Category: VMware

Microsoft FUD that idiot’s writing a story about …

This is a total load of FUD. Like most of the comments here, I must agree. Even WHEN this so-called HyperV does come out, it still will lack the features that VMware currently HAS! If you’re already running VMware, why would you DOWNGRADE!? If you’re not, why would you adopt an UNPROVEN LOSER 1.0 release!? Just like a lot of people are upgrading from Vista to XP, people will be upgrading from HyperV to VI3, which will be 2 years OLD by the time HyperV comes out. VMware stays atop for at least 5 years as nobody comes close just yet.

Here’s the story:
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/m … teid=yhoof

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Analyst Mumbo Jumbo about Red Hat

Quote:
Ahead of the Bell: Red Hat
Monday December 10, 8:08 am ET
Jefferies & Co. Analyst Downgrades Red Hat on Challenges From Competing Technology

NEW YORK (AP) — A Jefferies & Co. analyst downgraded Red Hat Inc., saying competing technologies are nabbing market share and could hurt profit growth, as the software maker deals with rivalry by making acquisitions.

Katherine Egbert in a client note cut her rating on Red Hat to “Hold” from “Buy” and reduced her target price to $19 from $23.

Red Hat will have to work to diversify its business away from its Red Hat Enterprise Linux products, which are based on open-source software, Egbert said. That’s because newer virtualization technologies, which allow businesses to use different computer operating systems on a single server, are replacing Linux servers as companies work to cut costs, Egbert wrote.

Often new servers are shipped with a key competing product from VMware Inc., which is cutting into Linux market share, she added.

But Red Hat is diversifying through acquisitions and could step up this process, Egbert said, which could eat into earnings potential.

This is total bullshit for lack of a better term. What in the hell does VMware have to do with Red Hat? They are new and coming into the Virtualization space! VMware actually allows OS vendors to sell more licenses!

Let’s see here “virtualization technologies, which allow businesses to use different computer operating systems on a single server, are replacing Linux servers as companies work to cut costs” … what the fuck!? So you’re running different operating systems … what operating systems might they be? Windows (costs money), more Linux? Probably! They’ll be running other operating systems … just less computers!

Anyone else with any input on this?[ad#ad-1]

quick deploy of VMs from – linked clones from 1 base disk

test_list.txt needs the names.

for i in `cat /tmp/test_list.txt`

do mkdir /vmfs/volumes/46a50aa4-65c3bb7e-d6d2-0014221878f9/$i; cp /tmp/sample.vmx $i/$i.vmx

echo “displayName = $i”>> /vmfs/volumes/46a50aa4-65c3bb7e-d6d2-0014221878f9/$i/$i.vmx

vmware-cmd -s register /vmfs/volumes/46a50aa4-65c3bb7e-d6d2-0014221878f9/$i/$i.vmx

vmware-cmd /vmfs/volumes/46a50aa4-65c3bb7e-d6d2-0014221878f9/$i/$i.vmx createsnapshot $i “linked clone to gold disk- DO NOT DELETE VM\!”;done

So in this case here, I have all of the names of the VMs I wanted in test_list.txt. I have a copy of /tmp/sample.vmx – it’s just a basic vmx file with the UUIDs, etc removed, so it would generate a new one. I then give the name of the vmx, the display name, register the VM, and create a snapshot, so that powering up and using the VM won’t mess up all of my other VMs that use the same underlying vmdk.

quick way of setting up NTP on your ESX host.

You can just copy/paste the following lines:

esxcfg-firewall -e ntpClient

echo “server clock.redhat.com” >> /etc/ntp.conf

echo “clock.redhat.com” > /etc/ntp/step-tickers

/etc/init.d/ntpd restart

chkconfig ntpd on

Just replace clock.redhat.com with your NTP server. If you want more than one time server, just echo the lines more. Use >> for the step-tickers line to append rather than overwrite.

How to get tcpdump from Virtual Switches in ESX 3

1) Install VMware-esx-supptools-3.0.0-1.i386.rpm from the ESX 3 cd.

2) You can then run “/usr/lib/vmware/support/esxnet-support man” and learn how to use the tool, but …

3) To get a trace from the portgroup, you’ll need to run:

/usr/lib/vmware/support/esxnet-support trace -z -p Network0

Network0 of course will need to change to your portgroup name.

Another thing you can do is create a portgroup and put it in promiscuous mode. Then, run tcpdump in that guest that’s in that portgroup.

How to install VMware Tools in Trustix Secure Linux

How to install VMware Tools

This is taken from: http://www.trustix.net/wiki/index.php/VMwareTools

How to install VMware Tools

This has (so far) only been verified to work on VMware Workstation v5.5 and a TSL 3.0 installation with the following groups installed: “Minimal with SSH”, “Commonly used local utilities” and “Commonly used network utilities”; a typical, almost minimal, TSL system.

Required packages

You need the following packages installed on the system to get VMware Tools to compile the needed modules (other packages may be installed due to dependencies):

make
gcc
glibc-devel
kernel-source

All in one using swup:

swup --install make gcc kernel-source glibc-devel

n.b. –ignore-filter may be required on TSL 2.2 to allow kernel-source to be installed.

Configure kernel-source

VMware tools won’t compile if you have not configured and prepared the kernel-source.

  • The kernel-source installs itself in /usr/src/kernel-source-<version>. You should link this folder to /usr/src/linux:
cd /usr/src
ln -s kernel-source-<version> linux

We also need to copy the kernel config file into our kernel-source:

cp /boot/config-<version> /usr/src/linux/.config
  • Lets prepare the kernel-source for VMware Tools:
cd /usr/src/linux
make oldconfig
make modules_prepare

n.b. With TSL 2.2 use ‘make dep’ in place of ‘make modules_prepare’.

Install VMware Tools

Having your TSL 3.0 installation active, release the lock (CTRL+ALT) and go to the menu and choose:

VM -> Install VMware Tools..

Mount the virtual CD-ROM containing the VMware tools and install the rpm there. Then unmount it.

mount /mnt/cdrom
rpm -Uhv /mnt/cdrom/VMwareTools-<version>-i386.rpm
umount /mnt/cdrom

Compile and configure VMware modules for TSL

To finish the VMware Tools installation we run the VMware tools configure script and it will compile the VMware Tools modules:

vmware-config-tools.pl

Answer yes to all questions and all but the X Windows display driver is configured. See below for X Window driver support.

Optimized network driver – VMXnet

When TSL 3.0 was installed as guest OS it found and installed the pcnet32 driver. You could stick with it, but I would recommend you change it for the optimized vmxnet driver which was just compiled. The following instructions are displayed after vmware-config-tools.pl finish to help you replace the network driver:

service network stop
rmmod pcnet32
rmmod vxnet
vi /etc/modprobe.conf /etc/mkinitrd/modules <-- change vmnics to vmxnet
tsl-fixboot.sh --install <kernel-version>
depmod -a
modprobe vmxnet
service network start

X Window

You need the following packages installed to have the X Window driver compile (other packages may download and install due to dependencies):

xorg-x11
xorg-x11-devel

As always, you may install them all in one using swup:

swup --install xorg-x11 xorg-x11-devel

Now run vmware-config-tools.pl again to compile the svga driver:

vmware-config-tools.pl

NB! You may get a warning about not being able to compile the vmxnet driver. Just ignore that. You already have it installed if you followed the instructions above.

Please note, this will only give you a minimalistic xorg-x11 without gnome or another DE/WM. I would recommend you check out the Desktop Environment section to get a fully working and useful desktop.

If you get the error when compiling the tool: “The kernel defined by this directory of header files does not have the same address space size as your running kernel.”

The way I fixed it was just by using a newer version of VMware-tools. I used the source from ESX 3.0 and you can search on the web and you should be able to find it.

lost vmfs volume – says 100% available – SAN LUN, storage pr

1) fdisk -l

this would show which device doesn’t have a partition.

2) dd if=/dev/sd(x) of=/tmp/dump_sdx.txt count=100 bs=1024

file /tmp/dump_sdx.txt shows x86 boot sector.

strings /tmp/dump_sdx.txt shows some vmdk files

3) fdisk -lu /dev/sd(x) shows that there are no partitions on the disk.

4) ran fdisk /dev/sd(x). created new partition spanning entire lun and then used partition type fb.

5) run “vmkfstools -V”

That’s it

Synchronizing with time server: [FAILED]

ntpd: Synchronizing with time server: [FAILED]
Starting ntpd: [ OK ]

When does it do the sync?

# Synchronize with servers if step-tickers exists

# or the -x option is used
echo -n $”$prog: Synchronizing with time server: ”
/usr/sbin/ntpdate $dropstr -s -b -p 8 $tickers 2>/dev/null >/dev/null
RETVAL=$?
[ $RETVAL -eq 0 ] && success || failure It does the sync when the /etc/ntp/step-tickers file is there. [root@localhost ~]#

cat /etc/ntp/step-tickers
time.vmware.com

Why would this happen? Strange stuff…

[root@localhost ~]# /etc/init.d/ntpd stop
Shutting down ntpd: [ OK ]
[root@localhost ~]# ntpdate time.vmware.com
28 Jun 10:49:44 ntpdate[25663]: step time server 10.16.12.148 offset 90.895171 sec

The ntpdate command doesn’t fail … wonder why… tail /var/log/messages shows:
Jun 28 10:52:31 localhost ntpd: ntpd shutdown failed
un 28 10:52:31 localhost ntpdate[26038]: can’t find host time.vmware.com
Jun 28 10:52:31 localhost ntpdate[26038]: no servers can be used, exiting
Jun 28 10:52:31 localhost ntpd: failed
Jun 28 10:52:31 localhost ntpd[26043]: ntpd [email protected] Wed Nov 17 15:43:55 EST 2004 (1)
Jun 28 10:52:32 localhost ntpd: ntpd startup succeeded

Can’t find host? Why’s that? Let’s try using the IP address instead of the name in the step-tickers file. Well, the IP address fixes it in Redhat Enterprise Linux 4, but I had this problem with ESX server (based on Redhat 7.2).

The problem was
[root@localhost ~]# file /etc/ntp/step-tickers
/etc/ntp/step-tickers: ASCII text, with CRLF line terminators The file was a DOS file. When the problem was in ESX, I was able to see the ^M character in /var/log/messages, so I was able to fix it after finding that. Fun stuff huh?

How to get USB devices to work in Linux or the ESX console

Here is how I’ve gotten a couple of cdroms / usb memory sticks / hard drives to work.

1) modprobe usb-ohci
Or
modprobe usb-uhci
(one of them should work, one may fail)

2) modprobe usb-storage

3) tail /var/log/messages
Or
dmesg
and you should see something like this:
Feb 8 14:50:56 supp15 kernel: Initializing USB Mass Storage driver…
Feb 8 14:50:56 supp15 kernel: usb.c: registered new driver usb-storage
Feb 8 14:50:56 supp15 kernel: scsi1 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
Feb 8 14:50:56 supp15 kernel: Vendor: SanDisk Model: Cruzer Mini Rev: 0.4
Feb 8 14:50:56 supp15 kernel: Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 02
Feb 8 14:50:56 supp15 kernel: VMWARE SCSI Id: Supported VPD pages for sdb : 0x1f 0x0
Feb 8 14:50:56 supp15 kernel: VMWARE SCSI Id: Could not get disk id for sdb
Feb 8 14:50:56 supp15 kernel: :VMWARE: Unique Device attached as scsi disk sdb at scsi1, channel 0, id 0, lun 0
Feb 8 14:50:56 supp15 kernel: Attached scsi removable disk sdb at scsi1, channel 0, id 0, lun 0
Feb 8 14:50:56 supp15 kernel: scsi_register_host starting finish
Feb 8 14:50:56 supp15 kernel: SCSI device sdb: 2001888 512-byte hdwr sectors (976 MB)
Feb 8 14:50:56 supp15 kernel: sdb: Write Protect is off
Feb 8 14:50:56 supp15 kernel: sdb: sdb1 Feb 8 14:50:56 supp15 kernel: scsi_register_host done with finish
Feb 8 14:50:56 supp15 kernel: USB Mass Storage support registered.

4) Now that we know that it’s sdb1,
Create the mountpoint directory:
mkdir /mnt/usb
Mount the device:
mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/usb

That’s it. Your files should be in /mnt/usb. To check, just run ls /mnt/usb

In a case that you don’t have /dev/sdb1 there, which is what happened to me once with a Dell CDrom, I had to mknod the device.
After plugging the usb cdrom into the machine, /var/log/messages showed:

date hostname kernel: sr0: scsi3-mmc drive: 10x/10x cd/rw …..

Unfortunately, if you type: “mount /dev/sr0 /mnt/mountpoint”, it will say:
“mount: special device /dev/sr0 does not exist” and that doesn’t do us any good. So what I did after that was:
cd /dev
mknod sr0 b 11 0

With that, /dev/sr0 existed and hence I was able to run:
mount /dev/sr0 /mnt/mountpoint

or, I could run:
ln -s /dev/sr0 /dev/cdrom
and run:
mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/mountpoint

That’s it!