I need to run program with GUI 24/7 - what to use (VirtualBox maybe)?

raven66 · 21. Februar 2019

Hi guys.
First, I want to thank you for a great product and communicty. I successfully run my custom build NAS for over a year now, without any hassle.
But until now, it serves me only as pure NAS.

Now, I want to run some program, with which I need to interact in graphical enviroment and this program need to be running 24/7.
I've tried to run RemoteDesktop via plugin, and I've succeded - RDP connection works fine. I'm able to view my XFCE enviroment.
Sadly, I'm unable to run my program in RDP session, because I get an error message:

Code

X server cannot be accessed!
Please check your DISPLAY variable and the permissions of your X server.

I am able to connect my physical machine to keyboard & monitor, and I discover, that this XFCE GUI works only in RDP session, not "physically" on the machine itself.
Yup, silly me. I don't have extended knowledge about Linuxes, X-servers, RDP, VNC, VM and such.

After researching and skimming through this forum and some other websites, I've came accross a number of topics, that suggest clearly, that running GUI desktop enviroment "on top" of running OMV is a very bad idea and is generally adviced against it.
Okay. So, I don't want to mess with my perfectly working OMV.

But I hope, that you can point me in the right direction, how to solve my problem.
I don't want to buy another physical machine...

So, is this good idea to make virtual machine in OMV, install Ubuntu in this VM and install my program inside Ubuntu inside VM inside OMV?
Or is there another bulletproof way to accomplish that?

cabrio_leo · 21. Februar 2019

I think it is necessary to do a complete Debian installation first and then OMV installation on top. There are several tutorials available how to proceed.

raven66 · 21. Februar 2019

Yeah, I don't want to install whole new system and then configuring OMV from the scratch...

cabrio_leo · 21. Februar 2019

How about OMV Virtual Box plugin?

raven66 · 21. Februar 2019

Zitat von raven66

So, is this good idea to make virtual machine in OMV, install Ubuntu in this VM and install my program inside Ubuntu inside VM inside OMV?
Or is there another bulletproof way to accomplish that?

That was exactly my question
But I'm a noob in VM topics.

Is this virtual OS behave the same way as bare metal OS?
I mean, if I switch off my NAS and then switch it on again and restart my virtual Linux (or whatever), does it remember all the files, settings, etc. inside virtual OS?

geaves · 21. Februar 2019

Zitat von raven66

Or is there another bulletproof way to accomplish that?

Not really a VM makes sense on my previous server I ran W7 in VB because specific software I was using would not run on my Linux Mint workstation, that mean't I could RDP to W7 from Mint. So I used W7 as if it was a standalone machine, started the W7 VM in OMV, RDP into it, then closed W7 as normal when finished.

raven66 · 21. Februar 2019

I'm sorry, but I'm not English native.
Do you mean "Not really, a VM makes sense" = VM is good solution for me?
OR
"Not really VM makes sense" = VM is not good in this case?

Also,
Is this virtual OS behave the same way as bare metal OS?
I mean, if I switch off my NAS and then switch it on again and restart
my virtual Linux (or whatever), does it remember all the files,
settings, etc. inside virtual OS?

geaves · 21. Februar 2019

Zitat von raven66

Is this virtual OS behave the same way as bare metal OS?
I mean, if I switch off my NAS and then switch it on again and restart
my virtual Linux (or whatever), does it remember all the files,
settings, etc. inside virtual OS?

Yes, well it did for me when I last used the virtualbox plugin, but I never turned my NAS off, still don't. The one option I rarely used was the php option within the plugin other than to change any settings which were specific to that VM, once installed I would start the VM from OMV then RDP into it once it was running.
The plugin works and it's the easiest option to achieve what you want and I used it as if it was an independent running machine, which is what a VM is.

raven66 · 4. März 2019

Hello again.
I've managed to install and use VB with no hassle.

But, I keep getting these two error messages ocassionally, and I want to ask, if there's a fix?

My VM is running, I can connect via RDP, status is "running".

raven66 · 20. März 2019

Another question, if I may.
I have my OMV set on Intel i3-7100 @ 3,9 GHz and I have Asus laptop with i3-7100 @ 2,4 GHz (so laptop is theoretically less powerful than my OMV/NAS machine).

Yet, my VM (inside VirtualBox plugin from OMV repo), which is Lubuntu 18.10, is sooooooooooooooooo slow, that it barely works.
I set up two same (identical) distros on OMV's VirtualBox and on Windows Oracle VirtualBox on my laptop.
Both VMs have the same RAM amount, same CPU settings, same GFX memory, all settings are the same.

On Asus laptop, Lubuntu is working great, like bare-machine OS.
But on OMV VirtualBox, the same Lubuntu is sluggish, slow and unresponsive. Everything works like on the edge of extinction.
When I launch Chromium or Firefox, after several seconds the whole browser process became frozen and all the OS is almost not working - even opening the "start" menu takes like 10-15 seconds.

Why is that? Is it the problem with VirtualBox plugin itself? Or am I missing something?

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