Upgrading VMware tools in your Jumpbox virtual appliance

If you migrate a Jumpbox virtual appliance between virtual hosts, for instance, form a VMware Server or VMware workstation to an ESXi server, the already installed configs and installed drivers maybe out of date or the wrong version, and the management screens will complain and let you know about it. This is very easily cured.

Firstly , make sure you have ssh enabled on your virtual machine, and log in as root or admin. Once logged in, go back to your management application, which for ESXi will be the vSphere Client, and select the virtual machine and select install vmware tools from the right button click on that virtual appliance.

This will have effectively mount an iso with the files on, which you must now mount from your ssh terminal window using a command like this:

mount /dev/cdrom /media/cdrom - (you may need to create that directory)

They move into that directory and cp the file VMwareTools-4......(whatever).tar.gz to say /tmp

Go into /tmp and untar the above file, and then move into the directory it creates.

Run the following command and hit enter when asked, after reading the output, but for a standard Jumpbox, just hitting enter will do:

./vmware-install.pl

At the end of the process you can either reboot the virtual machine, or type in the following command:

/etc/init.d/networking stop; rmmod pcnet32; rmmod vmxnet; modprobe vmxnet; /etc/init.d/networking start

Make sure you have the semi colons and type it all on one line.

Voila, you now have the latest vmware tools, which means you are running the optimum networking drivers which is important for performance

Getting Ubuntu 9.04 to work properly with VMware workstation

I had a need today to get an Ubuntu 9.04 image working with VMware workstation 6.5.3-build-156735 and I noticed several things were not working correctly, including shared folders, timesync and the mouse being uable to move between the host and guest operating systems smoothly.

I have been beta testing the latest VMware workstation product - workstation 7 -, that is about to be launched, so I thought I would give the the VMwaretools that come with that a try. I opened up one of my Linux virtual machines on the Linux workstation that has it installed and then grabbed a copy of the VMwareTools-8.1.0-169612.tar.gz. I then put this on a USB key and copied that over to the other machine. That did the trick.

All is now working properly, and the Ubuntu image is playing nicely with Windows XP as the host.

I'm trying to track down a better way of getting access to the latest tools, like a simple URL, but as yet the only resource I can find is the open-vm project, which is behind the VMwareTools, but the latest version of these would not compile on this version of Ubuntu due to a library mis-match.

I will update this post if I track the link down.

Playing with VMware workstation 7 beta

I have been using this on a Redhat 5.3 based workstation for several weeks now and it has proved in it's current build - 169612 to be very stable. I have run up several virtual images, which include a Redhat 5.2 image to test logical volume testing, and an Ubuntu 9.10 karmic image to have a look at how Grub v2 works with this next release. All have gone well, and there are many new features as you can see from the list below, which I have grabbed from the web.

The one point I would make , is if these are enough of an improvement on Workstation 6.52, as normally when Vmware ups the version number, they ask for some more money. We will have to wait and see for the announcement.

Anyway here is a list of what I have found on the new features.

* Improvements in the support of 3D
OpenGL 2.1 and Shader Model 3.0 are supported in virtual machines, Windows XP, Vista
and Windows 7.

* Support for new model drivers Windows Display Driver Model for Windows 7
is still only 2D acceleration and support only one monitor, the driver is using 32MB RAM.
If you want to run a 3d application in Windows 7, you must configure it to use the old SVGAII driver from VMware.

* Support vSphere 4.0 and ESX support
Professionals can now run these technologies as a guest system to verify the manner in which they are suited to your organization. ESX at this point is supported only on processors that support hardware-accelerated virtualization (all Intel Core 2 and above, AMD Athlon 64 X2 AM2/Phenom and above).

* Support for Multiple expanded to a four-SMP systems
VMware allows you to allocate to the guest system with four virtual single processor with two dual-and single-Quad.

* Virtual printer allows you to print without a printer to print on all printers host OS
Printers are added to the guest operating systems automatically and not require a network.

* Download VMware tools on the Internet on demand.

VMware added ability to upload via the internet the latest versions of VMware Tools including for the new OS, which will improve support for new systems of having to wait out a new version of VMware WorkStation.

* AutoProtect
Snapshot'ov possibility of creating a new virtual machine on a schedule for the rapid restoration of the guest OS.
* Encrypting the virtual machine
VMware now supports encryption (AES 128-bit) and password protection of virtual machines. Running such machines working in the VMware Player.

* Support for IPv6 was added to connect the type of bridge (direct connection of virtual machines to the physical network).

* Support for ALSA
Finally we became VMware support audio output to ALSA, which will simultaneously output sound from the host and guest OS without locking the sound device.

* Put on a break
Now you can temporarily stop the implementation of a guest operating system and free up resources for the system.

* Improvements in technology Drag and Drop.
Support drag and drop images, formatted e-mail attachments and zip folders is now supported in Windows, and Linux.

* Improved support for debugging of guest OSes in a replay ( "Play")

* Expanding virtual disks.
It is now possible to expand virtual disks and operating system Windows Vista and Windows 7 can take advantage of this opportunity without running additional software

* Fuse
Linux operating systems can now mount the virtual disk images via Fuse.