Installing VMWare Tools on Ubuntu JeOS

If your not familiar with Ubuntu's vm optimised version of linux check out it out here.

Here is a snippet however showing how to install VMware's VM-Tools package in the Ubuntu JeOS guest.

Installing VMware Tools

VMWare Tools will allow to have a better control of our appliance by the VMware environment, so it is a pretty good idea to set it up. For Ubuntu 8.04 you will have to get VmwareTools version 6.0.3 or later, 6.0.2 won't compile.

* First setup our environement by installing the build tools:

sudo aptitude install build-essential linux-headers-$(uname -r)

* Next install the package psmisc to get killall that is required by the VMware tools

sudo aptitude install psmisc

*Next should ask VMware to mount the VMwareTools CD by clicking on VM > Install VMware Tools… in the VMware Server menu.

* Mount the cdrom

mount /media/cdrom0

* copy the tools to the tmp directory and uncompress them

sudo cp -a /media/cdrom0/VMwareTools*.gz /tmp/
cd /tmp/
sudo tar -xzvf VMwareTools*.gz

* run the vmware-install.pl script accepting all the defaults

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

Quick Video of my Motorbike

just a quick link to a video of my motorbike. Its been posted a while but I thought I would give it a plug here as well.

Youtube - Hyosung GT650

Reinitialise MySQL Databases

If you are like me and constantly thrashing your MySQL installations evaluating products etc here is a command that will make your life easier-

mysql_install_db

Run this as root after you have dropped all your existing databases. This will override the MySQL installation to its original state.

That's all for today lol

Matt W

OCAU Down again

http://ocau.blogspot.com/

Seems Agg is having difficulty again over at www.overclockers.com.au

Poor bugger! SQL server has apparently run out of memory. Just when I had a lull in workload and decided to peruse the VM forum

VMWare ESX Host Mac Addresses

Stumbled across this handy tool today.

The tool was originally developed because of the way we manage IP addresses of our servers – every server (physical and virtual) is configured for DHCP and has a fixed reservation for its MAC address. So we require MAC addresses on our VMs that won’t change. I wrote this little app to make it easier and faster to do this, instead of having to SSH into the host and edit .vmx files by hand, and hope that VirtualCenter doesn’t want to overwrite your changes. Since then it’s been easier for me to add extra little features than write separate apps for everything – so now it also has a basic reporting feature.

Came in very handy as I had a number of vm's with the same MAC address somehow :O

Anyway I was able to statically set the MACs  on running machines even though VI client had disallowed it via its interface!

Good stuff fellas

Mini HowTo - Vmware Server 1.0.6 on Ubuntu 8.04

So this is just a short how to for you guys out there on how to set up Vmware´s Server 1.0.6 on an Ubuntu LTS 8.04 installation. Mainly I have written this up to document how I got it working so if I need to do it any time soon I know where to come.

First things first get yourself up and running with Ubuntu. In this particular case I am using Desktop but I have done the exact same procedure a number of times on Ubuntu server no probs. This machine is actually one of four I regularly have sitting in front of me at work. It needs Vmware on it as I regularly run a half dozen vmś on each physical as well for reasons i cant be arsed explaining right now. Anyway, head here for a short and sweet (unlike this!) demonstration on how to do that .

Once you get to your desktop for the first time open up a terminal window and type the following: 

sudo apt-get install linux-headers-`uname -r` build-essential

sudo apt-get install xinetd

Go to http://www.vmware.com/download/server/ for the latest release and make sure at the top you register for a free serial number

tar -zxvf VMware-server-1.0.6-91891.tar.gz or whatever the filename is

cd VMware-server-1.0.6-XXXXX

sudo ./vmware-install.pl

Accept all the defaults except the networking questions. These you will need to determine yourself. I dont use NAT for instance because I like to access all my vm´s from direct IP´s supplied from my existing subnet.

Enter one of the serial numbers you attained earlier and finish the config.

Returning back to the prompt enter the following for the Server Console to load correctly...

sudo cp /lib/libgcc_s.so.1 /usr/lib/vmware/lib/libgcc_s.so.1/libgcc_s.so.1

And your all done with the installation!!

Launch the Vmware Server Console. Accessible from the Applications menu at the top left of your screen, under System Tools. Connect to the localhost and your away!