My team is developing an application that needs to work on multi-platforms (linux [32/64], windows [32/64]), and involves 3D-rendering (OpenGL). We want to automate our tests, using a server, with an nvidia board.
We've tried to use Xen Server (Free Edition) to virtualize all platforms we want to test, but we weren't able to make the virtual servers to work with the nvidia board. Then we did some tests with VirtualBox, but it's 3D acceleration didn't work well for our purposes.
Now we are thinking about install all OS's in the server, as a multi-boot configuration. Does anyone know of some solution that allows remote control of this server, so we can remotely boot and reboot it, with the OS of our choice? In this way, it would be easy to automate the test process on all platforms.
I'm also open to other possible solutions.
Best Answer
If you use grub for your boot loader, when you're ready to switch to the next OS you can change the grub.conf to have a different default boot partition and then on reboot it will go to the next OS. On windows you would have to install the ext2 driver but that's not too hard.