Open zedman2000 opened 9 years ago
alexjj
commented
9 years ago I'm not the dev, nor have I contributed anything to this project...but Windows 2000! It made me chuckle. I was fond of Windows 2000 and remember using it for a long time myself.
Also, Microsoft stopped providing security patches for Win2k in 2010, so you're potentially at risk by running it, even in a VM.
zedman2000
commented
9 years ago @alexjj I'd agree about the security, aside from the fact that it is not open to the world behind a 2 layer firewall. If Google is compromised, access to my Google Drive is the least of my worries! :-)
But honestly, with a site license for it - anything that I can do to use it (for Windows related things), I do. Just makes interfacing to things a bit easier. It is also a REALLY compact OS (compared to fully patched XP or beyond). So, it makes running as a VM highly desirable. I'd rather run NT, but nothing runs on it any longer!
Since I did not get any information or posts or anything, I've since installed a VM of DSL. It has a similar footprint to Win2k (256MB ram, <2GB hard drive). It SEEMS that if I can get the Linux version of GDrive to stop crashing (I'm sure it is me - so I've not posted), this will work as a machine I can use to run automated backups. Basically, I setup a SMB share of files I want copied - then I use that to distribute the appropriate files to the appropriate Google Drive for long term retention. Seems to be working so far!
alexjj
commented
9 years ago @zedman2000 I can completely understand not wanting to buy a new version of Windows. I'd always encourage people to try Linux/BSD to replace their Windows usage because they are free and (in my experience) better at doing the job. If you're really limited on RAM/hard drive space you might want to consider not using virtual machines as these carry overhead. FreeBSD jails or Docker are good alternatives which offer isolation but minimise overhead. FreeBSD has the advantage that ZFS is baked in, so you've got your storage covered, but it's easy enough to install on Debian/Linux.
There's also the raspberry pi option! :neckbeard:
A good community for virtualization is www.reddit.com/r/homelab
zedman2000
commented
9 years ago @alexjj thanks for the advice! It is not a matter of BUYING or being limited, but why waste 16GB of ram on a machine that's sole purpose is to copy stuff to Google Drive? As for buying, it was not that either, just a matter of resources. If I could get away with it, I'd use DOS or if I had the time/patience I'd use SLACKWARE...they use next to NOTHING for resources!
I use ESXi, so resource sharing is not really an issue. I typically see DSL only using 29MB or ram, so ESXi will reclaim the rest of the 256MB for other machines to use. I'm not worried!
I already have a RPI. It controls the Zwave stuff in my house - which reports to a Win7 VM that runs my home automation (www.homeseer.com)!
Anyway, thanks for the link, I'll check that out.
I might just have to close this - due to the operating system that I've mentioned, but I'm going to open the dialog. Worst case, I waste some of the Dev's time telling me I'm nuts, so I'll close this after that.
Anyway, I used to use this in a VM I have for Windows 2000. It monitors and backs up specific files to Google Drive, though command line driven by my Home Automation Software. Since the last time I used this and now, I was messing with ESXi and transitioned all my VirtualBox VM's over to ESXi containers. Today I went to start that Windows 2000 machine back up to allow the Backups to continue. Everything booted. I went to run a test .bat file I made. To my surprise, even though the config.json and token.json were still there, GDrive asked for me to re-authenticate. I figured, no big deal. I tried to use the link, nothing was happening. So, I went to update to the most current version. I get "Program Entry Point AddVectorHandlerException could not be located in the dynamic link library kernel32.dll" I've seen this before, typically it means the program has been optimized for some newer version of Windows. At this point, I ran the .exe with --help to see what version was listed. Nothing. So, I downloaded every version that was tagged all the way back to 1.1.0. That was the only version that was tagged that would run - so I ASSUME that is the version I am using.
Anyway, if you cannot work out this request, I understand. I'll just have to work something else out. It is just nice to use Win2k as it is so simple and does not use many resources, plus...what else am I going to use those old licenses for? :-)
I can always try some super lightweight Linux, It was just nice to be able to mess with this (using snapshots) without messing up the main fileserver - which just served FILES, it did not care about backing anything up. Separation of powers!