[TriLUG] TriLUG Digest, Vol 869, Issue 1

[John Brier]

> Message: 5
> Date: Sun, 18 Oct 2009 08:28:26 -0400
> From: Randy Barlow <randy at electronsweatshop.com>
> Subject: Re: [TriLUG] Netflix streaming through guest OS?
> To: Triangle Linux Users Group General Discussion <trilug at trilug.org>
> Message-ID: <4ADB09EA.4000203 at electronsweatshop.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
> John Brier wrote:
>> The system is basically headless and X less so I was
>> thinking of running virtualbox in a vnc session.. is there a way to
>> run virtualbox w/o X? It would be nicer I think.
>
> Yes, you can most definitely run VirtualBox in headless mode.
>
> http://www.google.com/search?q=virtualbox+headless+mode

Just to follow up on this, I did do this and VBoxHeadless works for
this. I  couldn't figure out a way to manage the guest  so it started
on boot nicely except to put the command in /etc/rc.local

Anyway the actual Windows XP VM was too underpowered to play video
smoothly with playOn. My host was a Debian 5.0.1 Athlon 64 3200+ with
2 GB memory. I gave the windows guest 1 GB of memory and playon
claimed the CPU was not adequate (it has a little color coded rating
red/yellow/green) The CPU was listed as yellow. also, fwiw playon has
a minimum requirement of 512 MB of memory.

My system doesn't have virt extensions, I imagine if it did the guest
might perform well enough. I may have to upgrade my router/server to
accommodate this in the future. Hope this helps others.

John Brier