Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] vmware image?

[Michael Dickens]

On May 3, 2007, at 10:30 PM, Clark Pope wrote:
> Now that the vmware player beta supports USB2.0 for the USRP has  
> anyone built a vmware image with gnuradio + gEDA + SVN, etc.?

I have an Ubuntu Edgy Eft VM for VMWare with GNU Radio from SVN  
installed; it's a little out of date, but it works and can easily be  
updated (I'm doing that right now).  The virtual HD is 8 GB, but that  
could be reduced easily to save on size (I just copied it from  
another install that -did- require about 8 GB of HD space).

I don't have gEDA installed since it doesn't seem critical to GNU  
Radio compilation or execution.

I like using the VM: it's greatly convenient to for testing simple  
things such as the look of a GUI between (in my case, natively on)  
OSX, Linux (32-bit), and Windows (32-bit).  Also: I've never gotten  
into 64-bit OS, but that could be done in VMWare as well since it  
supports both 32- and 64-bit computing (while the other competing  
programs do not, or so the reports state) ... can be useful for  
debugging those darn lib64 versus lib issues that pop up on the list  
every now and then.

In testing, USRP <-> USB2 <-> GNU Radio does provide 32 MBps r/w, so  
that's not a limiting factor.  CPU speed is good (claim 95% of full  
rate), and disk I/O is OK (using the virtual HD as a native-OS file;  
supposed to be almost "full speed" when using an actual partition of  
disk dedicated to the VM).

The primary down-side is that graphics display update rates aren't  
great - this providing most of the slow-down when running GNU Radio  
GUIs that otherwise look and work well on their native platforms.

It's quite simple to make and pass along the files for a VMWare  
player for GNU Radio, though I don't know how large the resulting  
directory will be (after tar and bzip2) ... but it's a thought for  
quickly getting folks up and running in GNU Radio w/o all the hassle  
of installing libraries and such, making sure the USRP is recognized  
by udev, etc...

Also, where to host the VM tarball? - MLD