Windows Test Systems for MoinMoin-Developers/Testers?

As some of the MoinMoin (Windows) users might have noticed, although MoinMoin runs on Windows, it is rarely tested on Windows by the developers and testers.

This is simply for the reason because most of them use Linux, *BSD or Mac OS X as their preferred platform and often do not even have Windows installed.

As we use Python for MoinMoin, this is usually not a big issue, because it usually works independently of the platform, but for some cases this doesn't help:

• Windows sometimes has issues (in the OS) not seen on any other platform.
• Some stuff only exists or behaves differently on Windows:
  • e.g. Active Directory + the usual AD structure
  • IIS Internet Information Server
  • IE Internet Explorer
  • Some plugins for multimedia.
  • Windows ports of other software (Apache, mod_wsgi, whatever).

Thus, it might be beneficial for the state of "MoinMoin on Windows", if developers and testers had easy access to some Windows machines without having to buy a license, installing it and caring for it themselves.

How could it work?

Assuming you want to support us that way, you could do it like this:

Server: Windows Server (2003 or 2008 preferably, should have Active Directory service)

Client: Windows XP Pro or Windows 7 Pro (Pro needed for AD Domain Member feature)

General:

• please only use legal software / licensing:
  • maybe you have some unused licenses
  • maybe you want to sponsor some licenses for that purpose
• the windows test client should be an AD domain member of the windows test server
• connect the machines to the internet somehow
  • we need to reach them using RDP (Terminal Service Client) and/or VNC and/or http(s)
  • connection should be fast enough to allow doing remote work
• our access should be Administrator level, so we can create more accounts, install stuff we need, etc.
• after reaching some initial installation state, please make an image backup of the machine (or backup the VM files)

Important:

• make sure that no matter what happens on these machines, it would not influence your other IT infrastructure, your data, your privacy
  • do not use machines in your intranet, but rather machines in the DMZ or outside your network
  • of course do not use production machines, these should be test machines with no other purpose
• of course we would not willingly do something bad, but OTOH noone of us would like to be in suspicion in case anything bad happens on these or other machines at your site

What does the sponsor get?

You likely already got it: MoinMoin under GPL license.

MoinMoin is free software developed and tested by volunteers, thus we can't promise anything specific.

OTOH, if you make it easy for us to test and develop on windows, we might even do that every now and then.

We do not promise to do any specific amount of windows related testing or development. Please regard the windows test machine access as a donation you give to moin developers and testers.

Questions / Comments / Suggestions / Offers?

• As most MoinMoin developers are not familiar with the Windows offers, they might not have noticed the Evaluation Virtual Machines list at: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/bb738372.aspx

• They may then try to run these VHDs into the following hypervisors:
  • in Sun Virtual Box
  • by using VMware Converter

  • by installing the free HyperV Server located at: http://www.microsoft.com/hyper-v-server/en/us/how-to-get.aspx

• Intereresting. Where's the catch (except for the 180days server / 90 days client period)? Did you try it on VirtualBox?

• The catch is in the license : "Thou shall not use them as a production server"
  • More specifically the FAQ says:

    Q.  Can I take a VHD available from the VHD catalog and use it in production in my organization?
    A. No, The VHDs are intended to be used only for evaluation and test purposes.

• Using HyperV 2008R2-created-VHD in Virtual Box 3.1.2 was done by:
  • creating the new virtual machine in Sun Virtual Box
  • checking the "Enable IO APIC" option. This is needed because the ACPI option shown by the VirtualBOX BIOS is not the same as the MS Virtual BIOS, and the Windows HAL is not the same for both cases .

    • See here for the gory details: http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Migrate_Windows

  • In the VirtualBox Wizard, finally importing the VHD file.

  • neither win7 vm nor win srv 2008 r2 vm starts for me. first just hangs, second tells no OS found. any hints?

    • I checked the Windows 2008 R2 VHD against one of my own created VHDs from the standard Windows 2008 R2 ISOs. The Microsoft VMs use non fixed size VHDs, resulting in FATAL ERROR: No boot medium found error.

    • One solution seems to be to use the VHD -> RAW -> VDI conversion round trip as described here: http://www.sevenforge.com/2009/02/04/virtual-pc/

      $ qemu-img convert -O raw start.vhd intermediate.bin
      $ vboxmanage convertdd intermediate.bin final.vdi
      $ vboxmanage modifyvdi final.vdi compact

    • Under Windows, there's a tool to convert from dynamic to fixed type here: http://vmtoolkit.com/files/folders/converters/entry87.aspx

      • But you're ending up with huge files. Potentially the Windows 2008 R2 test machine needs 127GB.

• Converting a real physical Windows 2003 32-bit machine to run it on a 64-bit Virtual Box was even successful by creating a VHD with disk2vhd from http://technet.microsoft.com/en-gb/sysinternals/ee656415.aspx and applying the above method.

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