World: r4wp

That would double the size. Not good for a download :-)

no, the second time around, I put the cd on the second controller

The VMDK is good, though. Although it's a VMware format, QEmu can 
use that. That's why we always had VMware images in the past

but vmw workstation wouldn't let me put the hd as first dev on first 
controller with the cd as the second device

OVF seems to standardise all the settings that usually didn't transfer, 
so that's good

We're hosting on Amazon S3 and several other places. I appreciate 
the Box.net offer, but it would just complicate our infrastructure 
further. A lot of our time over the years has gone to managing that, 
so I am firm on simplifying things

np - wasn't trying to push it for any personal benefit - just thought 
you might be interested in any free, significantly sized offline 
storage. Most of the other free ones are only around 5 GB

although I think MS also has 25 GB or so with SkyBox

I understand, my only issue is with our management effort

can anyone see if this link to the VM works? It's hosted on SkyDrive

http://sdrv.ms/R8dxBA

It wants cookies and it says it will then use my Live ID, which I 
don't have

I'm not sure if the link allows you to download the file, or only 
to view it on SkyDrive

haven't used SkyDrive so I don't know my way around sharing stuff

Weren't you going to put it on Box.net?

they have a 100 MB file limit - dumb

at least for the free account

Yeah, I saw that. Wouldn't be of much use to us then, either

Putting it on a Windows site where you need to log in would offend 
a large part of our audience

sure, I'm hoping you don't need to - did you try and it asked for 
creds?

there's different kinds of sharing - so I'm just trying them out

I'd have to give it cookies first to find out for sure. Don't want 
to do that, either

This is the kind of trouble we get when taking extra infrastructure 
onboard

let me see if I can find some place like depositfiles - though the 
free downloads usually involve a countdown timer

dropbox is good for just giving a link with no hassle, but I only 
have 7 gb there and most is used up

That all sucks. This is why we're using S3. All under our control

they don't have the 100 mb limit like box does, though

how large is the image?

about 140 MB

I tried it on anothe computer and it seems you do need to sign in 
- I thnk I left this checkbox checked to allow editing the file, 
though - maybe that's why

Is that uncompressed?

no, compressed

well, the vmdk is just a little bigger - about 148 MB

What sort of compression?

7zip

like your other archives, no?

Yes. However, the standard CD is 93 MB. The VM shouldn't be much 
bigger

Did you install multiple times over the same image?

no

Hm, there's a serious inefficiency in there somewhere

this was a fresh VM - nothing else installed

Odd. This is another reason that the creation of our distributions 
is quite critical. Our existing VMware image is 55 MB, although that's 
for Syllable 0.6.6, which was smaller

when you create the disk, there's an option to pre-allocate it - 
I chose that (the size had was a 1 GB disk). Not sure if that would 
make a difference as to how small it would compress

Skydrive needs a Live ID to download a publicly shared file? That's 
hilarious. I should buy Dropbox shares (if I had the money). :-)

I can try again with a disk that is not pre-allocated

Could be, if it doesn't zero-fill it

no, I think I just shared it with the option to edit

Qtask also needs cookies to get into a public file listing

(If only Dropbox had public shares ... :)

creating the VM again without pre-allocating the disk to see if it'll 
compress more