Upgrading to VMware Server 2 on Ubuntu 8.04

After downloading the latest Windows 7 RC I loaded it into VMware Server 1.06 that I installed on Ubuntu Server a while back. All going well until the Windows 7 installer wouldn’t see the disk I had created. It seems that Windows 7 doesn’t like the SCSI virtual disk, so I removed that and created an IDE virtual disk and restarted the install.

Things were much better until it came time to install the VMware Tools and nothing happened. Things weren’t exactly snappy and without the tools installed, they weren’t going to get any better. It was time to make the upgrade from VMware 1.06 to 2.0 and as it turns out, is much easier than previous VMware installs.

Overall I followed the instructions from the LinuxGazette website and things worked flawlessly, but there were a couple of extras due to the upgrade.

Firstly (and fairly obviously), make sure you stop your current VMware daemon/service before starting the install. The VMware installer is pretty good, but I’m sure that your virtual machines would appreciate being offline before things get messed up.

sudo /etc/init.d/vmware stop

If you’re upgrading from VMware Server 1.06 the installer will also complain about the vmnet and vmmon modules being left from a previous version. So we need to get rid of those – using the correct kernel version. You can get that with “uname -r”.

sudo rm /lib/modules/2.6.24-22-server/misc/vmnet.o
sudo rm /lib/modules/2.6.24-22-server/misc/vmnet.ko
sudo rm /lib/modules/2.6.24-22-server/misc/vmmon.o
sudo rm /lib/modules/2.6.24-22-server/misc/vmmon.ko

After that it’s plain sailing. Just follow the instructions to untar your VMware download and run the installer. Assuming you used the default locations in the previous install, your virtual machines will be untouched and start happily under VMware Server 2.0

One of the final things to note in the install is that the new client interface is all browser based. To log into your VMware server requires a password and the Ubuntu root user does not have one by default. So on your server be sure to run,

sudo passwd root

and set a nice secure password for when you head to http://servername:8222. Firefox users will need to give the site security certificate the OK and all browsers will need to install the plugin to use the console to view your machines.

Hooray – Windows 7 now installs the VMware Tools properly and runs pretty well. At the moment I have no sound and the limited graphics under VMware don’t allow Aero fanciness, but I can now test and develop in the Windows world while meeting all license requirements. The Windows 7 RC license is valid until June 2010 although don’t wait that long as it’ll start making life hard for you in March 2010. That’s almost a year of free OS from Microsoft!

Enable WakeUp from PS2 Keyboard in Ubuntu 8.10

One of the annoying “missing features” I’ve struggled with under Ubuntu is that I was unable to wakeup the PC from suspend or hibernate with my keyboard. Of course, Windows just does it – tap the keyboard and the PC starts up again. I could press the power button on the front of the PC, but its down the side of the desk and not easily accessible.

I found an older post in the Ubuntu forums that had the fix for USB devices and it also works for PS2 with the simplest of changes. So follow these steps and you should be saving power and getting back to work faster.

Open a Terminal and type,

cat /proc/acpi/wakeup

Note the entries that come back and you should see a device called “PS2K” toward the top if you have a PS2 keyboard. For those with USB, it’ll be one of the USB items toward the bottom. The entry will probably also have “Disabled” on the same line, hence your problem.

To enable this entry, switch to a root session by typing,

sudo -s

and enter your password. Now type the following to update the acpi file and toggle “disabled” to “enabled”, (those with USB devices can try USB0, USB1, etc)

echo PS2K > /proc/acpi/wakeup

That should have now enabled your PS2 keyboard to wakeup your PC for this session. Give it a test by putting your machine to sleep and then tapping a key on your keyboard. Probably a good idea to save stuff first, just in case.

If you tried changing a USB device, it may take a few guesses until you find the KB. My mouse was USB0 and clicking any mouse button can also do the wakeup task.

To make this change permanant, you need to add that line to a script and run it when Ubuntu starts. So we create a file called wakeup.sh with the following contents,

#!/bin/bash
echo PS2K > /proc/acpi/wakeup

Save it and from a Terminal make it executable so it runs properly as a script and not just a text file,

chmod +x wakeup.sh

Now to add it to the startup area go back to your Terminal that’s running as root. We need to copy the file to the correct location and add it to the startup processes. You’ll need to run the cp command in the same folder as where you saved your wakeup.sh file.

cp wakeup.sh /etc/init.d/wakeup.sh
update-rc.d wakeup.sh defaults

Now when you reboot, the script will run and enable your PS2 keyboard in ACPI so you can wakeup your PC.

Mount USB Drives as Folders in Windows

I’d like to say that I could make a title like “did you know . . .?” into a series of short articles but I’m not that knowledgeable or interesting. But one thing I did discover today was that Windows can mount external USB drives into folders and not just drive letters.

We have a long standing problem in that normal users cannot change the drive letters that Windows XP assigns to memory sticks/thumb drives/external hard drives. Not a biggie but in some cases XP decides to mount the drive using the same letter as a network drive. Your thumb drive is detected and mounted OK but can’t be used. Bugger. It seems that XP ‘user-space’ doesn’t talk with XP ‘storage-space’ about who gets what.

To get around this we remotely use Disk Manager to change the drive letter. Windows ‘remembers’ the drive letter is associated with the USB device’s unique ID and in the future will keep using the same letter. Again, not a biggie and for the odd user in 10,000 a simple fix.

But with the proliferation of USB storage for anything and everything, the fight of the USB device versus the network drive for drive letters may be a problem for some. Enter the mounting of USB storage to NTFS folders! Users can create a folder on their local machine with a suitable name like, ‘My Pimptastic Red USB Stick – 2GB‘ and mount the device in that folder. No drive letters, no XP tripping over itself and a near infinite number of options.

Now who wants to write a tool that allows users to do that? You’d have my vote in any election.

Update – this old problem is resolved in Windows XP SP3. It knows to check your network mappings if you insert a USB drive when logged in.

Installing VMware Server 1.06 on Linux

Installing the free VMware Server is a common but slightly tricky process on some newer Linux systems. Having had to go through it again recently I thought I’d write some of it down. Of course if you are using Ubuntu 7.10 then the simple option is to enable the Canonical Partner repository and just use Synaptic to select and install VMware Server.

For the others in the audience that are installing on Ubuntu 8.04 or another Linux system that doesn’t have packages, you should have a working VMware Server install with web interface and a client console by the bottom of the page. Read more >>

Creating Windows Server Print Queues From the Cmd Line

I’d been given the task of setting up two Windows print servers with a touch over 300 print queues. The queues would be split between the two servers, with one holding all the even numbered queues (they’re named things like CityA094 or CityB031) and the other the odd names.

Well, it gets rather boring doing this via the GUI. The process of creating the TCP/IP ports, then the queues and entering the location information takes a fair number of clicks and typing. With only the queue name, location and description changing between each, it’s a good task for a script.

You need three VBS files that already exist on a Windows XP system, a target server and a logon to that server. The three VBS files are prncnfg.vbs, prnmngr.vbs and prnport.vbs which should be in your (windows root)\system32 folder.

Then use the following in a batch script to call them to do the work. It’ll create the port (using RAW mode), then the queue and then configure the queue.

WordPress really doesn’t like the script syntax and is getting a little confused so here it is in a text file: AddPrinter Script.

Note that I’m only using the Generic/Text driver for all queues, so the
usefulness may vary if you’ve got lots of different models.

Creating UNIX Time in Windows Script

I recently found myself needing to convert a date/time in a Windows vbs script to UNIX time and struggled to find an example of how to do this. Correct me if I’m wrong, but there doesn’t seem to be any built-in function to change 20070109161723+720 to 1168359443.

After fine-tuning a few Google queries I found using the DateDiff function the easiest way and came up with,

Function WMIDateToUNIX(strDate)
ConvertedDate = CDate(Mid(strDate, 7, 2) & "/" & _
Mid(strDate, 5, 2) & "/" & Left(strDate, 4) _
& " " & Mid (strDate, 9, 2) & ":" & _
Mid(strDate, 11, 2) & ":" & Mid(strDate,13, 2))

WMIDateToUNIX = DateDiff(“s”, “01/01/1970 00:00:00″,ConvertedDate)
End Function

Not the prettiest code I’ll admit, but if someone else can use it that’s all well and good.

The Cool Features of MS Class of 2007

I headed along to Microsoft’s latest “Business Value” presentation this morning on their latest products – Vista, Office 2007 and Exchange 2007. The keynote was headed by Microsoft CFO and New Zealander Chris Liddell who, along with business journalist Rod Oram, spoke about the need for NZ companies to step out of old roles and processes, stay original and aim higher.

On show were the new abilities of messaging and enterprise communication that Office and Exchange will bring about. You’ll be able to update you calendar, clear your voice messages and respond to emails all from your mobile phone. For those in the office you can see when others are at their desks or their reasons for being away and Instant Message (IM) them with Office Communicator.

Communication blockers across business are also being worked on in the new products. With Outlook 2007 you can email a copy of your Calendar to any recipient while specifying what info they see and if it’s today’s items, this week’s or this month’s. If the two companies are joined by a Federation then you’ll also be able to use the IM and presence tools of Communicator.

Overall if you’re a Microsoft based medium to large sized business, the upgrade path for you is better and more feature packed than ever before. And honestly, this time, you might even use most of the new features rather than wondering how that guy down the hall makes the boss happy with his awesome PowerPoints.

IE7 in the Wild

The latest version of Internet Explorer is out and about now and reaction seems to be mixed.

Most feedback on forums and in newsletters so far are of problems with the last Release Candidate (RC). The IE7 installs I’ve experienced have ranged from a single reboot for the last RC to two reboots when I installed the production version. Mozilla’s competitor browser Firefox has never needed a reboot. IE7 does work as advertised though and once people move to the new browser there should be fewer problems and less security holes.

Overall IE7 is a huge step forward from Microsoft, combining security fixes, tabbed browsing, a new UI, speed increases and a host of rendering improvements. But is it good enough to combat the hordes or techy folk who have embraced Mozilla’s Firefox browser? The latest 2.0 version of Firefox makes it’s own improvements and in my experience remains faster and most importantly handles standards based code better.

Nice work Microsoft, but you’re not quite there yet.

Replicating Printer Queues

Every now and again you stumble across a handy little tool that’s worth sharing with everyone else. In this case it’s Microsoft’s Print Migrator 3.1 that allows you to backup all print queue, driver and port information on one windows server into a CAB file and then restore it on another.

I currently use this for a client that uses two print servers for redundancy. They’re being feed from a UNIX system and one holds the even numbered queues and the other the odd. If one fell over the UNIX admins just alter their software to point at the working server. Each night the Migrator backs up the queues and new queues are created once and then copied over automagically.

Installing a Windows Dev Box

In the interest of saving this for future reference, here’s is a general how-to for installing a Windows based Web development server.

The reason for running up a Windows server as opposed to the typical LAMP alternative on Windows was due to frustration. The older Ubuntu server I had just made it very difficult to install the versions of PHP and MySQL that I wanted.

Applications I used were:
Apache 2.0.55
PHP 4.4.2
MySQL 4.1.18
Subverison 1.3
Read more >>