The Design and Implementation of laffer1

I purchased a copy of VMWare Fusion 3 for my iMac today.  In the past, I've used Parallels for intel Macs.  While there are a few features I miss, I must say that VMWare is quite fast.  I haven't found a way to run concurrent VMs like Parallels can do, but I don't use that feature often anyway.

I have not tested it with Windows yet.  Most people use it for accessing their bootcamp partition or running Windows applications.  I use it to test MidnightBSD software and to work on ports.  I have a real PC for windows.  

The updater is nice and it has tools for Windows, Linux, Solaris and FreeBSD.  I can't get the FreeBSD tools to install under MidnightBSD.  There are many levels of OS version checks and I'm missing one somewhere.  X.org worked perfectly under MidnightBSD 0.1.1 i386.  I'm updating to current now.  

The networking code works really well.  It seems much more stable so far.  I'm running on Snow Leopard.

I've had mixed feelings about VMWare products in the past.  The windows versions have caused BSODs on me.  Recent versions of VMWare player have been a lot more stable and based on that I decided to give it a shot for my Mac. I've also used quite a few of their free products over the years.  Lastly, I found that Parallels hasn't been innovating much and also not putting enough testing time into other OSes.

I bought a new HP server for hosting my websites and email.  I've spent the last day trying to get the system into shape to run MIdnightBSD current.  So far, the NIC isn't supported, the DVD-ROM drive causes some issues with shutdown in "Compatibility mode", I have to disable turbo mode to avoid an inturrupt storm (Xeon 3430), and some of the CPU features aren't detected properly.  Since, 0.1.1 couldn't boot and 0.2.1 amd64 wasn't working well, I had to partition from 0.2.1 and then run a current live cd, copy some files with cpdup, and then chroot it and run make buildworld to get it ready to go.  

At this point, I'm running with USE_MPORT_TOOLS and starting to install ports.  Chris's mport tools have been working pretty well on my desktop; I figured it was time to run them on the server.

The system currently only has 2GB of RAM, but I figure I'll be upgrading that later this year.  I bought a SSD last month for the OS boot drive and the 160GB drive is for /home and swap.  I considered var on there but since i only run email on it, i figured it would be tight but OK.  

The CPU is awesome.  I've been pro AMD lately, but I must say this Intel chip is quite nice.  I'm glad Caryn talked me into it.  

I've found a number of bugs with MidnightBSD while installing the OS on the server so far.  I've got a lot of work ahead of me.