[clug-talk] Emuators/VM's

[TekBudda]

TekBudda wrote:
> We are looking for a more effective way of testing images before
> deploying them out in to the world & besides imaging the actual
> hardware, I am not sure if ther is anyway to do this.
> 
> I had suggested VM's to people but that will only let you emulate
> ertain types of hardware IIR.  I then had the thought of using an
> emulator...similar to products out there for WIndows Mobile for
> example, where you can test your app on a software mockup of that
> device.  I hope I am explaining that right?
> 
> So apart from that can any suggest anything else or maybe where mght
> find emulators of that ilk.  I have though of the obvious bit of
> actually contacting the manufacturers, but I amnot even sure they have
> anything like that.

We are looking to emulate as close to an actual physical box from a 
manufacturer.  For example: An Acme Model 123 which x HDD, X RAM , X 
GPU, etc.

Whether this is done in an emulator or a VM doesn't really matter, but I 
am thinking the machine it is pretending to be needs to be customizable.

Esseentially, we deply out machines to sites & they are one of maybe 3 
models of hardware from the same manufacturer and instead of carrying 
around an actual physical box to each site, it would easier to carry 
around a laptop that we could build a VM based on a site specific image 
to test that image for any problems.  At the end of the pre-visit, we 
kill that VM (or whatever) & go off to the next site.  At the core the 
physical machines are basically the same but with some variances in 
things like HDD, RAM, GPU & a card reader.  Ther are also a couple 
laptops as well.  If the solution could ape a Mac box (preferably PPC & 
Intel) that would even better.

It is an idea that sprung up from a meeting today to make our jobs 
easier.  Having seen this is the mobile world (i.e. Emulators for an HP 
iPaq 1234 running WIndows Mobile 6, etc.) that people will test their 
apps against.

I hope this clears things up a bit.