Jason L. Froebe: Ramblings of a Geek

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.

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Can you do this on your favorite operating system?

“Laugh it up fuzzball!” - Han Solo

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Because Sybase has yet to address the GLIBC (LD_POINTER_GUARD) issue with any of their products on Linux, we are forced to find alternative ways of getting Sybase software to run on modern Linux distribution.  In this situation, we will be using the Ubuntu 8.04 Just Enough OS (Ubuntu JEOS) Linux distribution.

After installing Ubuntu 8.04 Server JEOS on the physical or virtual machine, download the Ubuntu 7.04 Server iso image.  Why Ubuntu 7.04?  Ubuntu 7.04 is the last Ubuntu release that has an old enough GLIBC that Sybase software will work with.

% sudo debootstrap feisty /home/sybase file:///media/cdrom0

• Change the home directory of the sybase user to be /dbms/sybase by editing the /etc/passwd file

% sudo cp /etc/resolv.conf /home/sybase/etc/resolv.conf

% sudo cp /etc/hosts /home/sybase/etc/hosts

% sudo cp /etc/passwd /home/sybase/etc/passwd

% sudo cp /etc/shadow /home/sybase/etc/shadow

% sudo `cat /etc/apt/sources.list | sed -e ’s/hardy/feisty/g’ > /home/sybase/etc/apt/sources.list`

% sudo mount –bind /dev /home/sybase/dev

% sudo mount –bind /proc /home/sybase/proc

% sudo mount -t devpts none /home/sybase/dev/pts

% sudo mount –bind /tmp /home/sybase/tmp

% sudo aptitude update

% sudo aptitude upgrade

% sudo apt-get install locales dialog wget debconf devscripts gnupg

% sudo aptitude install libstdc++5 libstdc++6 libaio

• If you’re installing v12.5x software, you will need to install an even older copy of libstdc++ (not needed for v15 or higher software):

% aptitude install libstdc++2.10-glibc2.2

• Install Sybase software into /dbms/sybase (as root in the chroot environment which you should still be in)

% sudo cp /dbms/sybase/SYBASE.sh /dbms/sybase/SYBASE.env

% sudo echo DSQUERY=MYASE >> /dbms/sybase/.SYBASE.env

% sudo echo sa_password > /dbms/sybase/.sapwd

% sudo chmod go-rwx /dbms/sybase/.sapwd

% sudo chmod u-wx /dbms/sybase/.sapwd

% sudo chown -R sybase /dbms/sybase

• Install the sybase_chroot script into /usr/local/bin and make it executable by root

• Install the sybase_ase rc script into /etc/init.d and make it executable by root

• Exit the chroot environment by typing ‘exit’

• create a symbolic link outside of the chroot environment to make /home/sybase/dbms appear as /dbms.  This will allow you to access the Sybase software, notably OpenClient, as a normal user outside of the chroot environment.

% sudo ln -s /home/sybase/dbms /dbms

You are now able to start Sybase ASE using sudo /etc/init.d/sybase_ase start and stop Sybase ASE using sudo /etc/init.d/sybase_ase stop.  Starting Sybase Replication Server, OpenServer, or similar Sybase software is simply a matter of copying the /etc/init.d/sybase_ase and tweaking the script copy.

If you feel this is way complicated and Sybase should just fix their software, let them know.  Please point them to this page and refer to CR455393.

UPDATE: The GLIBC issue is fixed in v15.0.2 esd 4.  It doesn’t seem to be working for everyone though.  More information is needed about those systems where esd 4 doesn’t resolve the matter.  No fix is available for 12.5x from Sybase.

UPDATE: Keep in mind, that the Sybase ASE 15.0.2 esd 4 patch is available only to Sybase customers with a current maintenance contract with Sybase.

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You’ve probably seen it, you copied an Ubuntu Linux virtual machine under VMware and tried starting it up with a new VMware UUID and the networking doesn’t work.  When you use a new VMware UUID, it will change the mac address on any virtual network device you have configured in the virtual machine.

A very simple ‘fix’:

In /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rule, delete the entry for your network device(s) so the new mac address is recognized on reboot.  It will look something like so:

# PCI device 0×1022:0×2000 (pcnet32)
SUBSYSTEM==”net”, ACTION==”add”, DRIVERS==”?*”, ATTR{address}==”00:0c:29:aa:4c:75″, ATTR{type}==”1″, KERNEL==”eth*”, NAME=”eth0″

Your network devices will now be working.  Don’t forget to reboot your virtual machine.

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ASE103 Adaptive Server Enterprise Migration to Linux:  PDF, Power Point, flash, OpenOffice

So much has changed in four years!  I see so many things that the presentation doesn’t address..  I/O schedulers for instance aren’t even touched upon, nor is virtual memory management to any degree.

I did a number of TechWave presentations over the years that I’ve misplaced.  I know of at least one ASE on Linux that isn’t in the archives.  No idea where that one went to…  I feel old

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I never thought I would live to see the day, but it looks like Microsoft is ‘bending knee’ to the consumer… Microsoft’s national technology officer, Stuart McKee, concedes to the victor:

…. “ODF has clearly won,” said Stuart McKee, referring to Microsoft’s recent announcement that it would begin natively supporting ODF in Office next year and join the technical committee overseeing the next version of the format. ….

read more at InfoWorld

I don’t know about you but I’m not holding my breath that Microsoft will actually do this…  they be sneaky

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Hi all,

After trial and error, I finally figured out how to convert an old divx 3 (you know, the old hacked version of the codec) video file to a format that my Sony Playstation 3 (PS3) could handle.  Why is it that Sony has made the PS3 to be such a finicky beast when it comes to reading video files, I will never know:

How to convert a video file using AviDemux v2.4.1 on Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron):

• Load the original video file into AviDemux
• Auto -> PSP (H.264) - choose defaults

• Video -> Configure -> 2 Pass

• Format -> MP4

• Save with the extension “.mp4″

If you’re going to put the video on an USB thumbdrive, you will need to create a folder:

• On the USB Thumbdrive:   VIDEO
• Group videos with subdirectories:  VIDEO / SCIFI

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My dad is an Owner-Operator of his own 18 wheel rig.  Anything that involves my dad I’m usually pretty facinated by it:

Imagine my surprise and delight when I discovered the blog The Big Road and a Nut run by “thenose“.  He is a big time Linux user and a truck driver.  Who can’t love that?

Even though my dad is a 15 to 20 years older and doesn’t ‘get’ the whole computer thing, thenose’s posts make me feel like I’m taking a peek into my dad’s world of Trucking

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A while back I removed the Beagle and Tracker desktop search engines from my Ubuntu 8.04.  As I’ve been consolidating more and more information into my home directory, I thought I would be able to simply install Beagle.

Boy was I wrong!  When I started up beagle search, I was rewarded with it dying on me:

I not so quickly determined I was missing libgalago-gtk1 and libgalago-gtk1.0-cil.  Once I installed them, everything was working properly!

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As an ongoing effort for work, IT has deemed it necessary to encrypt our laptops.  No problem I say, but one issue:  the encryption software they chose only works on Windows 2000/XP and certainly not on OSX or Linux.  My chosen platform for work is Ubuntu 8.04 with the bling of compiz to show it off In order to comply, I did a little googling and ran across an excellent article by Lars Strand on how to encrypt your /home directory and swap space on Ubuntu 8.04 (should work with 6.04 and higher).

Encrypted swap and home partition in Ubuntu 8.04

Sunday, 04 May 2008 @ 22:32 CEST

Contributed by: lars

I really would like to have an encrypted swap and home partition on my laptop. In case it gets stolen or if I should forget it somewhere, I can be sure that no-one would be able to read my private files. In this mini-howto I set my home partition using LVM, but using a regular partition should work just fine. This howto should also work, with minor modification, if you use another distribution than Ubuntu.
By using Linux Unified Key Setup (LUKS) setting up encrypted partition in Linux is done in no time.

read more

I’m totally impressed by the article - the instructions are step by step and are easy to follow.  I’d create a new user belonging to the admin group with its home directory outside of ‘/home’ and use that user to perform the steps.

Initially I attempted to use an USB thumb drive to hold a key file but it proved unreliable because it wasn’t being mounted consistantly before the /etc/init.d/cryptdisks & /etc/init.d/cryptdisks.early were being executed on boot up.  This issue would cause the key file to be unavailable and therefore the encrypted home from being attached to (/etc/crypttab).  However, when if I inserted the thumbdrive after the system booted, the usb thumb drive would be auto-mounted and performing ‘mount /home’ would mount the encrypted home directory.

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After I downloaded a few eBooks from Bruce Perens’ Open Source Series, I noticed that several of the books were zip files containing the chapters as individual PDF files.  I don’t know about you, but I would rather hava a single monolithic PDF file for each book.

By using Ghostscript and pdftk, we are able to create the PDF file with no problem:

On Ubuntu Linux, you can quickly install these two tools with a single command:

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In order to avoid a drifting time clock in “ubuntu server 7.10″ vmware guest machine on an ubuntu 8.04 host, you need to do a few things:

• /etc/vmware/config

host.cpukHz = 2000000  <– replace # with speed of your cpu (2GHz listed here)

host.noTSC = TRUE

ptsc.noTSC = TRUE

• ‘clock=pit’ added to the kernel line in /boot/grub/menu.lst
• tools.syncTime = “TRUE” in the (vmware_guest).vmx file

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SweeperBot is an application written by Paul Fenwick that plays Windows minesweeper for you automatically. It’s based upon code orignally written by Matt Sparks.

Get it at SweeperBot.org!

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For the past few days, we’ve been struggling with getting Sybase’s ASE DBMS to start on our new Linux PowerPC (a virtual machine running on top of AIX). We were able to install the software with no problems. We weren’t able to get past the __gxx_personality_v0 error:

symbol lookup error: /opt/ibmcmp/lib64/libibmc++.so.1: undefined symbol: __gxx_personality_v0

The error is a linking issue with IBM’s Visual Age runtime (a c/c++ runtime). I was able to confirm with Sybase that ASE will NOT run with Visual Age 8.x or 9.x and that it requires the 7.0 runtime. I downloaded the 7.0 runtime from IBM’s website but still received the same error.

ASE’s linking looked okay however:

[sybase@sybase ASE-12_5]$ ldd -v bin/dataserver
libbtsymbols.so => /sybase/ASE-12_5/lib/libbtsymbols.so (0×0000008000002000)
librt.so.1 => /lib64/tls/librt.so.1 (0×0000008000647000)
libm.so.6 => /lib64/tls/libm.so.6 (0×0000008081560000)
libnsl.so.1 => /lib64/libnsl.so.1 (0×0000008000674000)
libdl.so.2 => /lib64/libdl.so.2 (0×0000008081510000)
libibmc++.so.1 => /opt/ibmcmp/lib64/libibmc++.so.1 (0×00000080006a4000)
libpam.so.0 => /lib64/libpam.so.0 (0×00000080006b7000)
libpthread.so.0 => /lib64/tls/libpthread.so.0 (0×00000080006d3000)
libaio.so.1 => /lib/libaio.so.1 (0×00000080006ff000)
libc.so.6 => /lib64/tls/libc.so.6 (0×00000080812f0000)
/lib64/ld64.so.1 (0×00000080812b0000)
libaudit.so.0 => /lib64/libaudit.so.0 (0×0000008000711000)

I worked with Sybase & IBM to track down the cause but it was IBM’s Brian Shen that was able to identify the culprit. We need to preload the libstdc++.so.5 library:

export LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib64/libstdc++.so.5

Once we did that, we verified that the library was being picked up:

[sybase@sybase install]$ ldd $SYBASE/$SYBASE_ASE/bin/dataserver
/usr/lib64/libstdc++.so.5 (0×0000008000002000)
libbtsymbols.so => /sybase/ASE-12_5/lib/libbtsymbols.so (0×0000008000146000)
librt.so.1 => /lib64/tls/librt.so.1 (0×000000800078c000)
libm.so.6 => /lib64/tls/libm.so.6 (0×0000008081560000)
libnsl.so.1 => /lib64/libnsl.so.1 (0×00000080ef740000)
libdl.so.2 => /lib64/libdl.so.2 (0×0000008081510000)
libibmc++.so.1 => /opt/ibmcmp/lib64/libibmc++.so.1 (0×00000080007ba000)
libpam.so.0 => /lib64/libpam.so.0 (0×00000080ef6a0000)
libpthread.so.0 => /lib64/tls/libpthread.so.0 (0×00000080007cd000)
libaio.so.1 => /lib/libaio.so.1 (0×00000080007fa000)
libc.so.6 => /lib64/tls/libc.so.6 (0×00000080812f0000)
libgcc_s.so.1 => /lib64/libgcc_s.so.1 (0×000000800080b000)
/lib64/ld64.so.1 (0×00000080812b0000)
libaudit.so.0 => /lib64/libaudit.so.0 (0×00000080ef6c0000)

If you receive the following error, you can safely ignore it:

ERROR: ld.so: object ‘/usr/lib64/libstdc++.so.5′ from LD_PRELOAD cannot be preloaded: ignored

Don’t forget to set up your environment to include the IBM Visual Age runtime:

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/opt/ibmcmp/lib64:${LD_LIBRARY_PATH}
export PATH=$PATH:/opt/ibmcmp/lib64

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Ubuntu 8.04 LTS Desktop:

http://releases.ubuntu.com/8.04/ubuntu-8.04-desktop-i386.iso.torrent i386
http://releases.ubuntu.com/8.04/ubuntu-8.04-desktop-amd64.iso.torrent AMD64

Kubuntu 8.04 LTS Desktop:

http://releases.ubuntu.com/kubuntu/hardy/kubuntu-8.04-desktop-i386.iso.torrent Kubuntu x86
http://releases.ubuntu.com/kubuntu/hardy/kubuntu-8.04-desktop-amd64.iso.torrent Kubuntu AMD64

Ubuntu 8.04 LTS Server:

http://releases.ubuntu.com/8.04/ubuntu-8.04-server-i386.iso.torrent i386
http://releases.ubuntu.com/8.04/ubuntu-8.04-server-amd64.iso.torrent AMD64

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My favorite Linux ads - sorry for all the videos the last two days:

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I’m working on a Historical Server replacement.  I need to check with my employer as to whether I can open source it or not but the guts of it consist of:

1. Perl POE/DBD::Sybase for the daemon/ASE db connections (using FreeTDS instead of OpenClient)
2. SQLite for the local storage (way lower overhead than ASE or SQL Anywhere)
3. Perl Catalyst / Template::Toolkit web front end with REST web services

All of this goes into a VMWare Appliance running Ubuntu 7.10 Server… a drop-in solution that can even be run on a laptop.  I’m hoping that my employer lets me release it as then I can zip it up and put it on sourceforge so everyone can benefit.

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I downloaded the excellent SQLite administration tool, SQLiteman, today.  Take a look at the screenshots.  I’m very impressed with it but was disappointed that they don’t provide an Ubuntu binary package.  So… I built my own Ubuntu package using checkinstall:

sqliteman_1.0.1-1_i386.deb

When you install the Ubuntu package, it will show up in the Applications -> Office menu.

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This year’s Flourish Conference was held at the University of Illinois in downtown Chicago (UIC). The Flourish web site describes Flourish as:

The goal of the Flourish Conference is to promote the use and adoption of Free Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) by demonstrating the practical applications of FLOSS in the business and academic world. While everyone is familiar with businesses that focus on creating non-free proprietary software, the same cannot be said for those who specialize in developing and supporting FLOSS software, and an Open Culture.

I missed a part of Bruce Perens’ Innovation Goes Public presentation due to Chicago’s closing several sidewalks that go over or under the tristate. I’m not quite sure I agree with him that the road a head for open source is all rosey. Perhaps I misunderstood him but it seemed to me that the idea of simply giving the source of an application to the public would allow the programmers to still be paid via the support/service agreements.  This may work for some applications, but for others there wouldn’t be a sufficient number of support contracts to financially support the programmers Personally, I prefer open source but I will also pay for commercial proprietary software. I use what works.

The company I work for, Sungard Investment Systems, uses open source for many internal projects. One such product uses VMware and Linux for a portable monitoring system so I was highly interested in rBuilder Online from rPath. I attended the Appliance Development and Conary session presented by Stephanie Watson from rPath. I’m currently investigating on how well and easy it is to make a VMware appliance that would house a Sybase ASE server (DBMS) with no unnecessary os files. If the testing turns out well, I will ask my fellow Sybase ASE DBAs whether Sybase need certify it or whether we are ‘on our own’. The monitoring machine itself really doesn’t need Sybase ASE on it but since we have the license….

Dr. John Waclawsky, from Motorolla, gave a feel good presentation about the state of communication between wireless gadgets. The Revolution at the Edge of the Network Abstract. Short version: things are going to get very interesting in the next year

James Gray, from IBM, presented IBM’s Open Source Strategy - Turning Threat into Opportunity. While essentially a case study of how IBM has interacted as a semi-liason between the business executives and the open source community. IBM, to me, has seemed to be stuck in a love/hate relationship with open source and a dislike/hate relationship with the Free Software Foundation. That being said, it is necessary to give IBM credit giving credence to the open source community with the business executives. The IT folks no longer had to quietly use open source in the business but were free to use it extensively in many places. Linux, in particular, is no longer the wild west in many CTOs’ eyes but a integral part of their business.

I met Tony Wong in the Chicago Perl Mongers ‘booth’. We discussed the upcoming Yet Another Perl Conference (YAPC::NA 2008) that is being held in Chicago and the horrible documentation of the Catalyst MVC web framework. I informed him that the only way to learn Catalyst was the new book Catalyst by Jonathan Rockway (ISBN: 978-1-847190-95-6). I also warned him that the book should have gone through another round of proofreading prior to being published due to excessive example code errors, etc. I playfully suggested that Joshua McAdams be tormented because he wasn’t able to make it Friday morning.

The panel discussion on Friday afternoon was highly entertaining and a bit of a kangaroo court for Bobby Moore of Microsoft. I do not believe Mr. Moore was expecting Bruce Perens to repeatedly ask very pointed and informed questions. Moore did an excellent job of remaining cool and listening with an open mind to the criticism of Microsoft as a company. He explained that, yes, Microsoft did some not so nice things in the past but they are attempting to work with the open source community. Bruce Perens, Jon “Maddog” Hall, and James Bottomley brought up the pending MS Office OpenXML standard format issue where much of the format is proprietary and the published format won’t actually be used by Microsoft. Moore conceded that it was unlikely that Microsoft would use the published format as-is but the Office developers would likely base the actually used format off of the published format. Perens, Hall, Bottomley and James Gray all expressed their opinions that this was very typical of Microsoft. (side note: Microsoft has been accused of having the attitude of Embrace, Extend, Eliminate when it comes to industry standards.)

Perens, Hall and James Bottomley, as well as members of the audience, pummeled both James Gray of IBM and Bobby Moore of Microsoft for their companies’ approach and support of software patents.

Unfortunately, I was only able to attend the first day as my mother was in town from North Dakota to visit my three month old daughter (and the rest of us). If only I could have cloned myself… Don’t forget to check out the Flickr photo group for the Flourish 2008 Conference in Chicago!

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If you’re running Microsoft’s Vista os on your computer, you’ve probably noticed that the ‘updates available’ icon has shown up this morning on your task bar.

Very likely, clicking on the icon will prompt you to install Service Pack 1 for Windows Vista.  I’m only installing it on one machine right now to see if I run into any issues before putting in on the rest of my Vista boxes.

Wish me luck!

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