[nos-bbs] Virtual Machine JNOS

[Barry Siegfried]

["Bill Vodall WA7NWP" <wa7nwp at gmail.com> wrote]:

> > Has anyone got multiple jnos running on one host?
>
> Another virtual application is running JNOS with a Virtual network
> device on a pure windows system.  I believe that will present a clean
> network interface card to NOS and finally resolve the shared network
> access issue.

A DOS virtual machine under Microsoft VMware for Windows does this
nicely.  VMware uses the same network card as the Windows host does
but VMware changes the MAC address so that there is no ARP conflict
whatsoever with the Windows host.  W8GHZ has been doing this very
successfully at his QTH.

Also, the SwsVpkt packet driver (in which you cannot change the MAC
address) will work ok for xNOS in a Windows DOS VDM without the shared
network card issue if you use it on a second ethernet card and disable
the native Windows TCP/IP stack on that second card.  VE2PKT has been
doing this very successfully at his QTH.

I have personally done neither of these things yet.

Since the mid-1990s, I have been running multiple instances of xNOS
in DOS VDMs using an OS/2 Warp platform.  Each instance of xNOS gets
its own network card.  I have also more recently been running xNOS
under Windows using the SwsVpkt packet driver in a DOS VDM but I have
been sharing the network card with the native Windows TCP/IP stack
and I modified xNOS to co-exist peacefully with it.  It has full
network IP connectivity *except* to its Windows host which is fine
for the way I happen to use xNOS in this environment.

Running multiple instances of xNOS gives me the ability to isolate
and modularize their services and network functions.  This way, if
one virtual xNOS machine goes down it doesn't take down all of my
services and network functions along with with it.  This is one of
the big drawbacks of trying to force a single xNOS program do
everything you need.  I prefer to throw more hardware at my services
and network functions and separate them into individual xNOS programs
rather than cram them all into a single xNOS program which must then
run under an operating system like Linux in order to have enough memory
to include everything I want.

By using the "distributied services and network functions" model, the
DOS memory model becomes much less of a limitation for me and is why
I have been able to enjoy the continued use of this environment for
all these years.

73, de Barry, K2MF >>
           o
          <|>      Barry Siegfried
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