[Netkit.users] connecting to uml hosts

[Francesco Cipriani]

Hello Robert,

On Sun, Oct 17, 2004 at 01:47:57PM +0300, Robert Sebunnya wrote:
> Hello, everyone.I am wondering whether it is possible to creates virtual 
> hosts while not using x -windows.How does one connect to such created 
> hosts? 

I investigated in the past about this possibility, mainly because I don't
like much xterm. What I'm going to say is somewhat like the first part
of Massimo's message, but what I found is a little different and seems
not to screw up the terminal after the shutdown of the virtual machine
(maybe it depends on the distribution you use and on the terminal 
settings, I don't know - I can only say I'm using Gentoo Linux).
This method should solve the problem of Luis Barreto Jr. too, because,
even with only one terminal being available, you can use the wonderful
"screen" program, a full screen text window manager.

Quick solution: use the vstart script attached, which extends the
original one (taken from netkit 1.4-1) with a new option,
"--currentTerminal" (uhm, maybe it's too verbose :) ) that makes the 
virtual machine start in the current terminal. 
What does this option do? It inserts the options "con=pty con0=fd:0,fd:1"
into the uml command line, and doesn't start the vm in background as
vstart normally does. 
Except from this addition, the script works as usual.

If you have only a terminal available and want to start multiple virtual
machines, you can use "screen".
Screen is a full screen window manager which can run in the standard
text consoles, in a "konsole" terminal in kde, or wherever you want (I
think there should be no problem running it in a telnet session).
Each screen window can have a different title, and it is easy to switch
between windows using the key combination C-A " (control-A followed by
the quotes symbol).
Example: you want to start two vm named "host1" and "host2".
What you have to do is the following: 
1) in the current terminal, execute "screen -t host1"; this will start a
   screen terminal and give it the "focus"
2) remaining in the terminal just opened, execute "screen -t host2"
At this point you have two screen terminals named host1 and host2. 
3) From the host2 terminal (where you are now) you can then launch
   something like "vstart host2 --new --currentTerminal"
4) Even while the vm is booting, switch to the other terminal 
   using C-a n (another screen's key combination which makes you go to
   the next terminal)
5) you can now start "vstart host1 --new --currentTerminal".
After you have finished working with each vm, type exit and when all the
screen's terminals are closed screen will exit and return to the "real"
terminal it was running inside.

I found screen mentioned in some line of the vstart script, but the line
is commented and I believe that for some reason the idea to use it with
vstart was abondoned, but I think it's more clean to work with screen 
than open many xterms on the desktop - but this is a personal opinion.

I think the multiple windows trick using the "screen" program could be 
managed by the vstart script itself, but I leave this to the netkit's 
team :), if they want to add this feature.

Disclaimer: I'm not involved in the netkit project and the script
attached is unofficial, so use it at your own risk, even if I'm using it 
without any problem.

-- 
Francesco
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