Parker: Casino Verite on Linux

[Cacarulo]

> My primary laptop is a Toshiba PIII 650 Mhz
> w/320 MB RAM. Okay, it's not exactly state
> of the art, but I hate to spend a lot of
> money on laptops because they generally only
> last a couple of years before I manage to
> destroy them.

> The install was painless. I installed qemu,
> plugged the laptop into my LAN, and copied
> the hd.img file onto my home directory on
> the laptop hard drive. I didn't even have to
> reinstall the apps.

> Everything works, but it is reallllly
> slooooow. Even with the speed parameters
> maxed out, Casino Verite takes about 5
> minutes to boot and is slow, although not
> unplayable. CVCX also takes time to load,
> and it takes 3 or 4 seconds to register when
> a parameter is changed when viewing one of
> the canned sims. I didn't even think about
> trying to actually run a sim with it.

> Looks like it's upgrade time. :-)

Before doing the upgrade I'd try to start everything from scratch instead of using an SO that was installed for a different architecture.

Cac

[Cacarulo]

> I got the same error. Since I consider W98
> inherently insecure and incapable of being
> made secure, and because the only thing I
> will use this for is running CV, CVCX, BJRM,
> etc., I don't want it anywhere near my
> network, so I just ignore the error message.

> That being said, if you must access the
> network from W98, try something like this.

> "tun" is a kernel module that is
> some sort of virtual network card driver.
> Check for /dev/net/tun to see if you have it
> (If you're running Mepis, you don't have
> it). If not, you will need to do something
> like this (as root):

> ~# mkdir -p /dev/net
> ~# mknod /dev/net/tun c 10 200
> ~# modprobe tun
> ~# echo 'tun' > /etc/modules

> Then you'll need to change permissions so
> you don't have to be root to write to it:

> ~# chgrp users /dev/net/tun
> ~# chmod g+w /dev/net/tun

> tun won't run a DHCP server so you need to
> assign IP's so the Linux system can act as a
> gateway:

> ~# ifconfig tun0 10.0.0.1 up

Unfortunately when I get to this point it fails. Don't know why.

Sincerely,
Cac

> Then you'll need to go into Windows
> Networking configuration, turn off DHCP, set
> the IP for 10.0.0.2 or some such, and set
> the gateway to 10.0.0.1

> Finally, you'll need to configure iptables
> to allow IP masquerading and IP forwarding,
> something like:

> ~# iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o eth0 -j
> MASQUERADE
> ~# echo "1"
> >/proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward

> Warning: I wrote the above mostly off the
> top of my head and have not tried any of it,
> since as previously mentioned I have no
> interest in getting Windows to network. It
> is quite likely that I got something wrong
> and/or left out something important. In
> other words, I have no idea if any of this
> will actally work, so use it at your own
> risk. :-)

> Speed is acceptable. I cranked up the speed
> settings on Casino Verite, and it definitly
> will go considerably faster than I can
> count. :-)

> The animation is not as smooth as when
> running under native Windows, but I can live
> with it. I think this is because qemu
> emulates a Cirrus CLGD 5446 PCI VGA card,
> which isn't exactly a high-end video card,
> to say the least.

[Parker]

> Unfortunately when I get to this point it
> fails. Don't know why.

> Sincerely,
> Cac

Note that "tun0" is "tun(zero)" not "tun(letter O)"

Does it give you an error message?

[Parker]

> Before doing the upgrade I'd try to start
> everything from scratch instead of using an
> SO that was installed for a different
> architecture.

Hmm. It seems to me that it shouldn't make any difference, since qemu was installed natively, I'm running the same version of qemu on both boxes, and the virtual architecture is the same.

However, I'm still very much a newbie when it comes to emulation software, so your suggestion is definitely worth a try.

[Cacarulo]

> Note that "tun0" is
> "tun(zero)" not "tun(letter
> O)"

> Does it give you an error message?

Yes, the message is the following:

SIOCSIFADDR: No such device
tun0: ERROR while getting interface flags: No such device
tun0: ERROR while getting interface flags: No such device

Cac

[Trapper]

> (If you're not running Linux and/or have no
> interest in doing so, you can skip this one.
> Otherwise, read on.)

There is a version of QEMU available for Mac OS X so it could be a solution for Mac users who want to run CVBJ. I think it is listed as experimental for the Mac but it might work. Of course there is also Virtual PC which is supposed to be faster than QEMU at this time. I suspect neither would run CVBJ very well with a G3 or G4 with less than a 1GHz processor. I know with my G4 450 MHz and VPC 6, CVBJ is pretty much unusable.

QEMUX

[HarleyKrishna]

> There is a version of QEMU available for Mac
> OS X so it could be a solution for Mac users
> who want to run CVBJ. I think it is listed
> as experimental for the Mac but it might
> work. Of course there is also Virtual PC
> which is supposed to be faster than QEMU at
> this time. I suspect neither would run CVBJ
> very well with a G3 or G4 with less than a
> 1GHz processor. I know with my G4 450 MHz
> and VPC 6, CVBJ is pretty much unusable.

I'm running CVBJ 3 on a 667mHz G4 Powerbook using VPC 7 with XP Pro installed and it runs great. You have to adjust XP to run for best performance, and allot VPC 352 mb RAM and 8mb VRAM.
I have the VPC application installed on the Powerbook HD, but installed XP Pro on an external 7200 rpm firewire drive.

I don't usually have any other apps open when runnig VPC, but I was playing it a little while ago with iTunes crankin out some Blue Cheer (talk about a distraction while trying to keep count) and it ran fine.

What I like about VPC is when you quit it saves the PC's state, so you can stop in the middle of a session and pick up where you left off later.

[id]

> Yes, the message is the following:

> SIOCSIFADDR: No such device
> tun0: ERROR while getting interface flags:
> No such device
> tun0: ERROR while getting interface flags:
> No such device

> Cac

Make sure the tun module is loaded.

lsmod | grep tun

if you haven't rebooted you will need to insmod it. If you have rebooted check to see if it is there in dmseg, or if it had an error.

[Cacarulo]

> Make sure the tun module is loaded.

> lsmod | grep tun

> if you haven't rebooted you will need to
> insmod it. If you have rebooted check to see
> if it is there in dmseg, or if it had an
> error.

The tun module is perfectly loaded. Here is the grep:

tun 3712 0

dmesg:

Universal TUN/TAP device driver 1.5 (C)1999-2002 Maxim Krasnyansky

Don't know where the problem is.

Sincerely,
Cac

[id]

> The tun module is perfectly loaded. Here is
> the grep:

> tun 3712 0

> dmesg:

> Universal TUN/TAP device driver 1.5
> (C)1999-2002 Maxim Krasnyansky

> Don't know where the problem is.

> Sincerely,
> Cac

does 'ifconfig -a' show it as a device? If not make sure that the proper /dev/tun0 or /dev/net/tun0 entry is there.

[Trapper]

Are you running in OS X or System 9? I have heard VPC is quicker with System 9. I was running the CVBJ demo with Windows 98, VPC 6 and OS 10.3.9 (not able to boot in OS 9 at this time). I would imagine that XP Pro would be slower. Good to hear that you are having no problems. I should probably allocate more memory to VPC and try it again.

[Cacarulo]

> does 'ifconfig -a' show it as a device? If
> not make sure that the proper /dev/tun0 or
> /dev/net/tun0 entry is there.

No it doesn't show it but the "proper" /dev/net/tun was already created with mknod /dev/net/tun c 10 200.
Also, I've created a tun0 in the same way.
BTW, my Mepis 2004 is running a 2.6.7 kernel. Should I do an update? Do I need udev instead of devfs? Problem with udev is that it requires a kernel >= 2.6.8.

Sincerely,
Cac

[HarleyKrishna]

> Are you running in OS X or System 9? I have
> heard VPC is quicker with System 9. I was
> running the CVBJ demo with Windows 98, VPC 6
> and OS 10.3.9 (not able to boot in OS 9 at
> this time). I would imagine that XP Pro
> would be slower. Good to hear that you are
> having no problems. I should probably
> allocate more memory to VPC and try it
> again.

I'm running OS 10.3.9. If I remember correctly VPC 5 ran slow on OS X, but they fixed it with VPC 6.
I've never been a fan of Windows 98. Try running VPC with Win 2K if you have a copy.
If you're thinking of running XP Pro I can send you a list of my settings.