Jason L. Froebe - Tech tips and How Tos for Fellow Techies » vmware server

VMware 2.0.2 running on Win2k3 -> VMware ESX 4.0 .. done :)

Jason L Froebe — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 17:37:58 +0000

I was able to move a VMware Server 2.0 (v7) vm to VMware ESX.. it was a *live* copy where I performed a Windows Volume Shadow copy of the vm files. Everything worked for the most part but because the database, Sybase ASE 15.0.3, was running when the shadow copy was made, we had corruption in one database. Restore from backup and all is good.

Now we need to get an updated license file from Sybase as the NIC mac address has changed.. You can *not* use the mac address from the VMware Server on ESX. grr.

Twenty hours for the volume shadow copy to complete plus another 12 hours to scp the files to the esx box (esx console access is sloooow). Keep in mind that the host VMware Server box was rebooting itself randomly so I really couldn’t leave it alone. Then 3 hours to convert/clone the vmdk files and 2 hours to correct the database… I’m tired.

It turned out to be an issue with allocating 3.75GB to a VM that was causing the rebooting. Dropping it to 2 GB resolved the rebooting… who knew? Nothing in Google and VMware Support wasn’t able to find anything on their side.

Installing Oracle 10g / 11g on Ubuntu 8.04.1 (Hardy Heron) Server JEOS in VMware Server 1.0x/2.0x

Jason L Froebe — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 16:36:26 +0000

I’ve been tasked with becoming an Oracle DBA, so I need to be able to create an VMware Server image containing 32 bit Ubuntu 8.04.1 Server JEOS and Oracle 10g. Much of the work was taken from Augusto Bott‘s Installing Oracle 11g on Ubuntu Linux 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon) and Peter Cooper‘s How to Install VMware Tools on Ubuntu Hardy 8.04 under VMware Fusion.

I was able to consolidate the methods to work rather well together. As soon as Ubuntu 8.10 Server JEOS (Intrepid) is released, I’ll verify the procedure on that operating system as well.

If you’re looking for instructions on how to install Oracle 11 XE on Ubuntu 8.04.1, look at Installing Oracle Database XE on Debian, Ubuntu, and Kubuntu by Todd Trichler.

Create a VMware Image with the following settings

Choose 32bit Ubuntu for the OS type
1024 MBytes RAM
16GBytes disk space
Ubuntu 8.04.1 (or higher) Server JEOS edition http://www.ubuntu.com/products/whatisubuntu/serveredition/jeos
Upon the os installation, create a non “oracle” id to use to administer the os.

Install the required updates and packages

$ sudo aptitude update
$ sudo aptitude safe-upgrade
$ sudo aptitude install build-essential xinetd linux-headers-`uname -r` openssh-client openssh-server unzip libaio1 gawk ksh rpm libmotif3 alien lsb-rpm libtool libxtst-dev libxtst6 libstdc++5

Add swap

$ sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/extraswap bs=1M count=1536
$ sudo mkswap /extraswap
$ sudo swapon /extraswap
$ sudo echo "/extraswap none swap sw 0 0" >> /etc/fstab
# "/sbin/swapon -s" should show the added swap space
$ /sbin/swapon -s
Filename Type Size Used Priority
/dev/mapper/oracle10g-swap_1 partition 401400 92 -1
/extraswap file 1048568 0 -2

If VMware Server version is 2.0x or higher, install VMware tools:

$ sudo su – root
$ mount /dev/cdrom
$ cp /media/cdrom/*.gz ~
$ tar zxvf VMwareTools*.tar.gz
$ cd vmware-tools-distrib
$ ./vmware-install.pl

If VMware Server version is 1.0x, install VMware tools:

$ sudo su – root
$ mount /dev/cdrom
$ cp /media/cdrom/*.gz ~
$ aptitude install libgtk2.0-dev libproc-dev libdumbnet-dev xorg-dev wget
$ wget http://mesh.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/open-vm-tools/open-vm-tools-2008.04.14-87182.tar.gz
$ tar xzvf VMware*.gz ; sudo tar xzvf open-vm-tools*.gz ; cd open-vm-tools-2008.04.14-87182/
$ ./configure && make
$ cd modules/linux/
$ for i in *; do mv ${i} ${i}-only; tar -cf ${i}.tar ${i}-only; done
$ cd ../../..
$ mv -f open-vm-tools-2008.04.14-87182/modules/linux/*.tar vmware-tools-distrib/lib/modules/source/ ; cd vmware-tools-distrib/
$ sudo ./vmware-install.pl
$ sudo reboot

Append to /etc/sysctl.conf

$ sudo cat >> /etc/sysctl.conf << EOF
fs.file-max = 65535
kernel.shmall = 2097152
kernel.shmmax = 2147483648
kernel.shmmni = 4096
kernel.sem = 250 32000 100 128
net.ipv4.ip_local_port_range = 1024 65535
net.core.rmem_default = 1048576
net.core.rmem_max = 1048576
net.core.wmem_default = 262144
net.core.wmem_max = 262144
EOF

Append to /etc/security/limits.conf

$ sudo cat >> /etc/security/limits.conf << EOF
oracle soft nproc 2047
oracle hard nproc 16383
oracle soft nofile 1023
oracle hard nofile 65535
EOF

Append to /etc/pam.d/login

$ sudo cat >> /etc/pam.d/login << EOF
session required /lib/security/pam_limits.so
session required pam_limits.so
EOF

Set up user / groups

$ sudo su – root
$ addgroup oinstall ; addgroup dba ; addgroup nobody ; usermod -g nobody nobody ; useradd -g oinstall -G dba -p password -d /home/oracle -s /bin/bash oracle
$ passwd oracle
Password changed.
$ mkdir /home/oracle ; chown -R oracle:dba /home/oracle ; ln -s /usr/bin/awk /bin/awk ; ln -s /usr/bin/rpm /bin/rpm ; ln -s /usr/bin/basename /bin/basename ; mkdir /etc/rc.d
$ for i in 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 S ; do ln -s /etc/rc$i.d /etc/rc.d/rc$i.d ; done
$ mkdir -p /dbms/oracle ; chown -R oracle:dba /dbms/oracle ; sysctl -p
$ reboot

Retrieve Oracle 10g zip file

Copy the Oracle install zip file from disc or somewhere
Unzip it

Retrieve IP of the network card

$ ifconfig |grep "Bcast"

Install / Configure oracle manually verifying any requirements:

$ ssh -C -X oracle@(ipaddress)
…
$ cd /home//database
$ ./runInstaller -ignoreSysPrereqs

iSQL*Plus URL:

http://(ipaddress):5560/isqlplus

iSQL*Plus DBA URL:

http://(ipaddress):5560/isqlplus/dba

Enterprise Manager 10g Database Control URL:

http://(ipaddress):1158/em

Been a long time / Installing vmware tools in Ubuntu 8.04.1 JEOS Server

Jason L Froebe — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 22:03:45 +0000

I’m sorry folks, I got wrapped up in the ways of the physical world and then was sick the past few days.

Recently I tried installing vmware tools in a Ubuntu 8.04.1 JEOS Server virtual machine with no success. After a bit of googling, I came across the Peter Cooper’s blog that outlined the procedure rather well for VMware Fusion, but it works for VMware Server and VMware Workstation just fine. Essentially:

download Open VM Tools from Sourceforge
Mount VMware tools (Host -> VM -> Install VMware Tools), mount /dev/cdrom
Extract the vmware tools to /tmp
Extract and compile Open VM Tools (./configure)
Tar up the compiled open vm tools and copy to the vmware tools directory
Run vmware-install.pl

See Peter’s blog for step by step instructions.

Adding a Virtual Disk Device to a VMware virtual machine (Windows 2003 Server host)

Jason L Froebe — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 16:00:10 +0000

I thought it would be possible to add a virtual device file to a running virtual machine and have it show up in the virtual machine without restarting the virtual machine. I was wrong. The current VMware Server 1.0.6 is incapable of doing this. What you can do is to set up the device file so all you have to do is to restart the virtual machine, minimizing downtime to a couple of minutes:

Create a new 20GB preallocated disk in the D:\Virtual Devices\DBA Dev 1\Disk4 directory:

D:\Virtual Machines\DBA Dev 1\Disk 4>vmware-vdiskmanager -c -a buslogic -s 20Gb -t 3 Disk4.vmdk
Using log file C:\DOCUME~1\ADMINI~1\LOCALS~1\Temp\vmware-DBH1admin\vdiskmanager.log
Creating a split preallocated disk ‘Disk4.vmdk’
Create: 100% done.
Virtual disk creation successful.

We need to determine which device slots are available. Go to VM->Settings and look at the next free scsi device #

Associate the new virtual device file using the free scsi4 slot

D:\Virtual Machines\DBA Dev 1>vmware-cmd “D:\Virtual Machines\DBA Dev 1\Ubuntu.vmx” setconfig scsi4:1.fileName “Disk 4\Disk4.vmdk”
setconfig(scsi4:1.fileName Disk 4\Disk4.vmdk) = 1
D:\Virtual Machines\DBA Dev 1>vmware-cmd -v “D:\Virtual Machines\DBA Dev 1\Ubuntu.vmx” setconfig scsi4:1.present true
API Version: 1.01
setconfig(scsi4:1.present true) = 1

After you restart the virtual machine, the device will now show up when you run fdisk -l.

Unable to remotely connect to VMware Server on Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty)?

Jason L Froebe — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 12:33:27 +0000

VMware Server running on Ubuntu 64bit:

The problem is that the Ubuntu package is a 32bit package and doesn’t take into consideration that pam 64bit will try to load the 32 bit libraries as 64 bit libraries. The workaround, discovered by PLM is to replace /etc/pam.d/vmware-authd with:

#%PAM-1.0
auth       sufficient       /usr/lib/vmware-server/lib/libpam.so.0/security/pam_unix2.so shadow nullok
auth       required         /usr/lib/vmware-server/lib/libpam.so.0/security/pam_unix_auth.so shadow nullok
account    sufficient       /usr/lib/vmware-server/lib/libpam.so.0/security/pam_unix2.so
account    required         /usr/lib/vmware-server/lib/libpam.so.0/security/pam_unix_acct.so

VMware Server running on Ubuntu 32bit:

The problem is that for Ubuntu 32bit, the pam authentication lines in /etc/pam.d/vmware-authd are wrong and need to be replaced by:

#%PAM-1.0
auth required pam_unix_auth.so shadow nullok
account required pam_unix_acct.so