Utah Open Source Planet

Based on a request in the Ubuntu Tutorials Forum I spent some time this morning researching VMware Server on the new Ubuntu 8.10 release.  Google was quickly helpful, and I was able to get VMware Server 1.0.7 running on a fresh install of Ubuntu 8.10 “Intrepid”.  Here are the steps I took toward getting this installed and working.

Download the dependencies and components

You’ll need to, of course, download the VMware Server .tar.gz file.  This can be done using this command:

wget -c http://download3.vmware.com/software/vmserver/VMware-server-1.0.7-108231.tar.gz

There is also a patch to get this to compile properly.  VMware has regularly been guilty of not keeping up with the latest kernels.  This patch will help correct this problem:

wget -c http://www.insecure.ws/warehouse/vmware-update-2.6.27-5.5.7-2.tar.gz

And the one last thing we’ll need are the compiler tools, which can be installed using this command (or click the package name to use aptURL):

sudo aptitude install build-essential linux-kernel-headers xinetd

Now that we have all of the dependencies and archives downloaded we can unpack them.  In the same location where you downloaded the .tar.gz files (likely your home folder or Desktop), run the following command:

tar xf vmware-update*.tar.gz
tar xf VMware-server*.tar.gz

Installing VMware Server 1.0.7 + patch

We’ll now start the installation.  First we need to install the core vmware application.  We’ll then patch the configuration script, and configure the system.

cd vmware-server-distrib/
sudo ./vmware-install.pl

On my installation I used the defaults until it asked me if I’d like to run the vmware-config.pl configuration script.  At this point select [no].

Once this has finished and you’ve quit at the configuration option, use these commands to patch the config:

cd ../vmware-update*/
sudo ./runme.pl

This script will patch the configuration and then again ask you to run the vmware-config.pl configuration script.  This time around select [yes].  On my installation I selected the defaults for the remaining questions and my installation works fine.

Good luck.  Any issues, give the Ubuntu Tutorials Forum a try.

Other Points of Interest

• October 30, 2008 — Ubuntu 8.10 “Intrepid Ibex” Released (3)
• October 26, 2008 — Five Tips to Prepare for Release Day! (2)
• October 24, 2008 — 8.10)”>Upgrading Using the Alternate CD (8.04 -> 8.10) (2)
• October 23, 2008 — 8.10)”>Upgrading Using the Alternate CD (8.04 -> 8.10) (2)
• October 23, 2008 — 8.10)”>Network Upgrade for Ubuntu Server (8.04 -> 8.10) (3)
• October 20, 2008 — 8.10)”>Network Upgrade for Ubuntu Server (8.04 -> 8.10) (3)
• October 20, 2008 — 8.10)”>Network Upgrades for Ubuntu Desktop (8.04 LTS -> 8.10) (6)
• October 20, 2008 — 8.10)”>Network Upgrades for Ubuntu Desktop (8.04 LTS -> 8.10) (6)
• October 20, 2008 — Ubuntu 8.10 “Intrepid” Upgrade / Install Series (3)
• May 1, 2008 — “Ubuntu on the EeePC” : OpenWeek Presentation Went Well (7)
• October 22, 2008 — 8.10)”>Network Upgrade for Kubuntu Desktops (8.04 LTS -> 8.10) (3)
• June 8, 2008 — 8.10)”>Network Upgrade for Kubuntu Desktops (8.04 LTS -> 8.10) (3)
• June 8, 2008 — KVM and Virt-Manager On Ubuntu 8.04 (11)
• June 7, 2008 — How To Install VMware Tools on Ubuntu 8.04 Guests (17)

I want to thank everyone for the great feedback that I got on the poll regarding what you’d like to see on this site.  I think the results are pretty clear, although some of them did surprise me.  For those that haven’t taken a look at the results they are as follows:

Gnome Desktop Tips : 221 votes

Virtualization Topics : 163 votes

Installation & Upgrade : 163 votes

Security Related :152 votes

Ubuntu Server : 152 votes

3D Effects : 117 votes

Getting Involved : 69 votes

KDE Stuff : 65 votes

If you’d still like to voice your opinion the poll is still up for another day.  You can also comment on this post if you’d like to see topics not listed in the current poll.

I will try to keep these results in mind going forward.  I have seen website traffic go up recently, and I’m glad to see people are interested and coming to read the site.

A new poll will be starting July 1 so please come and give me your feedback at that point.

Related

• Gnome and Nautilus Keyboard Shortcut Keys
• At-A-Glance System Monitoring With Panel Applets
• Adding Custom Icons and Disabling Desktop Icons In Gnome
• Tunnel Web and DNS Traffic Over SSH
• Adding Weather and Locations To Your Desktop Clock
• Ubuntu Tutorials Poll: What Would You Like To See?
• Enable The Nautilus Advanced Permissions Dialog In Ubuntu 8.04
• KVM and Virt-Manager On Ubuntu 8.04

You’ve been seeing a lot of virtualization specific posts recently here at Ubuntu Tutorials.  I’ve been tinkering with a number of virtualization options, namely VMware Server, Virtualbox and now KVM with Virt-Manager.

I’m not going to go into comparing the three in this post, but I will say that KVM is the only solution that will let me run 64bit guests on my 64bit host.  It also cleanly manages networking, whereas VirtualBox still has issues there.  KVM is still fairly new however so the UI features are not as nice as the other two.

Installing The Packages

Assuming your machine will support KVM (generally, core 2 duo and later) lets get the right packages installed.

sudo aptitude install kvm virt-manager libvirt-bin

This will install the Virt-Manager graphical interface for creating and managing your virtual installations.  It’ll also install the kernel module to make use of the KVM instruction set and the libvirt library.

Initial Setup

Once you’ve got the right packages installed you’ll need to give yourself access to the KVM device.  This is done simply enough using:

sudo gpasswd -a username libvirtd

This will require you to logout and login again.  When you get back we’ll get Virt-Manager launched and some virtual machines built.  Go ahead, relogin.  I’ll wait…

Running Virt-Manager

Virt-Manager is a nice kvm/qemu/xen management interface developed by the good folks at RedHat.  This utility makes it really easy to create, manage and delete virtual installations.  You can launch Virt-Manager via the command line, or the Applications menu.

virt-manager

Troubleshooting

If you have VirtualBox installed you may run into conflicts between the kernel modules.  Make sure to remember to remove the conflicting module before you run either of the virtualization solutions.  You can do this by using these commands.

To remove the VirtualBox module:

sudo modprobe -r vboxdrv

To remove the KVM module:

sudo modprobe -r kvm-intel

Enjoy.

Updated: added user to libvirtd group instead of kvm group. Removed launching with sudo.

Related

• How To Install VMware Tools on Ubuntu 8.04 Guests
• Install VMware Server 1.0.5 on Ubuntu 8.04 “Hardy”

Installing VMware Tools on virtualized guests gives you a much more enjoyable experience within your virtual environment.  Screen resolution, mouse behaviour, etc will be improved for your virtual sessions after installing these additional tools.  Installing these tools within Ubuntu 8.04 virtualized guests is fairly simple, just follow along below.

Installing VMware Tools

The first requirement, of course, is that you have Ubuntu 8.04 installed within VMware Server and that Ubuntu 8.04 is running.

Once you’ve got your Ubuntu 8.04 guest logged in, navigate to the “VM” menu option (File, Edit, View… VM) and select “Install VMware Tools”.  This will notify you once again that your guest must be logged in.  If that is the case, click “Install”.

note: The next step in the process may be simpler if you make sure any other CD images are unmounted before continuing.

This part of the process mounts a virtual CD image with the VMware Tools contained on it.  To find these tools for installation navigate to Places > Computer > CD Drive.  You should find these two files listed there:

VMwareTools-*.rpm
VMwareTools-.tar.gz


For Ubuntu guest installations we’ll want to use the .tar.gz file.  Now we have access to the needed file, the next part of the process is opening the archive and installing the tools.

Below I’ve put together a copy-paste list of commands you should be able to use to unpack and setup VMware Tools on your Ubuntu 8.04 guest.  All of these commands happen within the Ubuntu 8.04 Guest machine:

sudo aptitude install build-essential linux-headers-generic
cp /media/cdrom/VMwareTools-*.tar.gz /tmp/
cd /tmp/
tar xf VMwareTools-*.tar.gz
cd vmware-tools-distrib/
sudo ./vmware-install.pl


You should be able to safely select the defaults for most of the questions.  You might want to pay attention at the step where it asks for your preferred available resolution and set that properly.  For the new VMware Tools to be available once this process is done you’ll need to reboot your Ubuntu 8.04 guest.  Enjoy.

Related

• KVM and Virt-Manager On Ubuntu 8.04
• Install VMware Server 1.0.5 on Ubuntu 8.04 “Hardy”
• Announcing the Release Candidate for Ubuntu 8.04 LTS

Today I needed to setup a couple of virtual machines for a client and realized that I had removed my installation of VMware Server.  Off I went to the VMware download page and what did I find?  A day-old release of VMware Server 1.0.6!  I figured you’d all appreciate an updated blog post on how to install VMware Server 1.0.6 on Ubuntu 8.04, so here we are.  (This is much simpler than the previous post, How To Install VMware Server 1.0.5 on Ubuntu 8.04)

Downloading the Requirements

The first step, of course, is to download VMware Server 1.0.6. You’ll want to download the .tar.gz version.  This command can be used for a direct download:

wget -c http://download3.vmware.com/software/vmserver/VMware-server-1.0.6-91891.tar.gz

The second step is to install some development tools that we’ll need to get things running. Use the following command or click the package names to install the requirements:

sudo aptitude install build-essential linux-kernel-devel linux-headers-generic xinetd

You will also need to generate a serial number to run VMware Server. Visit this link to register and generate the number of codes you might want. Remember to print the codes or write them down because in my experience they are not emailed to you.

OK, at this point we should have all of the requirements, now we can get to work…

Installation and Configuration

Let’s unpack the VMware archive that we downloaded and run the VMware installer.

tar xf VMware-server-1.0.6-*.tar.gz
cd vmware-server-distrib
sudo ./vmware-install.pl


The Last Step

If you attempt to run vmware at this point you might notice that it spits out some nasty errors and complains at you. There is one more thing we need to setup.

Basically VMware is missing and complaining about some cairo libraries and gcc. So, the simple fix for this is to point to them by using a symbolic link:

sudo ln -sf /usr/lib/gcc/i486-linux-gnu/4.2.3/libgcc_s.so /usr/lib/vmware/lib/libgcc_s.so.1/libgcc_s.so.1
sudo ln -sf /usr/lib/libpng12.so.0 /usr/lib/vmware/lib/libpng12.so.0/libpng12.so.0

At this point you should be able to launch vmware and enjoy some virtualization goodness.  Enjoy!

Related

• Compiz-Check and EnvyNG Configuration Tips : Ubuntu 8.04
• Install VMware Server 1.0.5 on Ubuntu 8.04 “Hardy”
• Extended Display on the MacBook (with xorg.conf) : Ubuntu 8.04
• Ubuntu 8.04 “Hardy” Rocks My Servers Socks!
• This Site Will Be Upgrading To Ubuntu 8.04 Server Today
• Upgrade To Ubuntu 8.04
• Upgrade Ubuntu 6.06 to Ubuntu 8.04
• How To Upgrade Ubuntu 7.10 to Ubuntu 8.04
• Upgrading From Beta To RC And Beyond…
• Announcing the Release Candidate for Ubuntu 8.04 LTS

UPDATE: This tutorial has been updated for VMware Server 1.0.6.  See the updated instructions here, at How To Install VMware Server 1.0.6 on Ubuntu 8.04.

Now that most of the modern world has upgraded to Ubuntu 8.04 I’ve begun to see comments regarding VMware Server no longer working.  You may have used my previous article, Installing VMware Server on Ubuntu 7.10, which has worked great.  Now that 8.04 “Hardy” is installed things have become a bit more complicated unfortunately.

The problem is that VMware has not updated their latest versions to make use of the latest kernel, GCC or gnome libraries.  So, we’ve got two options.

1. Wait for a new VMware release and hope they patch everything.
2. Follow the rest of this tutorial and get your hands dirty on the terminal.  We can make it work, but we have to hammer it into submission.

So, I’ll assume because you’re still reading that you’ve opted for the hammer into submission option.  Let’s get started.

Downloading the Requirements

The first step, of course, is to download VMware Server 1.0.5.  You’ll have to agree to the EULA (actually twice.  Once before download and once during installation.  Remember, VMware is free-as-in-beer but not free-as-in-speech.)

The second step is to install some development tools that we’ll need to get things running.  Use the following command or click the package names to install the requirements:

sudo aptitude install build-essential linux-kernel-devel linux-headers-generic xinetd


The third step is to download one more tool to help in the manual build process for VMware Server 1.0.5.  What we need is a script which will help in the custom config hosted at Google Code.  Download the vmware-any-any-update-116.tgz.

You will also need to generate a serial number to run VMware Server.  Visit this link to register and generate the number of codes you might want. Remember to print the codes or write them down because in my experience they are not emailed to you.

OK, at this point we should have all of the requirements, now we can get to work…

Installation and Configuration

Let’s unpack the VMware archive that we downloaded and run the VMware installer.  NOTE: After some basic configuration it will ask you to run vmware-config.pl.  DO NOT RUN vmware-config.pl, WE ARE NOT READY YET.

tar xf VMware-server-1.0.5
cd vmware-server-distrib
sudo ./vmware-install.pl


When it asks you to run vmware-config.pl you want to answer “no” and this is where the vmware-any-any-116.tgz patch comes in.

cd ..
tar xf vmware-any-any-update-116.tgz
cd vmware-any-any-update116
sudo ./runme.pl

After this runs it will ask you again if you want to run vmware-config.pl.  At this point select “yes”.

The Last Step

If you attempt to run vmware at this point you might notice that it spits out some nasty errors and complains at you.  There is one more thing we need to setup. (Hey, VMware, if you’re reading this will you please incorporate these fixes into your official download already!)

Basically VMware is missing and complaining about some cairo libraries and gcc.  So, the simple fix for this is to point to them by using a symbolic link:

sudo ln -sf /usr/lib/gcc/i486-linux-gnu/4.2.3/libgcc_s.so /usr/lib/vmware/lib/libgcc_s.so.1/libgcc_s.so.1
sudo ln -sf /usr/lib/libpng12.so.0 /usr/lib/vmware/lib/libpng12.so.0/libpng12.so.0

At this point you should be able to launch vmware and enjoy some virtualization goodness.  Please stay tuned for virtualization updates regarding virtualbox and the new KVM!

sources: I want to throw a big thanks to my buddy Igor for helping figure out these tweaks.  Check out his blog, with these and other instructions, here.

UPDATE: based on some of the comments below I’ve added the “-f” to the symbolik link options.

Related

• Compiz-Check and EnvyNG Configuration Tips : Ubuntu 8.04
• Extended Display on the MacBook (with xorg.conf) : Ubuntu 8.04
• Upgrade To Ubuntu 8.04
• Upgrade Ubuntu 6.06 to Ubuntu 8.04
• How To Upgrade Ubuntu 7.10 to Ubuntu 8.04
• Announcing the Release Candidate for Ubuntu 8.04 LTS
• KVM and Virt-Manager On Ubuntu 8.04
• How To Install VMware Tools on Ubuntu 8.04 Guests
• Install VMware Server 1.0.6 on Ubuntu 8.04 “Hardy”
• Ubuntu 8.04 “Hardy” Rocks My Servers Socks!

VMWare released a new version of Fusion last week: 1.1.2. There are a lot of little fixes that if they were a problem for you you'll be very glad to have fixed. If not, you might not notice much difference. I'd been bit a few times by Fusion refusing to release USB resources when it quit. Bottom line: if you're not having any issues, no rush.

Tags: virtualization vmware fusion

Update: Those who downloaded the appliance, may have noticed a packaging problem (ie part of it was missing! :()  I have fixed that as well as done a little tunning and a few modifications.  I’ll post about those later.

Available now! I’ve just finished the latest evaluation version of the VMware based Alfresco Appliance built on the latest Alfresco Enterprise release 2.1.2. This is a full 30-day trial release. It comes with the core Document Management Repository and Web Content Management pre-installed.

This is based on my previous work using Ubuntu Jeos. (I am, however, keen to try out LimeJeos based on openSUSE.)

A couple notes:

• When it first starts, Alfresco will take a few minutes to come up fully. It is creating the initial DB. Subsequent restarts are quicker.
• This is an evaluation appliance. So once you start it, you have 30-days before the trial expires.
• When the appliance first starts it will ask you if you copied or moved the appliance. The correct answer is moved it.

Look for other (community) appliances in the next month or so. I also have some RPMs for Alfresco Community in the works (using the openSUSE Build Serivce). I’ll post more this evening about what I learned since the last time I built the appliance.

Well, maybe not completely innocent. Here's the story: A little bit ago, I claimed that uninstalling Parallels from my system had solved some instability problems I was having. Not so fast. I'd gone five days when I wrote that post without seeing any evidence of the instability after removing the drivers. The next day they came back.

What did change was that my erratic mouse problem went a way permanently, so I still believe that vmmain.kext was the cause of that. But it wasn't causing the freezing. As I said, that returned and kept happening.

I began to suspect that it was a memory issue since there were no third party kernel extensions left to uninstall and the visible behavior was not something I'd attribute to a application (overall system hanging with frequent accompanying high CPU load). It felt like a tight loop in privileged code.

So, my latest theory is that it's related to memory. I've now gone a week without a problem after pulling the memory and replacing it with new DIMMs. The only problem is that I only had 3Gb of replacement RAM so I went from 4 to 3Gb. If this really does solve my instability problem, then I will have to determine whether the memory is really bad or if it's something to do with having 4Gb in my machine. Another option is that it's thermal and having 4Gb of memory pushes it over the top on temperature. Isn't this fun?

Tags: virtualization osx gear

Lately, I've had a very rocky relationship with my Mac Book Pro. One of the things that attracted me to OS X was its stability. Over the past several months (before and after Leopard) my MBP has had trouble with sleeping, waking, and weird, inexplicable freezing. Often when the machine woke up, it would the screen would be black and never come back. The machine would freeze at odd times and nothing would unstick it. I couldn't even log in remotely using SSH, so it was pretty stuck.

The final straw was erratic mouse behavior. The mouse seemed sluggish and wouldn't follow the track. Only a reboot would cure it and the it would deteriorate over the next 5-10 hours.

I considered an OS reload, but didn't really expect that would solve the problem since these issues had persisted through reloads before. I suspected, but didn't have much evidence that it has something to do with a kernel extension because the locking up was occurring at a deep level.

The good news is that OS X some new tools for exploring what kernel extensions are loaded. I used the following command to see what (besides Apple extensions) were loaded:

kextfind -loaded -not -bundle-id -substring 'com.apple' -print 

Doing so revealed about five extensions. I started Google each one and discovered that vmmain.kext was suspected in at least one other case of causing erratic mouse behavior. I didn't want to uninstall Parallels to test this, so I just renamed the plist file in StartupItems so it wouldn't load.

mv /Library/StartupItems/Parallels/StartupParameters.plist foo.plist

Now, after a reboot, Parallels doesn't load and looking at the loaded kernel extensions shows that in particular vmmain.kext hasn't loaded.

I did this five days ago and my machine has been remarkably stable. It feels like my old Mac again. I don't know that it's a Parallels problem--at least not exclusively. I suspect that its an interaction with other things. In particular, I run Parallels and Fusion both and there may be some weird interaction going on there.

I like Parallels. I like Coherence better than Unity. I like the snapshot feature in Parallels because it allows multiple snapshots of the same image. But I need Fusion for running Fedora (Parallels didn't work so well for me there). Fusion also wins on the performance front--particularly with multiple cores.

There are ways to load and unload kernel extensions and that may be a better solution, but for now, I'm just using Fusion to see what happens. I'll let you know if my experiment turns up anything else.

Tags: osx parallels virtualization debugging fusion vmware

As promised in yesterdays post I’m going to outline today how to setup seamless window integration with Ubuntu and Virtualbox. If you missed yesterday’s post you might want to take a look at the seamless integration screenshot. No, that is not Photoshop’d, its really my desktop. I’ll also outline how to setup a shared folder between the two systems so that the icons and folders available on your XP desktop are available on your Ubuntu dekstop. So lets go ahead and dive in.

Installing VirtualBox

If you’ve already got VirtualBox installed you can skip ahead here down to Activating Seamless Integration. If not we’ll be starting you from scratch. Fortunately Ubuntu has packages for VirtualBox available in the repositories. I have a previous post on installing VirtualBox, but we’ll repeat the steps here:

sudo aptitude install virtualbox-ose virtualbox-ose-modules


This’ll install VirtualBox Open Source Edition, and should take just a few minutes.

After the installation is finished you’ll need to do just one of the following.

• Add yourself to the vboxdrv group (sudo usermod -G vboxusers -a username), and then re-login.
• change permissions on the vboxdrv device (sudo chmod 666 /dev/vboxdrv)

You should now have VirtualBox listed in your Applications menu (Applications > System Tools > Innotek VirtualBox). Go ahead and launch this and install Windows. (I wont get into details on Windows installation, I’m hoping you can figure that much out on your own.)

Activating Seamless Integration

With the release of VirtualBox 1.5.0 (the version you just installed via the Ubuntu repositories) Innotek added the seamless integration feature. This is similar to what is available on Parallels on Mac, allowing you to run individual applications from a virtual environment seamlessly on your native desktop.

Once your guest machine is running and logged in you can activate seamless mode via a shortcut key. Now I want to note that you might double-check to see what your “Host Key” is set to before you dive into this. This proved problematic for me on my MacBook as the default key is right-ctrl, but there is no right-ctrl on the MacBook.

Navigate to (File > Preferences) inside the main VirtualBox window, select the “Input” option and verify or set your “Host” Key” before you go forward.

You’ll also need to install Guest Additions on the Windows guest for this to be available.  See the mention in the next section on how to do that.

Once you’re sure what your “Host Key” is, go back into your running Windows guest and activate seamless mode by hitting:

"Host Key"+L

This should make everything but the Start menu disappear, allowing you to launch individual applications as you normally would. You may want to move your bottom gnome panel to the top for better integration.

Configuring Shared Folder Integration

One additional thing you might want to setup is shared folder integration. What I mean by this is having the files from your Ubuntu desktop appear on your Windows desktop as well. This might be useful, for instance, if you launched Internet Exploder via your integrated Start menu and downloaded a file. The saved file would then appear on your native Ubuntu desktop, via the shared folder system.

First we’ll need to install the VirtualBox Guest Additions. I haven’t yet blogged about how to do this on Windows guests, but you might refer to my previous post on Installing Guest Additions for Ubuntu Guests. Hopefully this’ll be enough until I write a proper article on the topic.

Next activate virtual shared folder support in your guest OS (Windows). Do this via the main VirtualBox window, selecting (Machine > Settings > “Shared Folders”). Click the button to add a shared folder (the top right icon), and define the path to your share. You’ll likely want to share your current Desktop, so you might select:

/home/username/Desktop

Now, toggling back to your Windows guest, you’ll want to mount this shared folder. You’ll need to open a shell using (Start > Run > “cmd“). Then use the following command to “mount” this shared folder between your Ubuntu host and your Windows guest.

net use x: \\vboxsvr\Desktop

You should now have access to your shared folder, but we also want to tell Windows to use this as its primary folder.

Start up regedit via (Start > Run > “regedit“) and navigate to the following location:

(HKEY_CURRENT_USER > Software > Microsoft > Windows > CurrentVersion > Explorer > User Shell Folders)

Look for the key “Desktop” and change the value to:

x:

Save your changes, reboot your Windows guest and you should be done.

I realize this post ended up a bit longer than I expected, but hopefully its comprehensive enough to make it easy to follow. I am really impressed with VirtualBox Open Source Edition, and this even improves my opinion of it!

I’ve got a tutorial in the works that I’m really excited about. If you use virtualization much you might want to come back for this one. I’ll outline how to setup and run seamless window integration using VirtualBox for your virtualized applications.  I’m not sure how I’ve missed using this for so long, I just hadn’t heard of it.  If you’ve been using this already please hold you comments (and hopefully tips) until tomorrow so we get all the ‘how-to’ in one place.  Thanks.

The reaction from one of our LoCo members was entertaining:

01:02 < tonedevf> Zelut: that's hella bitchin'

Until the tutorial is done (it’ll post tomorrow) here is a screenshot teaser.

Last Friday I asked a question about how to set up a network in Xen with a machine attached between a public and private network, like you might use in a firewall or load balancing situation. I want to be able to mimic real world networking situation in Xen for experimentation and modeling purposes.

There were numerous replies and I'm grateful for all the help. In the end, Steve Fulling (he's not as pointy haired as you though) came up with a pretty simple solution.

To use virt-install to create a bridged, public machine, you'd do something like this:

virt-install --paravirt --vcpus=1 --name $1 --ram 500 \\
             --file /var/lib/xen/images/${1}.img
             --network=bridge:eth0 \\
             --file-size 10 --nographics \\
             --location http://192.168.1.150/fedora8-i386

To use virt-install to create a private machine, you'd do something like this:

virt-install --paravirt --vcpus=1 --name $1 --ram 500 \\
             --file /var/lib/xen/images/${1}.img
             --network=network:default \\
             --file-size 10 --nographics \\
             --location http://192.168.1.150/fedora8-i386

The trick to getting a machine on both is to issue two --network commands:

virt-install --paravirt --vcpus=1 --name $1 --ram 500 \\
             --file /var/lib/xen/images/${1}.img  \\
             --network=bridge:eth0 --network=network:default \\
             --file-size 10 --nographics \\
             --location http://192.168.1.150/fedora8-i386

There are other, more complex scenarios. For example, you might want to create multiple VLANs, etc. I found these resources helpful:

• Xen network configuration and multiple VLANs
• XEN networking explained

Tags: xen virtualization networking kynetx

I want to create a setup on XEN that has one or more machines load balancing for a number of other machines on a private network. This diagram shows roughly what I'm thinking:

The idea is that some machines will be connected to both the public network and the private LAN and other machines will only be connected to the VLAN. This offers some security benefits and reduces the number of public IP numbers I need.

The catch is I want to do this all virtually. Does anyone know of the recommended way to do this with XEN? I can't seem to find a HOWTO guide with this kind of setup. Pointers welcome.

Tags: xen virtualization apache kynetx

GigaOM has an interesting interview with Dr. Mendel Rosenblum, the Chief Scientist at VMWare.

We went down a rat hole on how we built the data centers. I am not surprised with all the problems we are having with data centers. In my opinion, the architecture has problems because it was built with inferior solutions. What you had was people placing services on servers in a way that led to lightly loaded machines that were idle most of the time. The whole thing was built for peak performance (and not maximum utilization.) Well, idle machines use as much energy as fully utilized machines. The way out of this is to put more on the machines, and get them to be more efficient and take on the work load that will, to some extent, lower the power consumption.

From The GigaOM Interview: Dr. Mendel Rosenblum, Chief Scientist, VMWare - GigaOM
Referenced Thu Dec 27 2007 10:42:49 GMT-0700 (MST)

Tags: virtualization

I just posted at article at Between the Lines on using DC power in datacenters to save power.

Tags: enterprise+computing virtualization datacenters

I'm looking for a management console for Xen (besides the command line). I'd looked into this months and months ago and concluded that when the time came, I'd try Enomalism, but after some initial experiments I'm no longer sure. Any advice? Let me know what you use for managing the Xen hypervisor and why.

Tags: xen virtualization open+source kynetx

GigaOM has an interesting interview with Dr. Mendel Rosenblum, the Chief Scientist at VMWare.

We went down a rat hole on how we built the data centers. I am not surprised with all the problems we are having with data centers. In my opinion, the architecture has problems because it was built with inferior solutions. What you had was people placing services on servers in a way that led to lightly loaded machines that were idle most of the time. The whole thing was built for peak performance (and not maximum utilization.) Well, idle machines use as much energy as fully utilized machines. The way out of this is to put more on the machines, and get them to be more efficient and take on the work load that will, to some extent, lower the power consumption.

From The GigaOM Interview: Dr. Mendel Rosenblum, Chief Scientist, VMWare - GigaOM
Referenced Thu Dec 27 2007 10:42:49 GMT-0700 (MST)

Tags: virtualization

I just posted at article at Between the Lines on using DC power in datacenters to save power.

Tags: enterprise+computing virtualization datacenters

I'm looking for a management console for Xen (besides the command line). I'd looked into this months and months ago and concluded that when the time came, I'd try Enomalism, but after some initial experiments I'm no longer sure. Any advice? Let me know what you use for managing the Xen hypervisor and why.

Tags: xen virtualization open+source kynetx

Laurianne McLaughlin has an excellent article in CIO magazine about security threats in virtual machines and what you can do now to mitigate them. One that caught my eye was No. 4, "Understand the Value of an Embedded Hypervisor". The reason I was tuned into that was a conversation I had with Gregory Ness on a Technometria podcast where he went into some detail about the role of a hypervisor in VM security.

As an aside, am I the only one who finds the interstitial page ads that IDG is placing in this online magazines completely annoying? I wouldn't mind so much if it wasn't the same ad, over and over again. I don't mind them having ads--after all, I write for InfoWorld, another IDG publication. Maybe its because I do write for them that they bother me so much. I suspect that 90% of the people will never tunnel through the interstitial to the second page.

Tags: security virtualization technometria podcast itconversations

This is an attempt to document the steps I needed to take to install VMware Server 2.0 beta now available for download. Please note that this is beta software from VMware and this should also be considered a beta tutorial. I have not tested these steps to any great degree, but its my hope that this will be a good starting point for those interested and any improvements can be left in comments for future improment.

I should mention first off that the VMware Server interface has completely changed in this release. It is now accessible via a web interface vs the application interface. This took a little bit of searching for me to find initially. To access your VMware Server you’ll need to do so via Firefox (I can’t get the remote console to work in Epiphany).

How to install VMware Server 2.0 Beta in Ubuntu 7.10 “Gutsy Gibbon”

1. Download VMware Server 2.0 Beta available from the VMware website. Write down the serial number it generates for you at registration.
2. Unpack this archive to a location on your machine (perhaps /tmp).
3. Before you configure and compile VMware Server we need to disable ipv6 support in Ubuntu as it is not currently compatible.
4. sudo aptitude install build-essential xinetd
5. cd /tmp/vmware-server-distrib ; sudo ./vmware-install.pl
6. Answer the questions presented during the installation. The defaults should be safe in most cases.
7. Because Ubuntu does not use the root user account we also need to setup access for your main user. Replace root with your username on line 10 of: /etc/vmware/hostd/authorization.xml (ACEDataUser).
8. At this point I had to restart my machine to put the changes in place. I did try restarting the service(s) after changing the config, but it still didn’t allow access.
9. Access your VMware Server via http://localhost:8222 or https://localhost:8333
10. Accessing the remote console tab to view your virtual machine will also require an extension installed to Firefox. This also requires a browser restart after the extension is installed.

The web interface took a bit of getting used to for me. I had to spend a few minutes in there poking around to find everything. I see some advantages in moving in this direction, but for those more familiar with VMware Server 1.x it is quite a change. All the rebooting and restarting seems a bit “Windows” to me, but maybe this can be improved in the future. Again, at this point the software (and this tutorial) are beta so you get to run it at your own risk and help fix bugs.

This is an attempt to document the steps I needed to take to install VMware Server 2.0 beta now available for download. Please note that this is beta software from VMware and this should also be considered a beta tutorial. I have not tested these steps to any great degree, but its my hope that this will be a good starting point for those interested and any improvements can be left in comments for future improment.

I should mention first off that the VMware Server interface has completely changed in this release. It is now accessible via a web interface vs the application interface. This took a little bit of searching for me to find initially. To access your VMware Server you’ll need to do so via Firefox (I can’t get the remote console to work in Epiphany).

How to install VMware Server 2.0 Beta in Ubuntu 7.10 “Gutsy Gibbon”

1. Download VMware Server 2.0 Beta available from the VMware website. Write down the serial number it generates for you at registration.
2. Unpack this archive to a location on your machine (perhaps /tmp).
3. Before you configure and compile VMware Server we need to disable ipv6 support in Ubuntu as it is not currently compatible.
4. sudo aptitude install build-essential xinetd
5. cd /tmp/vmware-server-distrib ; sudo ./vmware-install.pl
6. Answer the questions presented during the installation. The defaults should be safe in most cases.
7. Because Ubuntu does not use the root user account we also need to setup access for your main user. Replace root with your username on line 10 of: /etc/vmware/hostd/authorization.xml (ACEDataUser).
8. At this point I had to restart my machine to put the changes in place. I did try restarting the service(s) after changing the config, but it still didn’t allow access.
9. Access your VMware Server via http://localhost:8222 or https://localhost:8333
10. Accessing the remote console tab to view your virtual machine will also require an extension installed to Firefox. This also requires a browser restart after the extension is installed.

The web interface took a bit of getting used to for me. I had to spend a few minutes in there poking around to find everything. I see some advantages in moving in this direction, but for those more familiar with VMware Server 1.x it is quite a change. All the rebooting and restarting seems a bit “Windows” to me, but maybe this can be improved in the future. Again, at this point the software (and this tutorial) are beta so you get to run it at your own risk and help fix bugs.

My previous tutorial on installing VMware Server on Ubuntu 7.10 has been wildly successful but I also realize now that it has become a bit out of date. This tutorial is an update with a few simplified steps. It will be nice when VMware Server makes it into canonicals partner repository (as is available on Ubuntu 7.04), but until then these few steps should work for most of us.

As an update from the previous post, for those that are curious, here is an explanation. At the time of that writing there was a slight issue with the current kernel that required the suggested patch. Since that post was published the kernel has been updated and the patch no longer needed. It doesn’t appear to conflict with anything if it is run with the patch, but I felt that this warranted an updated tutorial.

Installing VMware Server on Ubuntu 7.10 “Gutsy Gibbon”

1. Download VMware Server from the VMware website.
2. Unpack the contents of the archive to your system (perhaps /tmp)
3. sudo aptitude install build-essential xinetd linux-headers-$(uname -r)
   
4. Open a terminal (Applications > Accessories > Terminal), cd /tmp/vmware-server (or wherever you unpacked the archive)
5. sudo ./vmware-install.pl

Answer all of the questions presented to you. The defaults should be fine if you are unsure about any. When everything has finished you should be able to launch VMware Server from your desktop menu under Applications > System Tools.

The last step in the installer should ask you for your VMware Server serial number. While VMware Server is free (free as in beer) it does require a serial number to use and is not free software (free as in freedom). If you need a serial number generated you can register for your VMware Server serial number(s) here.

So, I have tried virutal box for a week, and have found some frustrations that I never had with VMWare. To start, I can't get Fedora 7 to go full screen for my life. No matter how hard I try, it is stuck at 1024 X 768. And with my 1600 X 1200 native screen resolution that is really annoying.
Next I can not get VirtualBox to install openSUSE for my anything! It would go along and then when it tried to check the network device it would cough and die. I could log in as root, where I created my user account, and then I could go like normal. Then I find that if I tell it to download updates and walk away, the VM would just crash and VirtualBox would say that it is aborted.
So, after some frustration I installed VMWare Server again. None of the afforementioned issues. I haven't had a chance to do side by side startup times. but I am wondering if VMWare has some small edge with me now.
Soon I will post my thoughts on Fedora Moonshine just before I try out Werewolf.
Also coming, a review of openSUSE 10.3

When you install Linux in Fusion, make sure you install the tools. But just installing them isn't enough. Clock synchronization is turned off by default, so you need to start up the tools interface:

sudo /usr/bin/vmware-toolbox

Then click the box for synchronizing the guest time with the host. If you don't, the guest will lose time.

Tags: fusion virtualization linux

I have been recently interested in virtualization as a way to test out other distros (and for those times when windows must be used). Today I think rounds out a lot of my journey with virtualization. I have used vmware-server in the past, but I had heard a lot of talk about other options. First thing after work today I try to set up KVM with QEMU. I was very disappointed that my machine doesn't support KVM, effectively killing that trial. I decided to try VirtualBox at the prodding of some friends. I must say that I was pleasantly surprised.

VMware took three or ten tries to get fedora 7 "moonshine" up and running. I was frustrated that to finally get it going I had to fight the machine like a dog for a chew toy. With virtualbox it saw everything right away and installed Moonshine in a flash. It seems to run faster than vmware-server did also.

On the other hand, vmware-server had some pluses over vbox. One, I can't seem to get full resolution with vbox but, I was able to with some ease in vmware. Also, vbox doesn't do bridged connections for your Ethernet, it does NAT. And so the world can't get back to you without some work. If you are like me though and are not setting up a server that needs to have incoming connections you are good to go.

Pluses for vbox: Faster, stores vm's in home directory by default, can also hook to other system dirs as a "shared directory" (vmware-server has no shared folder or drag-n-drop support), easier to set up than vmware-server, easier "bios" configuration than vmware-server.

Pluses for vmware: I actually like the interface better, it has bridged network so the world can get back.

There are still other options that I haven't tried, parrelles, xen, vmware-desktop (that I am not willing to pay $190 for). But for a quick to set up fast virtualization, vbox is the winner.

InfoWorld asked me to do a head-to-head review of Parallels and Fusion. That review appeared today.

As a frequent user of both virtualization packages, I really enjoyed this review since it gave me an excuse to dig deep on some things and to talk to the product managers for both.

One thing is clear: there's some stiff competition between Parallels and VMWare and the users are the winners. These are both great products that perform well. VMWare has a performance advantage--especially when you need multi-core performance. Parallels, I think, has a slight advantage in usability and a pretty big advantage--for now--in the way snapshots work.

Read the review for details, but here's the bottom line:

• VMware Fusion is a solid virtualization package for OS X that builds on VMware's long experience but offers a native Mac look and feel. Support for SMP and 64-bit operating systems make it the top choice for power users. Support for Windows is strong, but some switchers will find the sparse set of GUI-based management tools a turn-off.
• Parallels Desktop is an intuitive, easy-to-use virtualization platform for switchers who need to run Windows applications alongside OS X. Convenient, GUI-based tools and a quick Windows install are the product's real strengths. Lack of support for 64-bit operating systems and some versions of Linux won't matter to most users, but could be important to developers and others pushing the platform to the limit.

Both packages cost $79.

Tags: virtualization infoworld parallels fusion reviews

As I’m doing more XEN stuff, I just want to post quickly about #opensuse-xen on irc (freenode). We are few in numbers, but would love to see more people in there helping and sharing ideas.

In Fusion (and other virtualization systems) you should install OS tools on the guest OS to make it behave better. This is not something specific to Fusion, this is a general fact of virtualization. Usually, clicking the "Install VMWare Tools" does the trick--especially with Windows. Sometimes, however, it doesn't do anything. On those occasions you need to take over and do it manually. Here's how.

First, mount the right ISO as a CDROM image. You'll find these in

/Library/Application Support/VMWare Fusion/isoimages

Select the right one for your OS. You may need to manually mount the disk. Fedora, for example, should automatically mount the CDROM when you connect it, but sometimes it doesn't. As root, use a command like this one to mount it:

mount /dev/hdc /mnt/media -t iso9660

I say "like this one" because you'll have to figure out which device is the CDROM. Note that if the /mnt/media directory doesn't exist, you may get an error.

The image will contain a tarball. Untar it to a convenient directory and then run the Perl script. It will ask you lots of questions. For Fedora Core , I accepted it's default answers and it worked great. If it can't find the right version of vmmemctl it will try to build it. This worked flawlessly for me. If it doesn't for you, it probably needs include files from packages you didn't load at install. I always load the developer and kernel building packages.

That's it, a reboot or an X restart and you're done.

Tags: virtualization osx vmware fusion

Lamont Peterson, co-founder of NeverBlock is talking about XEN and virtualization.

The talk is an intro to virtualization technology and a discussion of why use virtualization. Here are some pros:

• Resource consolidation: fewer systems to buy, own, manage, power, cool, etc.
• Unification: all VMs have the same "hardware" even if they're running on different hardware.
• Access and management tools allow VMs to be managed over the network.
• Utilization: most bare metal systems are under utilized. VMs allow that resource to be recovered.
• Fewer physical machines can improve reliability since there's less

Of course, there are some cons:

• It can be more complicated to set up.
• Administrators have another layer to learn and work with.
• Physical servers need lots of RAM.

It's a good idea to keep some headroom on each machine so that VMs can be migrated when a physical box dies. This gets easier (and less costly) as the number of physical boxes you're using grows. Here's my analysis: The headroom you need is somewhat greater (20%) than 1/N where N is the number of servers. So with 2 boxes, you can use about 40% of each machine and still be able to migrate everything from one machine to the other in the case of problems. With 10 boxes, you can load boxes up to 80% (as much as I'd do in any event) and still have room to migrate a single bad server's VMs. XEN supports live migration if you get the storage architecture right.

Tags: virtualization open+source utosc uosc07