coLinux is gaining momentum as a way to run Linux programs on
Windows, and I decided to try it. As a user
of Gentoo, my first choice is to use Gentoo with coLinux. The
following description documents what I have done to run Gentoo
cooperatively in Windows laptop. I mainly follows up the Gentoo Wiki Howto article
and other coLinux resources.
1. Installation
First download the latest coLinux snapshot (you can
also get it from SourceForge). The
file I used is coLinux-0.7.2.exe from SourceForge. Run the
installer. Some notes during installation:
- In screen Choose Components, leave the default settings
on (i.e. selecting all components), but uncheck Root FileSystem
image download (we will download it separately).
- In addition, change the Destination folder to
c:\bin\coLinux (note that all the description below assumes
coLinux is installed into this directory. If you prefer other
directory, please modify accordingly in steps below).
- Installer prompts to download and install WinPCap separately,
but my network configuration does not need WinPCap therefore I don't
install it.
Then download Gentoo-colinux-i686-2007-03-03.7z from SourceForge,
extract the archive into c:\bin\coLinux, with a
gentoo subdirectory created during extraction. Copy file
gentoo.conf in gentoo to the parent directory and
modify it as follows:
kernel=vmlinux
cobd0=C:\bin\coLinux\gentoo\gentoo-root
cobd1=C:\bin\coLinux\gentoo\linux-swap
root=/dev/cobd0
hdc=\Device\Cdrom0
initrd=initrd.gz
mem=1024
eth0=tuntap
cofs0=c:\linux
Some explanations of the above file, details will be covered in
later sections.
- For mem, I set it to 1G. Choose according to your own
situation.
- For network, I only select TAP driver.
- I shared Windows folder c:\linux to coLinux.
- CD/DVD-Drive is mounted.
To test drive, open a command prompt, change to the directory
c:\bin\coLinux, and run the following command:
colinux-daemon @gentoo.conf
coLinux console should run. If there is something wrong, please
check previous steps. After some time, you are prompted for log in.
You can now login as root with password. Change your password
immediately.
Congratulations! You just successfully run Gentoo in coLinux! You
can now fool around with the system. Type halt when you are
tired. There is still a long road ahead to fully harness the
power. Following is two optional steps, but highly recommended.
Run coLinux during system startup
First, we need to install coLinux as a service. Open a command
prompt, change to the directory c:\bin\coLinux, and run the
following command:
colinux-daemon.exe @gentoo.conf --install-service "CoGentoo Linux"
Then open Control Panel, first select Administrative
Tools, then Services, click service CoGentoo Linux, and
change its Startup type to Automatic.
Enlarge the image file
The original image size is 2G. This might not be sufficient. To
enlarge it, you need to download the tools from here. Extract the
archive and run file toporesize.bat. Use the program to
resize file c:\bin\coLinux\gentoo\gentoo-root to whatever
size you want. Make sure you uncheck "resize file
only no resize2fs".
2. Configuration
2.1 Timezone
Since I'm located in Beijing, I set the corresponding info as
follows. The related configuration files is
/etc/conf.d/clock. I changed two lines as follows.
CLOCK="local"
TIMEZONE="Asia/Shanghai"
Also run command ln -fs /usr/share/zoneinfo/Asia/Shanghai
/etc/localtime.
It is interesting that Beijing cannot manage to snap one place
inside /usr/share/zoneinfo/Asia.
2.2 Network
Based on coLinux
wiki article.
2.2.1 One network interface
This configuration only enable TAP, which is used to enable both
the high-speed private connection between Windows host and Linux
guest, and also to bridge the connection to Internet. One drawback of
this setup is that when you Internet connection changes (e.g. from
ADSL to WiFi, you have to adjust bridging and some parameters
manually).
File gentoo.conf discussed above already contains the
setup for coLinux. Next steps are as follows.
On hosting OS (Windows), configure TAP-Win32 Adapter V8
(coLinux) with following properties (make sure to leave
Default Gateway as blank):
Ethernet adapter:
Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :
Description . . . . . . . . . . . : TAP-Win32 Adapter V8 (coLinux)
Dhcp Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : No
IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.1
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . :
We need to bridge the Internet connection with TAP interface. For
example, assume you're using an ADSL PPPoE connection. In Windows
host, select Control Panel -> Network Connections, right
click the PPPoE interface, and select Properties. In tab
Advanced, for Internet Connection Sharing, check
Allow other network users to connect through this computer's
Internet connection, and for the Home networking
connection, select the TAP interface (e.g. Local Area Connection
2). When Windows prompts that TAP interface IP address will be set to
192.168.0.1, choose OK.
Under coLinux, edit file /etc/conf.d/net as follows.
config_eth0=( "192.168.0.20/24" )
routes_eth0=( "default via 192.168.0.1" )
dns_servers_eth0=(" xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx " )
Please change the DNS server information (shown as xxx above) to
those obtained in windows (e.g. via ipconfig).
We have to emphasize here that in this setup, Linux guest has IP
address 192.168.0.20 (this is arbitrarily selected, could be other
numbers like 192.168.0.x when 2 <= x <= 254), and Windows host has IP
address 192.168.0.1 interfacing Linux (of course Windows host has
external IP addresses as well).
2.2.2 For two network interfaces
Note this part is NOT compatible with other sections. The purpose
of this section is only to document alternatives to above solution. If
one interface solution is fine for you, you can skip this section.
This configuration enables both SLiRP and TAP connections. SLiRP is
used to connect outside world while TAP enables the high-speed private
connection between Windows host and Linux guest, which is desirable
for X protocol. The benefits of this configuration includes improved
security and that SLiRP can automatically use current Windows Internet
connection for outgoing connections (i.e. you do not need to enter DNS
server information) without reconfigurations. This works fine for
Wireless LANs, but I did meet problems for ADSL and finally decided to
use TAP only.
Anyway, let's look at how to setup two network interfaces.
First, we need to modify the aforementioned file
gentoo.conf located in coLinux directory. Change the line
eth0=tuntap with two lines as below.
eth0=slirp
eth1=tuntap
Then edit file /etc/conf.d/net on Linux guest. This
enables both SLiRP and TAP.
config_eth0=( "dhcp" )
config_eth1=( "192.168.37.20/24" )
We then need to setup DHCP client as following:
emerge dhcpcd
rc-update add dhcpcd default
/etc/init.d/dhcpcd start
Since only eth0 device is generated, we need to generate
eth1 device by
cd /etc/init.d
ln -s net.lo net.eth1
On hosting OS (Windows), configure TAP-Win32 Adapter V8
(coLinux) with following properties (make sure to leave
Default Gateway as blank):
Ethernet adapter:
Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :
Description . . . . . . . . . . . : TAP-Win32 Adapter V8 (coLinux)
Dhcp Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : No
IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.37.10
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . :
2.2.3 Proxy
If you connect to Internet directly, you can skip this section.
To use proxy server, add the
following lines into /etc/env.d/99local:
http_proxy="http://proxy.server.com:8080"
ftp_proxy="http://proxy.server.com:8080"
Replace the port and domain name according to your situation. Then
run:
env-update && source /etc/profile
2.3 Add additional locales
Modify file /etc/locale.gen, select appropriate
locales. For me, the locales are:
en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8
zh_CN.UTF-8 UTF-8
Then run command locale-gen.
2.4 Mirror selection
First run emerge mirrorselect. To select the fastest
mirror. I use the following command mirrorselect -D -H
-s2 to select the mirror. It means
that:
- -D: actual file will be downloaded from the mirror to test speed.
- -H: test http mirrors only.
- -s2: only select 2 mirrors.
After running the command, original /etc/make.conf will be
backed up as /etc/make.conf.backup and your selected mirrors will be
reflected in make.conf. Type mirrorselect -h for
details.
2.5 Modify /etc/make.conf
This is specific for your computer type and other
factors. Following is my configuration (I'm using a Core 2 Duo CPU on
32 bit Windows). Please refer to Gentoo documentation for your own
reference. GENTOO_MIRRORS reflects the fastest mirrors for my
connection, so you may skip that line if your have already performed
mirrorselect above.
CFLAGS="-march=prescott -O2 -fomit-frame-pointer -pipe -fno-ident"
CXXFLAGS="${CFLAGS}"
CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu"
LDFLAGS="-Wl,-O1"
MAKEOPTS="-j2"
ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="x86"
FEATURES="parallel-fetch"
LINGUAS="en zh"
USE="-* auctex bash-completion bzip2 cjk crypt curl doc emacs gd gif glibc-omitfp gtk \
javascript jpeg mmx mozilla ncurses nls nptl nptlonly opengl pam png readline \
ruby sbcl source spell sse sse2 ssl svg tcpd tiff truetype \
unicode X xft xml xorg xpm zlib"
PORTDIR_OVERLAY="/usr/local/portage"
GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://ftp.iij.ad.jp/pub/linux/gentoo/ http://ftp.kaist.ac.kr/pub/gentoo/"
2.6 Update system
Since our original system is somehow outdated, we need to update
it. First run emerge --sync or emerge-webrsync
-v to synchronize portage, then run the following suites of
commands (we need the -p argument to check what the commands are
supposed to do since they're somehow "dangerous"):
emerge -uDNpv world
emerge -uDNv world
emerge --depclean -pv
emerge --depclean -v
revdep-rebuild -pv
revdep-rebuild -v
Caveat: if you encounter circular dependency when
emerge -uDNv world, try to remove gtk USE flag
from /etc/make.conf. After successful emerging, add
gtk flag again and run emerge -uDNv world again.
After update, run dispatch-conf to update the
configuration files (you need to avoid the update of
/bin/setfont. If you accidentally updated the file, you can
remedy the situation as discussed below):
Caveat: if during booting, you meet the error
message putfont: PIO_FONT: Function not supported
, Solve the
problem as follows (as discussed here):
First, run command mv /bin/setfont /bin/setfont.old
Create a new file /bin/setfont with the following content:
bash
if ! uname -r | grep -q -e "-co-"
then
/bin/setfont.old $@
fi
and make it executable by running chmod +x /bin/setfont
3. Run X
X.org is already installed in coLinux machine when we update the
system as discussed in section 2.6 (we have include X USE
flag). Therefore the remaining steps are just to install X server in
Windows host.
We choose Xming considering it is lightweight and widely used. To
install Xming, Download Xming
installer, font
installer and Xming-tools-and-clients. You
may use Xming-mesa
installer to replace Xming installer for stable OpenGL operation (only
do so if you meet problems with Xming installer).
My settings during installation of Xming are as follows:
- Xming
- Destination directory: changed to c:\bin\Xming.
- Xming-fonts
- Destination directory: changed to the same directory as
Xming (c:\bin\Xming)
- Fonts to be installed: select according to your own taste.
- Xming-tools-and-clients
- extract the zip file of
Xming-tools-and-clients to the directory where Xming is installed
(c:\bin\Xming in this case).
Settings on Windows host
For file x0.hosts in Xming directory, make sure the IP
address of coLinux machines (192.168.0.20) is added.
If you want to run the tools and clients bundled with Xming in
Windows host, you need to type set DISPLAY=127.0.0.1:0 in
your Windows host.
Following steps are used to enable Windows fonts to be used by X
application. This step is optional.
Open a command prompt window, change to directory
c:\bin\Xming, and type the following commands:
mkfontscale C:/WINDOWS/Fonts
mkfontscale -b -s -l C:/WINDOWS/Fonts
Make sure that directory C:\Windows\Fonts appeared in the
file font-dirs in Xming directory.
On coLinux machine
Add the following line into /etc/profile.
export DISPLAY=192.168.0.1:0
After start Xming (preferably to start it automatically when
Windows start), you can simply invoke any command inside Linux console
like:
xterm &
4. Miscellaneous
Change host name
According to Gentoo
Handbook.
Edit file /etc/conf.d/hostname, if you call your coLinux
machine as tux, then set the following line.
HOSTNAME="tux"
Edit file /etc/conf.d/net, if you call your domain as
homenetwork, then set the following line.
dns_domain_lo="homenetwork"
Remove string .\O from file /etc/issue to get rid
of the annoying unknown_domain in the welcome message "This
is host.unknown_domain ...".
Create regular user accounts
With the following command, I created a new user named foo as a
powerful user (with the ability to su to root and also invoke some
portage related commands). Pleas substitute foo above with
your desired user name.
useradd foo -m -G users,wheel,portage
passwd foo
Access Windows folder
When we edit gentoo.conf above, we have already enabled
coLinux to share folder c:\linux. To make our regular user to access
this directory in Linux, edit file /etc/fstab and add the
following line:
cofs00 /home/foo/windows cofs uid=foo,gid=foo,dmask=0755,fmask=0644 0 0
The above line will enable the Windows folder to be shared in Linux
as a folder /home/foo/windows. You can modify above line for your own
user.
Additional programs
Following is a list of commands to install my own favorite
programs. Your situation would be of course different.
emerge gentoolkit slocate
echo "dev-lang/erlang hipe" >> /etc/portage/package.use
emerge aspell ruby sbcl erlang dev-util/git maxima
emerge inkscape blender xscreensaver
emerge mozilla-firefox
emerge xlsfonts xfontsel
Before emerge texlive, I have to add a bunch of keywords
for dependencies in /etc/portage/package.keywords as
follows.
app-text/texlive ~x86
app-text/texlive-core ~x86
dev-texlive/texlive-metapost ~x86
dev-texlive/texlive-basic ~x86
dev-texlive/texlive-documentation-base ~x86
dev-texlive/texlive-psutils ~x86
dev-texlive/texlive-langcjk ~x86
dev-tex/cjk-latex ~x86
dev-texlive/texlive-documentation-english ~x86
dev-texlive/texlive-genericrecommended ~x86
dev-texlive/texlive-latexrecommended ~x86
dev-texlive/texlive-latex ~x86
dev-texlive/texlive-texinfo ~x86
dev-texlive/texlive-latex3 ~x86
dev-texlive/texlive-htmlxml ~x86
app-text/jadetex ~x86
dev-texlive/texlive-fontsrecommended ~x86
app-text/dvipdfm ~x86
dev-texlive/texlive-documentation-chinese ~x86
dev-texlive/texlive-langmanju ~x86
Use CVS version of Emacs
Run the following commands:
echo "app-editors/emacs-cvs ~x86" >> /etc/portage/package.keywords
emerge emacs-cvs
If you want to use this bleeding-edge version only, you
can uninstall the previous version of Emacs (if you have installed)
and type:
echo "virtual/emacs ~x86" >> /etc/portage/package.keywords
Otherwise (i.e. you have multiple versions of Emacs), when you
emerge packages requiring Emacs, a stable version
(e.g. v22.1) will be installed. For the multiple-version-installation,
you can use eselect emacs list to see a list of available
version. To use Emacs 23 just installed, you can type eselect
emacs set emacs-23. For details, please consult here.
Emacs extensions
I run the following commands to install a few Emacs
extensions. Note that in Gentoo, many extensions (e.g. those related
to development) are automatically installed for you when you emerge
the related tools and enable emacs USE flag.
echo "app-emacs/gentoo-syntax ~x86" >> /etc/portage/package.keywords
echo "app-emacs/imaxima ~x86" >> /etc/portage/package.keywords
emerge htmlize imaxima app-emacs/gentoo-syntax keywiz
Enable SSH server
You may want to enable SSH access to your coLinux machine. There
are some benefits. Examples are shown below (assuming PuTTY is
used):
- More flexibilities to configure the client (e.g. pretty fonts)
and nice scrollbars.
- The title of PuTTY indicates what coLinux is doing (such
information might be useful during a long emerge process).
To start SSH server, type the following commands.
rc-update add sshd default
/etc/init.d/sshd start
When you use PuTTY client, you should fill 192.168.0.20
as the host address to utilize the high speed internal connection.
GTK configrations
Change the default GTK+ font. Edit file ~/.gtkrc-2.0, add
the following line, and change the font name and size to your
preferred one.
gtk-font-name = "Arial 15"
Mount CD
Simply type the following
# mount -t iso9660 -o ro /dev/hdc /mnt/cdrom
Final Words
coLinux is an interesting way to run Linux applications in Windows
host. One drawback of coLinux is that the daemon process is pinned to
one processor only. This avoids some bizarre issues, however it does
not utilize the potentials of modern multi-core systems. This is
disappointing especially for a Gentoo user who requires lots of
computation power. Hope the situation could be improved in the
future.
Update: please refer this post on how to enable sound.
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