I’d forgotten that I had signed up for the JoliCloud1 Beta a couple of months ago when I was trying to decide on a Netbook vs. a MacBook. Apple won and Steve has my money, but I got my JoliCloud Beta invite a couple of days ago.
The OS still looked cute and highly polished, if only in a GUI way. So I decided to try it out. Virtualization for the win!
Problem: Most Virts don’t like USB keys, at least not for booting. And that is precisely what JoliCloud needs. A bootable USB key.
Solution: After trying a variety of solutions with minimal success I found that the IMG file that you get from JoliCloud, you do have beta access right?, is a bootable HDD file that VirtualBox will recognize. So here are the steps I took:
- Downloaded JoliCloud Beta Image File
- Downloaded and installed VituralBox (Google It, I’m lazy…)
- Created a new VM in VirtualBox
- Assigned HDA to use the JoliCloud Beta Image File, set this to be the boot disk
- Created a new Disk (HDC) for installation
- Booted the VM
- Ran JoliCloud in ‘Live’ mode
- Played, installed some apps etc…
- Used the built in installer and chose HDC as the destination. Defaults all around.
- Shutdown the VM
- Removed the two HDDs from the profile.
- Assigned HDA to use the old HDC file.
- Turned on the VM and it booted perfectly.
Pretty simple really. Glad I thought of it!
Really tho, VirtualBox, while nice is painfully slow. If you want to try out JoliCloud, build the USB key, walk into a BestBuy and reboot a machine into it. That is the only way to test it’s speed etc. Just don’t install it onto the store’s netbooks. It’s not nice to tease the GeekSquad nerds.
