Tip for web developers regarding computer speed

[Hex]

[font="Calibri, Arial"]If you do development of web applications and your computer is slow to boot, you might want to stop some of the services of your testing servers and things from running automatically. I got a new Vista laptop a few weeks back and it booted in about 10 seconds.

Then I installed all my web stuff and it took about 2 minutes to boot up (an improvement over my old XP laptop which when booting it was advisable to push the button then have a cup of tea or something).

So I went through the services and disabled a few (specifically Apache, MySQL and Subversion) and now my laptop boots in around 30 seconds.[/font]

 

[recovery]

What I normally do is run a simple/test server as a VM. It doesn't have to have all your RAM, but 256MB should be more than enough. Don't like Linux? I've been using WinXP + Notepad++ for ages doing that. I actually bother to log in with RDP into it.

then just suspend/hibernate the VM when you don't need it. Takes a couple of seconds to get it running again.

 

[Hex]

[font="Calibri,Arial"]How do you set up a VM. Is it possible with free software?[/font]

 

[DannyTheNinja]

VMware Server is free, as is VirtualBox; the latter is free as in freedom. It's not too hard to get started with either, but if you use VMware Server be sure and get 1.0.x as 2.0 sucks balls.

My Ubuntu laptop takes nearly 4 minutes to boot up, but its ACPI suspend is so reliable that I never have to shut it down. I traded it for a loaner with identical hardware while it got shipped out a couple weeks ago and put my own hard disk in the loaner, and I booted the loaner up exactly once. After that initial boot I didn't shut it down or reboot until my own laptop came back in yesterday. With ACPI suspend it resumes in about 3-5 seconds.

--Danny :ninja:

 

[chevre]

Yeah, I use VMWare Player to do this with Ubuntu server and it has worked pretty well for me. In the future, I may be using Xen (once I get a box with virtualization extensions). I just started playing with it a few weeks back and it's very cool.

There's also a security aspect to it -- say you run a bunch of services and one has some bug and is compromised. Most likely, the breech is limited to the VM which is much easier to replace than the base install on your system. That, and you could even restore from a previous snapshot.

 

[recovery]

but if you use VMware Server be sure and get 1.0.x as 2.0 sucks balls.

I'd re-emphasise that point. I just installed 2.0 And it's web interface is... abismal. Anyway, I'll be going back to 1. Also, if you get a serial Key (you can put bogus info if you want, they don't email it. Or at least when I did it) you can use it for any version on vmware server as far as I can see. As long as a windows serial goes to the windows version. Also, What you want is the windows version whether or not the guest OS is linux.