I had that rare feeling of a project being truly done. My pi-server-vm tool, built with an AI co-pilot, worked perfectly on my Windows machine. To prove it was cross-platform, I did a final test on a fresh Ubuntu install.
It didn't just fail. It exploded.
I have to tell you, I don't have much experience lately on Linux. It was many years ago I configured a linux server.
The first error was a cryptic VMX root mode failure. The AI suggested the fix was in the BIOS, and after a bit of playing wack-a-mole, I found the setting. It was already enabled. That was the first sign this was going to be a long day.
The real culprit, as the AI eventually helped me diagnose, was a conflict with Linux's native KVM hypervisor. Even on a fresh install, it was active and had locked the hardware. We blacklisted the kernel modules and the VM finally booted. Victory?
Not quite. Now my Remote Desktop connection to the Linux host was dead. It turned out that a previous attempt to fix VirtualBox had ripped out a shared library that the RDP server needed. Another fire, another fix.
The final boss was the networking. The simple Bridged Adapter that was the core of the project refused to work. The VM was invisible to my network. The AI proposed a complex two-adapter (NAT + Host-Only) setup. It was a clever, technical solution, and we spent a good while implementing it before I realized it was also completely wrong. It solved the local discovery bug but violated the project's main goal: the VM had to be on my main network.
The AI is a fantastic tool, but it has no common sense. It will happily build a beautiful bridge in the wrong direction. My job was to be the architect who remembered where we were going.
We scrapped the complex workaround. The real fix, after all that, was to completely and cleanly reinstall VirtualBox using the official Ubuntu package. That was it.
The journey was a painful reminder that your development environment is your project. But it was also a perfect test of this new human-AI partnership. I provided the experience and the direction. The AI provided the instant commands and diagnostics. Together, we put out the fires.
The project is now truly cross-platform. And the setup guide is a lot more realistic. Sometimes, you have to watch your project burn down on a new platform to know how to build it stronger.
Top comments (1)
Made me think of that classic “works on my machine” meme while reading your post. Good one, by the way