Karthik said:
The internet connection is in Linux (Host OS).
I am just eager to know if i have Windows as a
guest OS on Host OS(Linux), is it less possible
for Windows to get infected by virus ?
The guest systems are not protected in any special way.
If Windows crashes, is there a mechanism
to recover it from Host OS(Linux) ?
No, except for easy backups of entire VM's, or the ability of the
virtualization software to reset a VM into some previous state
(snapshot). Both methods have their pro's and con's, with regards to
performance and disk space. I'd go for backups of entire machines, which
are easy to restore (simply copy the VM folder). If you want to preserve
huge downloads, put them on an independent virtual disk (not affected by
snapshots), then you can backup the system and data disks independently.
I found it good practice to separate system and data disks anyway. You
can have any number of virtual disks, for different purposes, and with
some experience you can use them in multiple VMs. E.g. I have
independent disks for my many software projects, so that I can start
updating a particular project by attaching the virtual disk to my
development VM.
Shared folders are another way for persistent data storage. The folders
can be used in multiple VM's at the same time, and also are accessible
from the host OS. Shared folders may be slower than virtual disks,
because they are implemented as remote (network) resources, so that they
should not normally be used for life data; but they can hold downloads
very well, where the duplicate network traffic (from Internet to guest
to disk) is almost neglectable.
In any case you should consider that a virus can spread onto *every*
attached R/W disk or folder. That's why IMO restarting infectable guests
from a clean state is essential. Where Windows systems have a higher
risk of infection, because they are the preferred targets of malware
producers. While newer Windows versions (Vista...) have acceptable
admin/user isolation, its administration (ACL, UAC...) IMO still is a
mess. At least it's easier to protect a Linux system by simply logging
in as non-privileged user - the essential system files and folders are
always owned by "root", without any need for special administration efforts.
Also, is there any mechanism to debug windows
from linux ? Any ideas ?
No idea. Remote debugging may be possible, but that's not related to
virtualization.
I am planning to use Ubuntu as Host OS and
Windows Vista as Guest OS and either
Vmware or VirtualBox (Virtual machines).
If you want a stable host system, then do not use it for surfing at all.
I'm using a tiny Win98 VM for surfing, which is easy to backup and also
to restore to its "virgin" state after every Internet session. Any Life
CD (Ubuntu, Knoppix...) can be used for that purpose as well, where a VM
will boot the CD faster from the ISO image than from a CD drive. BTW
creating and burning ISO images is built-in with almost every Linux, no
need for additional (expensive and/or unreliable) burning tools.
DoDi
