back to article Hyper-V telling fibs about Linux guest VMs

If Microsoft's Hyper-V was found to treat Linux guests as second-class citizens, the resulting storm of controversy would probably generate enough heat and light to make a dent in some climate change models. So there are probably a few brows being mopped down Redmond way this week over this knowledge base article titled “ …

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  1. Cirdan
    Headmaster

    FUD

    A culture of FUD.

    Marketing depends on FUD.

    (OH NO, they might run out of the eyeFone 13s before I get mine! How many do they have left? Should I get an extra for my girlfriend while I'm in line... I don't think they'll have any tomorrow.)

    The "Call to Action" (yes, there's a marketing term for that) is usually about a great time- or quantity-limited deal that you'll regret missing... SO ACT NOW!!!

    Be aware of it...it tries to bypass your neocortex.

    ...Cirdan...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: FUD

      Apple have gone out of their way to not run out of new iPhones for years now and always have the latest models in stock in their stores. You may not be able to get them on contract for a week or two, but you can always get hold of one if you want it. Perhaps a more up to date analogy is in order?

  2. A Long Fellow

    FUD like it's 1991!

    It's déjà vu all over again. See Graham Lea's article from 15 years ago in a newish, youngish, website that was just starting to rake up the muck:

    http://www.theregister.co.uk/1999/11/05/how_ms_played_the_incompatibility/

    The article quotes Brad Silverberg: "What the guy is supposed to do is feel uncomfortable, and when he has bugs, suspect that the problem is dr-dos and then go out to buy ms-dos."

    The coy, "Hah, hah, just kidding!" from Microsoft will do nothing to appease the PHB standing over your shoulder when that little warning appears.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    So,

    Which error messages represent real problems and which do not? Gee, to avoid any future confusion, maybe you should just run Windows on Hyper-v. You know, just to be sure....

    1. plrndl
      Linux

      Re: So,

      Maybe you should just run Linux on Google/Amazon clouds.

      1. RAMChYLD

        Re: So,

        Or maybe you should run Window$ inside KVM on a Linux server instead. Or a VMWare ESXi server (which is based on Linux and is free for up to 3 physical servers)...

        And only then if you really need Window$ Server for some weird proprietary enterprise software.

  4. Goat Jam

    I make it a point to avoid all MS products. It's the only way to be sure.

    1. John Sanders
      Mushroom

      I may say "nuke them from orbit". It's the only way to be sure.

  5. Lusty

    Looks to me like they are saying the team writing the linux tools are not keeping up with the Hyper-V guys. Since it's MS writing these tools they could quite easily update all of the tools each time Hyper-V changes surely?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      No, the team writing the Hyper-V tools are up to date and are part of the Hyper-V team. It is the Linux manufacturers that lag behind in merging the updates to the Integration Tools into their releases. As it mentions in the Microsoft statement.

      1. Mystic Megabyte
        Windows

        "No, the team writing the Hyper-V tools are up to date and are part of the Hyper-V team. It is the Linux manufacturers that lag behind in merging the updates to the Integration Tools into their releases. As it mentions in the Microsoft statement."

        In other words, Microsoft keep moving the goalposts to ensure a constant level of FUD.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        > It is the Linux manufacturers that lag behind in merging the updates

        That depends upon whether MS:

        a) Informs RHEL (and others) about changes it is going to make so that when MS releases them everybody can be in sync.

        b) Release changes then informs RHEL so that RHEL (and others) are constantly behind.

        I suspect b) but am quite happy to admit to not knowing.

      3. Mad Mike

        @AC

        "No, the team writing the Hyper-V tools are up to date and are part of the Hyper-V team. It is the Linux manufacturers that lag behind in merging the updates to the Integration Tools into their releases. As it mentions in the Microsoft statement."

        Unfortunately, you're making the mistakes of trusting what Microsoft says. Any virtualisation product that expects every client to always be at the highest level of integration tools is living on another planet. There are a huge number of reasons why this will never be the case. We have products that stipulate the exact version and patch levels that are supported as far as the O/S is concerned, so we can't necessarily just put higher versions of things like integration tools onto them. It breaks the application support model.

        Also, why is this happening on Linux clients (or maybe non-MS) only? Surely, some people have run a Microsoft O/S without the highest/right level of integration tools? Wouldn't that get the same message? This all sounds very FUD like. Mind you, it's not really surprising. After all, if you buy a virtualisation product from a company that also sells O/Ss, what would you expect. A good reason to stay with anybody but MS if you ask me.

      4. John Sanders

        It is the Linux manufacturers that lag behind... (Bollocks)

        Load of bullcrap.

        MS has never produced a tar file that works (One that works reliably that is) with the latest version of the drivers, like others vendors do.

        MS Treats any non MS product like second class citizens.

        1. Mad Mike

          Re: It is the Linux manufacturers that lag behind... (Bollocks)

          @John Sanders.

          "MS Treats any non MS product like second class citizens."

          To be fair, I'm not sure they're singling out non-MS products. They seem little better at supporting some of their own!! Maybe it's just general incompetence?

      5. Lusty

        So why wouldn't the tools be available as a package to update for Red Hat? Surely if VMM tells you the tools are not up to date there should be a link to the package containing said tools. That's nothing to do with Red Hat since it's Microsoft's package!

      6. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        > It is the Linux manufacturers that lag behind

        AnCon, you're talking bollocks out of every orifice in your body, as usual. I suggest you (and Microsoft) take a look at how VirtualBox does it.

        Apologies everyone else for the rudeness.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Linux

    Allow me to translate

    While the market has forced us to acknowledge that OSs other than Windows exist, and that you use them, we will continue to ensure [administer electric shock now] that you understand that only running Windows [administer chocolate now] is really the right thing to run. Oh, and we also resent having to make up some bizarre story about our tactics on this [administer shock now.] But still, you're starting to feel better about how we treat your silly ideas of running Linux aren't you? [nod head sympathetically now.] Ah, what's the point [keep the shock button pressed now]

  7. Decade
    Trollface

    Who expects Microsoft software to run flawlessly?

    even if “... a certain non-Windows guest has integration services that were based off earlier Hyper-V protocols, the guest is expected to run flawlessly on newer Hyper-V releases.”

    Oh, like anything that Microsoft produced has "run flawlessly." What universe are these people writing from?

    1. southpacificpom
      Linux

      Re: Who expects Microsoft software to run flawlessly?

      Who in their right mind would use that product anyway?

  8. John Sanders
    Unhappy

    First hand experience here with Linux in Hyper-V

    MS treats Linux guests like 3rd class citizens.

    I still remember when the MS drivers for RH/CentOS 6 showed the hard drives twice, one with the wrong geometry and another with the right one.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: First hand experience here with Linux in Hyper-V

      > I still remember when the MS drivers for RH/CentOS 6 showed the hard drives twice,

      > one with the wrong geometry and another with the right one.

      Well, it's good to provide choices. :-)

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Oh,

    "non-Windows guest integration services may not always have the code to interoperate with the latest Hyper-V protocols."

    Which is why I run Windows and Linux on KVM.

  10. saif

    A tiger never changes its spots

    Microsoft has a history of this kind of behaviour, deliberately crippling cross platform compatibility. Producing error messages that alarm users hoping to use non-MS products is certainly not new... avid reg readers will recall http://www.theregister.co.uk/1999/11/05/how_ms_played_the_incompatibility/

    and making people attempting to use Linux VMs uncomfortable clearly a key objective

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    And this is why people buy VMWare products...

    No-one in their right mind would use HyperV, especially running a mixed o/s environment.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: And this is why people buy VMWare products...

      And why run Linux under windows anyway? That I do not understand.

  12. James Boag

    Fud

    Here in the North East of Scotland FUD is an insult.

    Just putting that out their for you all !

    1. STGM

      Re: Fud

      Which when using that meaning (by adding an 's' to the end of the abbreviation for the grammararians) generally makes articles/comments more entertaining. The first comment on this article being a fine example.

  13. pyite

    It's not done 'til Lotus won't run

    They have a long history of this kind of passive-aggressive treatment.

    For the longest running example, if you have a Linux partition in your system Windows still shows it as "Unknown" -- even though the 82 partition type code has been in use for 20 years.

  14. Gordon 11

    That's a bug. not a feature...

    “... it is safe to ignore these messages because Hyper-V protocols are implemented to be backward compatible ...”

    So, the message is actually a bug, and should be fixed in the next patch update (tomorrow?).

    Anyone taking bets on that happening?

  15. Hans 1

    >“... it is safe to ignore these messages because Hyper-V protocols are implemented to be backward compatible ...”

    Is it me or is there something fishy in this sentence ? The protocols are implemented to be backwards compatible, however, when they encounter a previous release of the software, the log errors like mad ... Yeah, at MS we have just redefined the meaning of backwards compatible.

    In fact, I'm sure this is just a bug they will fix ... time will tell.

  16. Virtual PC Guy
    Boffin

    Behind the scenes

    While I do enjoy reading the comments - let me explain a bit of the behind the scenes stuff.

    Letting people know that they have the *right* version of the integration components installed inside a virtual machine is quite important. First, it helps users avoid a number of common problems - second, it helps avoid a huge annoyance. That is the annoyance of hitting a problem, calling Microsoft support, and having them say "please update your integration components before we do anything else".

    To this end - we have spent a chunk of time trying to make sure we detect when the wrong version of the integration components are present - and do as much as we can to indicate what is happening.

    The problem is that all of our systems for doing this are built around the Windows integration components - which ship as part of the host operating system. This means that they are versioned along with the host operating system, and we can just check their versions against the host operating system version. This story is completely different for Linux. The Linux integration components ship as part of Linux. They have a completely different versioning and release system to the Windows integration components.

    The unfortunate result is that you can have a Linux guest operating system that has the right components installed, with all the necessary functionality - but Hyper-V is confused about the support stance.

    The primary reason why we published the document that is being referred to in this article is so that users would not be "given the run around" if they called up Microsoft support when running a Linux guest with the latest integration components.

    Hopefully, this is something that we can handle better in the future.

    Cheers,

    Ben (Hyper-V Program Manager - A.K.A. Virtual PC Guy)

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