Mac OS/X, Virtual PC 6, Oracle, and Cygwin/X - a tale

[Dr Robert Young <rcyoung at aliconsultants dot com>]

Well it is possible to get cygwin/X running on Virtual PC 6.1.1 under 
Mac OS/X 10.3. There are some  tricks (simply to make it work, and to 
preserve your sanity......all Windows OSs are NOT created equal), so 
please  bear with me while I provide some "color" to my tale.....

Now, you may ask why anyone would want to get this combo working on a 
Macintosh Powerbook G4 running OS/X 10.3.5? You can get X windows for 
OS/X directly.

However, the world is populated by Windows machines, and as a database 
consultant, I have to access a multitude of client sites "remotely" 
since travel is not an option for a myriad of reasons. That means you 
enter the world of VPNs, which are in heavy use today, and getting more 
common by the minute. And the world of VPNs is dominated by Windows 
software ( NOT the VPN that you  get w/Windows direct from Microsoft, 
but the proprietary ones like Contivity, Cisco, Avaya, etc). Further 
VPN's do not "like" to be installed on the same machine as other VPN's 
( these things do not "play well" together), so if you are working with 
3-4-5 customers and all the associated VPN software is from different 
vendors...well you can see the problem even if you don't toss in the 
point that I wanted to use my Mac that I had already paid for with hard 
earned, cold, unadulterated CASH.

That was my original motivation for getting Virtual PC...so one could 
use the Windows VPN software to access the client sites, by defining 
"multiple" virtual PCs each with their own software installed for a 
specific customer, and do it all from (1) laptop..... AND IT WORKS!

The next issue came from Oracle Corporation ( remember I make a living 
as a database consultant). On Unix (Sun, HP, AIX, Linux) the Oracle 
installer is the "Universal Installer"...ie it is  a java based & 
X-based. Character based telnet installs are not a real option anymore, 
much to the telecommuter's regret.

That means I needed to come up with a means of running remote X-apps, 
through the client's VPN under Windows, but (in my case solely as a 
matter of personal preference) on a Macintosh OS/X system. There is now 
a version of Virtual PC for Windows letting you define multiple Win 
OS's on the same Intel platform ( I do, in fact,  have an older Compaq 
laptop ), but that means I have to by a newer Intel based laptop with 
more disk & memory & the Win Virtual PC software, and I didn't want to 
spend the $$$ there.

Enough of the "tedious" background...but you do now have a good feel 
for the situation....


I looked at several commercial Windows X servers (since I had to use 
Windows based VPNs) , and all would run under Virtual PC but in true 
Murphy's form, each had its own "problem" with the Oracle Universal 
Installer...fonts, missing buttons, etc. The glitches were well 
documented around the various Oracle www sites, but no real good 
solutions were available unless you could get a customer to change 
their X client setup "just for you" ( not a point you really want to 
ask a paying customer), upgrade their Oracle site-wide ( only a few 
hundred thousand dollars for that one), or  you could find V6 of the 
'X' server software (which was now on V12..lotsa luck on that one). 
Then I came across cygwin/X...

Now I like free software in my business, it allows me to spend more 
money on my hobbies. So I downloaded cygwin/X onto two different 
Virtual PC setups...one is Windows 2000, the other is Windows 98SE.

In the case of the basic cygwin, one has to increase the environment 
space for storing PATH information, etc. Once that was done, cygwin 
would come up under both Windows OSs, but it was much slower under Win 
2000.

Next I needed the X software running. For each Windows OS, I tried 
startxwin.bat & startxwin.sh. Sorry to say, these were a no go. The "X" 
showed up in the task bar, but no xterm was generated, and no X app 
would display. I should not say they never worked, startxwin.bat did 
work completely (1) time in 5 days of trial and error...but it never 
repeated.

So then I went back an extra step.. to the cygwin admin window and 
entered....

xinit -- -kb

and IT WORKED! It worked on both OSs, but it was much ...much faster in 
Win 98SE.  This was with the VPN running ( my only immediate need is 
for the Avaya VPN, but I plan to test it with some of the others as 
well at a later date).

After the xterm appeared, I started the Oracle Installer on the remote 
Sun system using

ssh -Y username@host  /usr/openwin/bin/xterm

and then from the Sun xterm, I could run the Installer ( I could have 
run it directly from ssh, but after the install you usually have to 
check some things, so I wanted a xterm window ready, willing, and 
able), and it displayed back on the Mac WITH NO VISIBLE PROBLEMS.

So, cygwin/X now lets me run the Oracle software, displayed back to my 
existing Mac, without having to purchase either a commercial Windows X 
server ( around $300), or buy a another laptop ($1,000-2,000).

And that is the end of my tale....


________________________________________________________

Dr. Robert Young
WWW: http://www.aliconsultants.com




________________________________________________________

Dr. Robert Young
ALI Database Consultants
1151 Williams Dr
Aiken SC 29803
USA

WWW: http://www.aliconsultants.com
Tele: 1-803-648-5931
Toll free in US: 1-866-257-8970 Fax:1-803-641-0345
Email: rcyoung@aliconsultants.com
"Source of Rdb Controller, software for database analysis &  
performance tuning"