mnt/cdrom, e.g. mkdir /mnt/cdrom).
3. Look at the symbolic link definition for /dev/sr0.  This will most likely be /dev/dsk/c1t0ds2. Mount this device to /mnt/cdrom, e.g. mount /dev/dsk/c1t0ds2 /mnt/cdrom.
4. Copy the tools to /tmp, unzip them, then run the vmware-install.pl script.

Note that this will change the network device from pcn0 to e1000g0.  There are various ways to reconfigure the network after this, but if the guest does not have anything important in its configuration yet then the easiest is to use the sys-unconfig command and reboot.  This will allow you to define all the configuration settings during the next reboot.

There are several steps to configuring a static network address manually on Solaris 10.  Since I could not find clear instructions elsewhere on the net, I've put together all of the steps here:

1. Add the new address and hostname to the /etc/hosts file.  While you're there also make sure the loghost is defined on the same line as the localhost (unless you're logging to a different host of course).  Adding loghost will fix an annoying boot error message.
2.  Add the new address and hostname to the /etc/inet/ipnodes file.
3. Create (or modify if it already exists) the /etc/nodename file so that it has the new hostname.
4. Modify the /etc/hostname.interface file (where interface is the name of the network interface, e.g. e1000g0) so that it has the new hostname.
5. If automatic routing detection does not work (and it did not work for me) then define a default route in the /etc/defaultrouter file.  This file takes the numeric IP address of the gateway.

Reboot and the new network name/address will be defined correctly.