Missing Network Interfaces in Ubuntu Under VMware ESXi

Every now and again I clone a VM and add it to another host. ESXi prompts you for a new UID when you start the VM and I always remove the virtual network card(s) from the machine and re-add them later. I do this to make sure I don’t have two machines with the same MAC addresses on the network. But if you do this with Ubuntu, the new NIC(s) don’t get picked up by the OS. This is almost certainly not specific to VMware or their ESXi product, it’s just the environment I’m using.

This problem seems to be caused by a lack of automatic hardware probing at boot, probably for a good reason but I’m no Linux kernel guru so won’t make a judgement there. The root of the issue is located in the file /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules where you’ll see the old interfaces still listed alongside the new ones. Simply remove the old NIC(s) and ensure the new ones have the MAC addresses you expect and the correct ethx labels. Give the system a reboot and you should be happy.

Steps to resolve a missing network interface in Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx (and possibly earlier):

1. sudo nano /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules
2. Delete the lines with the old interfaces after comparing with your VMs newly assigned MAC addresses.
3. Confirm the interface names are what you expect at the end of each line.
4. Ctrl-X to save and exit.
5. sudo shutdown -r now
6. Run ifconfig to confirm the interfaces are up with the correct IPs.
7. If the interfaces are up, check your /etc/network/interfaces config to adjust IP settings as required.

Installing VMware Server 2.0.2 in Ubuntu 10.04

After updating my trusty old server to Ubuntu Lucid Lynx 10.04 the installation of VMware Server 2.0.1 started giving problems. Resinstalling VMware didn’t help as I was repeatedly getting compilation problems in vmmon and vmnet modules. Luckily I stumbled across the following process from one of the VMware forum pages which pointed to a great work-around from the radu cotescu site.

So I take no credit for this but simply repeat it here so that the search gods may recognise it’s usefulness and +1 it’s importance.

Start by downloading VMware Server 2.0.2 from the official VMware site. If you haven’t already got a few licenses, get one now. (They’re free so you might as well get a few) I’m going to assume the downloaded file is in your home directory.

You also need to update the header files for your current kernel so that the configuration scripts from VMware can build the appropriate modules.

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

Now just run the following commands.

cd /usr/local/src
sudo wget [http://codebin.cotescu.com/vmware/vmware-server-2.0.x-kernel-2.6.3x-install.sh]
sudo tar xvzf raducotescu-vmware-server-linux-2.6.3x-kernel-592e882.tar.gz
cd raducotescu-vmware-server-linux-2.6.3x-kernel-592e882/
sudo cp /home/<your_username>/VMware-server-2.0.2-203138.i386.tar.gz .
sudo tar xvzf VMware-server-2.0.2-203138.i386.tar.gz
sudo chmod +x vmware-server-2.0.x-kernel-2.6.3x-install.sh
./vmware-server-2.0.x-kernel-2.6.3x-install.sh

If you have a previous installation of VMware Server, you’ll be prompted that it’ll be removed as part of the install. Don’t worry, any guest VMs you had should still be there afterwards. The script will run through the usual prompts and you’ll see references to the patched files from Radu Cotescu. After a few minutes you should have a working install of VMware Server 2.0.2 on your Ubuntu 10.04 server.

Running WordPress & PHP Behind ISA Proxy

Some things work well on their own but when mixed make your life hard. Things like Linux and PHP work very well. Microsoft ISA proxy also does a good job in a corporate MS environment. But making the two work together in a controlled environment can be an exercise in frustration.

In this post I’ll pass on the methods I found to get PHP and your Linux boxes talking out through a corporate ISA proxy server. You can then bring in RSS feeds, updates and other things in WordPress and use apt-get to update Ubuntu. Read more >>

MySQL Replication on Ubuntu with DRBD

I’ve been looking around for some easy and open-source ways to handle database replication for a handful of small but important MySQL databases. A few options were viable but usually included too many config changes for things like creating a new database. DRDB on a Linux server seems to be one of the fastest and easiest methods to handle database synchronisation for DR purposes, so this is the subject of this post. The content is a combination of two main sources from Mark Schoonover and the Ubuntu server guide and the gotchas I found along the way.

This post will show you how to create two MySQL servers that automatically replicate all their databases using DRBD. With Heartbeat installed on a third machine you’ll have basic fail over protection as well (we’ll do this in another post). Only one of the database servers will be active at any one time. Read more >>