Nowadays it's almost impossible to do good work without using VM's. However they tend to get big, so it is difficult to share them with other people. Here are a couple tips to get you going.

1. Use 7zip to compress and split them. Split them to about 650 Megs, i.e. size of CD. 7zip takes longer to compress than winzip, but the file sizes are about 35% smaller. When it comes time to upload or download the file, this will pay off in spades. Here is the link: 7zip

2. Now most Oracle employees are behind a firewall that doesn't let them connect to port 22 on outside servers. Port 22 is secure telnet port. The way to get around this is to connect to the 'clear-guest' wireless network in your office. For this you'll want a laptop ( so you have wireless access ), and call reception, they change this password daily. The main use for this wireless networks is for visitors to Oracle who need temporary access to the internet, but not to the Oracle network.

3. Now I upload my vm's to a public website using ssh (which uses port 22) and rsync. The nice thing about rsync is that is picks up where it left off if it stops halfway. If you want to upload files to my server, email me the request, you can find me on aria 'Fenton Travers'

I recommend downloading and installing cygwin. When you do make sure to add the rsync and openssh packages to the install list, and while you are there might as well download xwindows too. Here is the link: Cygwin. If you have issues write them here and I'll watch this page and post a fix.

4. Now go the directory, inside of cygwin, to the folder where you have kept the files. To get to your c: drive use:

cd /cygdrive/c

You can use 'tab' to autocomplete directory and file names, like in regular unix shell.

5. Now use rsync to upload the files that are in your current folder with the commands below.

Command format:

rsync -avP --stats [files to upload] [username]@[hostname]:[remote directory]

username: spiceman
hostname: spicevan.com
password: ( email me to get it )

for example:

rsync -avP --stats red_hat_ucm10gR3_image.part*.7z spiceman@spicevan.com:/home/spiceman/vm_images