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Developing inside a virtual machine

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Re: Developing inside a virtual machine

#121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you share more info on your MacOS VM setup? I’ve managed to set one up precisely once with proxmox, and getting iCloud/imessage to work required me to contact Apple support

I used Kholia's scripts[1] on Qemu with Virsh. I didn't have much trouble other than some SELinux permission issues which I resolved quickly. iCloud/imessage have always been finicky with Hackintosh, but in my experience setting the correct serial number with appropriate Mac model is the key to resolve those issues. With just couple of years of Hackintosh scene left before support for x86 Macs are dropped completely,…

Even a VM will stop working soon as Intel support is removed from the OS and apps start demanding newer OS versions.

Or is it possible to emulate Apple Silicon on a VM now?

Re: Developing inside a virtual machine

#123
post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bun package manager (compatible with NPM) doesn't execute any code during package installation.

Except you "need" things like postinstall lifecycle hook for some things. So you add the specific package you wanna download to trustedDependencies (like you'd need to do with node-sass for example), and then we're back to it executing code after downloading, making compromises to upstream dangerous again. A lot better than npm that lets any package run postinstall for sure, but as always there are no silver bullets.…

It allows you to separate these steps and only execute the unsafe ones in a container but not having to do everything in there.

Thanks for mentioning the default list! Good point.

Re: Developing inside a virtual machine

#124
post #122

Consider using tailscale drives to expose certain folders using webdav. Have been doing this for de containers and VMs since it got demoted and since has replaced using winscp or other ways to share files

Just trying this out and it seems amazing so far. Thanks for the tip!

Re: Developing inside a virtual machine

#125
post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Or maybe IT departments are always ran by clueless fools, who knows? I think IT has its fair share of clueless fools, but what I've noticed is that when the "security department" is separate, people there tend to have no idea what they're talking about and rely on checklists. Plus, "everybody uses X, that means we're missing out".

Corporate IT security seems to be mainly about checklists and compliance, not about actual security.

There's no reason to do anything else. Nobody has gone to jail as of yet for not securing their company, and even "security" companies that get utterly popped still have plentiful business a year later.

There is no legal incentive to do good security. There is no market incentive to do good security. Why is it so surprising to people that we have abysmal security?

Re: Developing inside a virtual machine

#126

You can use pbcopy/pbpaste in a Linux VM on Mac by making a shell script wrapper in the VM that calls “ssh mac-host pb{copy|paste}” - that is, basically ssh back from the guest to the host to use its clipboard. It’s seamless and fast since it’s basically a local network connection. My specific setup is that I use an authorized_keys entry on the host that restricts the guest to running a specific command, which limits…

iOS devices share a clipboard with macOS. It would be cool if that could be implemented on Linux.

Re: Developing inside a virtual machine

#127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was thinking of doing something similar, especially since work mostly insists on running Windows. Do you use conferencing software or such from the VM? If so, how's the performance?

I started working from home around 12 years ago and have been using this setup in various incarnations. I experience zero issues related to running work from inside of a VM. I work for an MS Shop, so we are using teams. The main issue with my setup is that VMware or Windows 11 (my host OS) can't use the GPU when rendering the UI of the VM (I'm not sure if VMware or MS is to be blamed or both) despite having a discret…

Weird, I pass through a dGPU for work VM sometimes on Win10/11 @ 2K without much memory usage except I don't use MSTeams but it doesn't surprise me that it needs 60GB RAM nowadays.

I'm jealous of your system's 256GB, my memory controller looks to max at 128GB but it's kinda old now (DDR4).

Re: Developing inside a virtual machine

#128
post #5

I do something similar but using WSL on Windows. But something I really, really hate is dealing with special certificate handling required to pass the corporate Zscaler proxy. I think it works somewhat transparent on the Windows host, but repeating the setup in every VM is such a pain.

Given how much you hate it, any chance you documented how you did it?

All you really need to do is install the zscaler cert in the appropriate trust store.

It’s really a 1 step process in your dockerfile or other location.

Re: Developing inside a virtual machine

#129

You can use pbcopy/pbpaste in a Linux VM on Mac by making a shell script wrapper in the VM that calls “ssh mac-host pb{copy|paste}” - that is, basically ssh back from the guest to the host to use its clipboard. It’s seamless and fast since it’s basically a local network connection. My specific setup is that I use an authorized_keys entry on the host that restricts the guest to running a specific command, which limits…

> I use an authorized_keys entry on the host that restricts the guest to running a specific command, which limits what a compromised guest can do to the host. The command is set to a script that has a list of specific permitted actions.

That’s a neat trick, thanks for mentioning this.

  command="command" ssh-ed25519 ...
would be the authorized_keys entry and I’m guessing the script would read the SSH_ORIGINAL_COMMAND environment variable to determine which action was intended.

Re: Developing inside a virtual machine

#130
post #126

You can use pbcopy/pbpaste in a Linux VM on Mac by making a shell script wrapper in the VM that calls “ssh mac-host pb{copy|paste}” - that is, basically ssh back from the guest to the host to use its clipboard. It’s seamless and fast since it’s basically a local network connection. My specific setup is that I use an authorized_keys entry on the host that restricts the guest to running a specific command, which limits…

iOS devices share a clipboard with macOS. It would be cool if that could be implemented on Linux.

Linux had this for more than 10 years with KDE Connect phone app. KDE connect has a bunch of other neat tricks, like letting you phone act as a touchpad for your computer .
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