Ubuntu Lucid Lynx is in Feature Freeze, and Alpha3 is right around the corner, releasing next week.If you're running Ubuntu 9.04, 9.10, or 10.04, it's trivial to testdrive Lucid in a virtual machine, without modifying your current installation!
If you're already running Lucid, congrads! All you need to do is add the testdrive ppa, and install testdrive, and either kvm or virtualbox-ose.
Just pop open a terminal and run:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:testdrive/ppa && \Then you can either run testdrive from the command line, or use the menu, Applications -> System Tools -> Testdrive.
sudo apt-get update && \
sudo apt-get install testdrive
Then, a menu will pop up, with a menu of Lucid daily images. If you have previously downloaded any of these, you should see a timestamp of the cached file. If you run testdrive everyday, your cache will stay up-to-date, and the incremental download will be much faster!
Select one of the offered ISOs, or enter a URL to another one of your choosing, and you should be off and running. Help us make Lucid Lynx the best Ubuntu to date!
:-Dustin
Which package has this virtual machine manager which is in your System Tools menu
ReplyDeleteNice. It would be nice if a graphical interface was added instead of the text menu in the terminal window.
ReplyDeleteits great and helps a-lot, and i wish that it could work for me.
ReplyDeletethe problems isn't in test drive (i think) because it installed lucid and ran it on VirtualBox, then i chose "Run Ubuntu without Installing", then i have that amazing black screen with nothing but White Underscore blinking. i left it for an hour but nothing changes.
This problem didn't happen on Lucid Alpha 1 but now i have this problem.
Thank you.
ReplyDeleteI tried this out and the tool very helpfully pointed out that I didn't have VT support and so things would be slower than the might otherwise be.
Of course, I do have VT support, I'd just forgotten that you have to turn it on in the BIOS. That should give my VMs a bit more oomph.
You may want to fix the spelling of the title of this post, Dustin.
ReplyDeleteThis is my first time trying out Testdrive. It seems like a great idea. I've got this error and googling didn't produce any helpful results. Do you have any suggestions that I try?
ReplyDeleteI'm using both VirtualBox and VMware on the box with VT extensions.
INFO: Using KVM for virtual machine hosting...
INFO: Syncing the specified ISO...
rsync://cdimage.ubuntu.com/cdimage/daily-live/current/lucid-desktop-amd64.iso
receiving file list ...
1 file to consider
sent 121 bytes received 98 bytes 146.00 bytes/sec
total size is 740143104 speedup is 3379648.88
INFO: Creating disk image [/home/tale/.cache/testdrive/img/testdrive-disk-srZgWf.img]...
Formatting '/home/tale/.cache/testdrive/img/testdrive-disk-srZgWf.img', fmt=qcow2 size=6442450944 encryption=off cluster_size=0
INFO: Running the Virtual Machine...
kvm: unhandled exit 4400
kvm_run returned -22
INFO: Cleaning up empty disk image [/home/tale/.cache/testdrive/img/testdrive-disk-srZgWf.img]...
@ Anonymous, I don't support a GUI idea. It really doesn't get much easier than pressing numbers 1 through 10 then pressing enter :)
ReplyDeleteThanks for the hard work and the safety net Dustin, but I just aptitude update so then you devs can fix my Lucid breakage :)
Reynaldo.
There's a testdrive-gtk package for those who want a GUI but it might not be working correctly (off to raise a bug...!)
ReplyDeleteAndy-
ReplyDeleteThe testdrive-gtk package is abandoned, as far as I'm aware.
I don't see what the big deal is about wanting a GUI... You can launch testdrive from the Ubuntu Desktop, Applications->System Tools->Testdrive. You then interpret a simple menu and type a number to select an image. After that, a GUI pops up running either KVM or VirtualBox.
I can't justify the effort of writing a testdrive-gtk front end. But if someone else wants to do so, I'll gladly provide a stable API to the command line back end.
I suggest that testdrive-gtk be it's own package/project, though, as I don't have any desire to work on it.
:-Dustin
It would be nice to add an option tu use an already downloaded ISO (using last option and "file:/path/to.iso" doesn't work).
ReplyDeleteA simple workaround is using Python's SimpleHTTPServer.
See the manpage. You most certainly can use local paths. file:///path/to/foo.iso.
ReplyDeleteTrying testdrive but seem to have a problem with rsync. Probably have to check the firewall to see if that is casing the problem.
ReplyDelete