Tag Archive: Linux


High overview of Cloud Computing with Ubuntu Eucalyptus Cloud (UEC) from Canonical

Filed Under: Linux, OS, VMware, Windows, virtualization by Jason L Froebe — Leave a comment
June 22, 2010

I installed Ubuntu Eucalyptus cloud (#UEC) on a couple of servers at home. I was naively expecting it to be similar to VMware. Oh I was wrong.

UEC is the Eucalyptus ‘cloud’ software running on Ubuntu servers. The instances would run under the KVM or Xen hypervisors. Ubuntu’s defaulted to running KVM but isn’t restricted by it.

“Eucalyptus is a software available under GPL that helps in creating and managing a private or even a publicly accessible cloud. It provides an EC2 compatible cloud computing platform and S3 compatible cloud storage platform…” Eucalyptus Beginner’s Guide

This is how a vm works in UEC:

You publish an image that you previously installed all the software you need (or you can download such an image). There can be as many instances of this image running as the hardware supports (spread across N number of backend Node Servers).

All instances are transient. As long as an image is running, it will have a physical presence.. but when it is shutdown, the instance is removed including any work performed in the instance.

“static” storage is available via a Storage Server. After you create an image but before you start it, you have the opportunity to attach storage to the instance.

Diagram courtesy of Eucalyptus Beginner’s Guide – UEC edition

While the management tools for UEC, and therefore Amazon EC2/EM, are primitive compared to VMware, it should be able to scale much higher with far less focus on which ‘virtual machine’ goes where.

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

Filed Under: ASE, Databases, OS, Sybase, VMware, Windows, virtualization by Jason L Froebe — Leave a comment
April 24, 2010

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.

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How to: Installing VMware ESXi 4 on a 6 year old cheap motherboard

Filed Under: Linux, OS, VMware, virtualization by Jason L Froebe — 5 Comments
February 15, 2010

I’ve been trying to get VMware ESXi 4 on my old MSI MS-7388 motherboard for a long time. No matter what I tried, neither the SATA controller on the motherboard or the add on SATA controller would be recognized.

Install VMware ESXi 4.0 on an unsupported motherboard (SATA controller must support AHCI):

  1. make sure the SATA controller(s) is set to AHCI in the computer’s BIOS
  2. download VMware ESXi 4 iso
  3. burn the iso to either a cdrom or a USB thumb drive (512mb minimum) using unetbootin
  4. boot the computer into VMware ESXi
  5. Before you’re prompted to hit Enter to begin, hit ALT-F1 which will get you to a console screen without a prompt
  6. Type “unsupported” followed by Enter
  7. When prompted for a password, just hit Enter
  8. Type “vmkload_mod ahci” followed by Enter.  This will load in the driver for just about any AHCI compliant SATA controller
  9. Hit ALT-F2 to finish the installation

At this point VMware ESXi 4.0 will be installed but it won’t start when you reboot.  This is because VMware won’t load the AHCI driver by default.  So… we will have to tell it to load it automatically.  You will need a Linux Live CD such as Ubuntu.

  1. Boot into Linux
  2. From the desktop you will need to mount the VMware partitions.  In Ubuntu 8.04 and higher, you just need to click on the folders in the drop down menu
  3. Locate oem.tgz on the second VMware partition and overwrite it with this oem.tgz.  It includes a system.map file telling VMware to load the AHCI driver
  4. reboot and boot into VMware ESXi

You should have a fully working VMware ESXi server installed and ready for you to setup virtual machines! :)

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Sun’s VirtualBox 3.1.x: Getting VRDP (remote desktop) to authenticate properly with Linux PAM

Filed Under: How To, Linux, OS, virtualbox by Jason L Froebe — 4 Comments
January 22, 2010

I rebuilt an Ubuntu 9.10 server this past week, ripping off VMware and replacing it with VirtualBox 3.1.2. Setting up VirtualBox as a headless server was very easy with VBoxTool. However, I ran into a problem that I was unable to connect using remote desktop (rdesktop) as any user but the user that started the virtual machine.

Jan 21 22:43:13 vm-holder unix_chkpwd[16040]: check pass; user unknown
Jan 21 22:43:13 vm-holder unix_chkpwd[16040]: password check failed for user (jason)
Jan 21 22:43:13 vm-holder VBoxHeadless: pam_unix(vrdpauth:auth): authentication failure; logname=virtualbox uid=1001 euid=1001 tty= ruser= rhost=  user=jason

This is, currently, an undocumented security feature of VirtualBox 3.1x to prevent just anyone from accessing the virtual machine console. For most folk, this might be a very good thing but if you have a team of sysadmins that should have access to the virtual machine consoles, you probably don’t want them to use the same login.

If that is the case, you can add the user(s) that should have access the virtual machine console to the shadow group on the host Linux machine. Be warned though that the user(s) that are added to the shadow group should not be able to log into the host machine else they will be able to read the shadow file where all the passwords to the box are stored. If the users need access to the host box, then they should have a login for host access (not part of the shadow group) and another for virtual machine console access.

Adding linux user jason_vrdp to the shadow group:

(root) # usermod -G shadow,virtualbox jason_vrdp

Prevent jason_vrdp from logging in to the host or anyone from sudo’ing to it:

(root) # usermod --shell /bin/false jason_vrdp

That’s it :)

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Started reading “Foundations of Qt Development”

Filed Under: Book, Linux, Mac OSX, OS, Windows, misc by Jason L Froebe — Leave a comment
January 19, 2010

When I purchased Foundations of Qt Development (Expert’s Voice in Open Source) by Johan Thelin a few months back, I hoped to get to it right away but work and life diverted my attention. Today at lunch I dived into it. Even though I’m still going through chapter 1, I think I can give a hint of it:

Foundations of Qt® Development (Expert’s Voice in Open Source) is well written. He assumes that you have a little bit of C++ knowledge, avoiding into the trap that so many other authors do. You wouldn’t believe how many technical books I have where the first half or more of the book is simply a rehash of the basics. Forget that!

What I really like is that when he shows you an example of code, he explains why you would want to write it this way and how it differs from the Standard Template Language (STL – see C++ Programming Language, The (3rd Edition)). Where there are performance gains or penalties of using Qt instead of STL, he demonstrates it.

I never realized just how easy it is to write C++ using the Qt framework! Just the Signals and Slots alone make it very very powerful and that’s just the beginning. I’m completely blown away :)

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