There’s a very annoying bug with UltraVNC on Windows in which shutting down a (local) Virtual Machine on VMware Server will cause it to immediately disconnect a VNC’ed client. Not only that, it will then enter into an endless loop that terminate any further attempts to connect.

Not such a big deal you might say; well, try that on a headless server with no monitor or keyboard in sight.

Well, stop snickering will you. Yes, I run a headless Virtual Machine on Windows XP using VMware. In fact, I run two. And they run so stably I actually saw a spike in my electricity bill last month. Ouch.

But why not run it on Linux or some other uber-geek OS? Well, that would be another article for when I’m not so pressed for time as I am now. But I’m a realist, and suffice to say that Windows XP is actually quite secure behind a NAT’ing firewall, fully patched and running without any client-interaction (i.e. headless) to trigger off the plethora of IE/GUI bugs.

There you go. Well, looks like VMware finally got updated properly now. I need to go back to installing Solaris 10. Oh yes, just to whet you appetite some, I am actually half-way through an article about the (in)security aspects of Wi-Fi.

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