I thought I'd kick off my Citrix blog with a question I get pretty often from Linux enthusiasts: how to install unsupported Linux distributions on XenServer 4.1.

The most common solution people find is to use the "Other Install Media" template, insert the distribution installation CD, and find that the mouse cursor doesn't work when they boot into X11. The reason for this is that they are using the hardware-assisted emulation mode of installing Linux. In this mode (dubbed "HVM"), all input and output is emulated, and in particular the mouse interface uses the USB tablet interface. If the distribution doesn't include a driver for USB tablets, then no mouse will appear.

Windows guests run at high-speed in HVM mode due to the installation of the XenServer tools which install high-speed drivers, but these are not necessary for Linux distributions since they can be run in para-virtualized mode (dubbed "PV"). This involves obtaining a Xen-enabled PV kernel from the distribution, and modifying the VM record in XenServer to boot into this kernel instead of HVM mode. The XenServer built-in templates for popular distributions such as RHEL, CentOS or SUSE Linux already automate all this and are in PV mode from the installer onwards.

In the remainder of this post, I'll explain how to take a distribution without direct support (Ubuntu 8.04), get it installed in HVM mode on XenServer 4.1, and convert it to PV mode with a XenCenter graphical console.

• Download the "Alternative Installation CD". The main installation CD uses graphical mode, which won't install as well in HVM mode due to the use of esoteric 16-bit mode instructions for the graphics operations. The 16-bit emulation mechanisms vary between processors (with better support on AMD chips, and a software instruction emulator required on Intel VT chips). However, the Ubuntu alternate CD uses a text-based installer which works fine.

• Create a new VM on the XenServer 4.1 host using the "Windows Server 2003" template. This template is set up with a sensible set of hardware emulation flags and default disks, and so is a good base for the HVM installation of Ubuntu as well. Attach the Ubuntu ISO you just downloaded to the VM, and proceed to install Ubuntu as normal. You should install it onto the first disk, to make the subsequent steps in this guide easier.

• When the installation is finished, reboot the VM (don't forget to detach the installation ISO first). It should boot up in HVM mode into the graphical login screen. The XenCenter display will show it as not being optimized, which is fine. At this stage, I prefer to work via a remote command-line using SSH. Open up a Terminal from Ubuntu, and run "sudo apt-get install openssh-server". Then find out the VM's IP address with "ifconfig eth0", and then connect to it remotely. Alternatively, you can continue to type in the commands directly into the terminal as well.

• On the Ubuntu guest, you now need to install the latest Xen version of the Ubuntu kernel:
  • Install the Linux kernel virtual package with "sudo apt-get install linux-image-xen". This is a virtual package which pulls in the latest Xen kernel and modules, in my case 2.6.24.19.21.
  • You now need to workaround a bug in grub. Due to the switch in recent versions of Linux to work with the hypervisor-independent paravirt_ops interface, update-grub doesn't update the grub configuration with your newly installed Xen kernel. To fix this:
    • Open /boot/grub/menu.lst in your favourite editor.
    • Scroll to the bottom to the kernel list, and find the entry which looks like: title Ubuntu 8.04, kernel 2.6.24-16-generic root (hd0,0) kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.24-16-generic root=UUID=<uuid> ro quiet splash initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.24-16-generic quiet
    • Add a new entry which is similar to this, but change all references to the 2.6.24-16-generic to the Xen kernel. In /boot I have vmlinuz-2.6.24-19-xen, so my new entry looks like: title Ubuntu 8.04, kernel 2.6.24-19-xen root (hd0,0) kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.24-19-xen root=UUID=<uuid> ro quiet splash initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.24-19-xen quiet
    • Also edit the default entry in the menu.lst to match the number of the kernel you just added. I set mine to 3, since it is the fourth entry in the list and the indexing starts from 0.

• When this is done, shut down the guest but do not reboot it just yet. You first need to edit the VM record for your Ubuntu VM to convert it to PV boot mode. From the control domain console of your XenServer:
  • Determine the UUID of the Ubuntu VM by using the xe CLI:
    • xe vm-list name-label=Ubuntu params=uuid --minimal : this will print out the UUID of the VM named "Ubuntu". If you are logged into the control domain, pressing the <tab> key will perform auto-completion of UUIDs in subsequent XE commands, so you don't need to keep typing it in every time!
    • xe vm-param-set uuid=<uuid> HVM-boot-policy= : this will clear the HVM boot mode from the VM.
    • xe vm-param-set uuid=<uuid> PV-bootloader=pygrub : this will switch the VM to using to the pygrub bootloader which starts the guest in PV mode by examining its filesystem for kernel.
    • vm vm-param-set uuid=<uuid> PV-args="console=tty0 xencons=tty" : this configures the kernel boot arguments to display the login console on the correct TTY, so that it shows up in the XenCenter console.
  • Next, you need to flag the root disk of the VM as bootable so that pygrub knows where to look for the PV kernel:
    • xe vm-disk-list uuid=<uuid> and look for the UUID of the VBD for the disk. VBD stands for "Virtual Block Device" and represents how to map the virtual disk into the virtual machine.
    • xe vbd-param-set uuid=<vbd uuid> bootable=true will set the root disk VBD to be bootable.

• You should be all set now! If you boot up the Ubuntu VM, it should start up in text-mode with the high-speed PV kernel. If it doesn't work due to an incorrect grub configuration, you can use the xe-edit-bootloader script in the XenServer control domain to edit the grub.conf until it works.

• The next step is to install the XenServer tools within the guest, so that metrics such as the network interface IP addresses are recorded and reported from XenCenter. To do this:
  • Due to a portability issues with the default shell in Ubuntu (dash), you will need to replace it by: sudo apt-get -y install bash && sudo dpkg-reconfigure dash. We've actually fixed this issue in future releases of XenServer, but for XenServer 4.1 you will need to use bash.
  • Attach the XenServer Tools ISO into the VM, and mount it into the guest with sudo mount /dev/xvdd /mnt
  • Install the tools with sudo dpkg -i /mnt/Linux/xe-guest-utilities_4.1.0-257_i386.deb.
  • The warnings about the VM being unoptimized should disappear, and additional information such as the IP address of the guest should appear in XenCenter.

• In order to access the Ubuntu installation via the graphical console, you need to configure it to run VNC on the external network interface. XenCenter polls the guest to see if it is listening on the VNC port 5900, and offers the option to switch to the graphical console if it finds it. I followed the excellent instructions on this forum post. To summarise them:
  • sudo apt-get install vnc4server xinetd : to install the required packages
  • Edit /etc/gdm/gdm.conf and uncomment the RemoteGreeter=/usr/lib/gdm/gdmlogin line, set the key Enable=true in the [xdcmp] section.
  • Install a new service file for xinetd into /etc/xinetd.d/Xvnc with the following contents: service Xvnc { type = UNLISTED disable = no socket_type = stream protocol = tcp wait = no user = nobody server = /usr/bin/Xvnc server_args = -inetd -query localhost -geometry 1024x768 -depth 16 -cc 3 -once -SecurityTypes=none -extension XFIXES port = 5900 }
  • The major difference from the forum poster is to run it on port 5900, and not to restrict it to just localhost (since XenCenter also needs to connect to it).
  • Finally, restart the xinetd service by running sudo /etc/init.d/xinetd restart.

Once you're done with this installation, you can shut down the VM and convert it to a template. Any exports or clones will continue to run in PV mode, since the XenServer XVA export format records all of the metadata required to re-create the VM records.

Enjoy the Ubuntu on XenServer experience! Remember to report any issues you have with the in-guest packages on the Ubuntu support forums, or just give them positive feedback.

PS: many thanks to Andrew Peace and Ian Campbell for assistance. May their Linux beards remain long and uncut.

I was working on a project recently, where I wanted to offer the user some fine grained control over transformation of display objects. A quick search led me to Green Sock, run by Jack Doyle. What can I say other than that Jack has tweening libraries for every flavor project and task. He also has a transform manager library, which at the time was only ActionScript 2. After an email exchange, Jack graciously provided me with an advance copy of his ActionScript 3 code base. That ActionScript 3 version is now done and you can purchase a license by heading over to the Green Sock web site.
(more�?�)

The attached document goes over a set of security-related events and how they are logged on ESXi 4.0. The focus is on actions initiated directly on the ESXi host, since these would bypass vCenter for the most part. The ideal case of course is to perform all actions through vCenter, since this automatically records events in the vCenter Events table, but there are certain cases in which direct access to the ESXi host is involved. Use this information to help you configure your log collection system to alert you to security-related events of interest

VI and Security Admins

Charu Chaubal, Sr. Technical Marketing Architect, VMware

You use this proven practice at your discretion. VMware and the author do not guarantee any results from the use of this proven practice. This proven practice is provided on an as-is basis and is for demonstration purposes only.

WebKit now supports explicit animations in CSS. As a counterpart to transitions, animations provide a way to declare repeating animated effects, with keyframes, completely in CSS.

With a recent nightly build, you can see the above animation in action.

Let�??s take a look at how to use CSS animations, starting with an example of a bouncing box.

See this example live in a recent WebKit nightly build.

Specifying animations is easy. You first describe the animation effect using the @-webkit-keyframes rule.

A @-webkit-keyframes block contains rule sets called keyframes. A keyframe defines the style that will be applied for that moment within the animation. The animation engine will smoothly interpolate style between the keyframes. In the above example we define an animation called �??bounce�?� to have two keyframes: one for the start of the animation (the �??from�?� block) and one for the end (the �??to�?� block).

Once we have defined an animation, we apply it using -webkit-animation-name and related properties.

The above rule attaches the �??bounce�?� animation, sets the duration to 4 seconds, makes it execute a total of 10 times, and has every other iteration play in reverse.

Now, suppose you want to party like it is 1995 and make your own super-blink style. In this case we specify an animation with multiple keyframes, each with different values for opacity, background color and transform.

Again, see this example live in a recent WebKit nightly build.

Keyframes are specified using percentage values, defining the moment along the animation duration that the keyframe snapshots. The �??from�?� and �??to�?� keywords are equivalent to �??0%�?� and �??100%�?� respectively.

CSS Animations is one of the enhancements to CSS proposed by the WebKit project that we�??ve been calling CSS Effects (eg. gradients, masks, transitions). The goal is to provide properties that allow Web developers to create graphically rich content. In many cases animations are presentational, and therefore belong in the styling system. This allows developers to write declarative rules for animations, replacing lots of hard-to-maintain animation code in JavaScript.

The other good news is that the WebKit on iPhone 2.0 already supports CSS Animations (as well as CSS Transforms and CSS Transitions). The iPhone implementation has been optimized for the platform so you get fantastic performance. Combining animations, transitions and transforms allows for some really impressive content.

We�??re documenting these enhancements on webkit.org and are proposing the specifications to standards bodies. Note that since they are currently features specific to WebKit they are implemented with a -webkit- prefix, although the specifications do not use the prefix.

You can find more examples on Apple�??s Web Applications Developer Center.

As always, leave feedback in the comments and file bugs at http://bugs.webkit.org/.

IamTHEvilONE wrote:Mike,

that's because GHO is not directly supported. You'll need to use Ghost to export the GHO into the virtual disk format (sv2i or v2i).

Or, ghost the image inside a virtual machine as if it were physical and then use the reconfigure option on the virtual machine to make it bootable.

I am familiar with Ghost but not VMware:

1) How do i convert the image from GHO to sv2i or v2i with Ghost? I have Ghost Solution suite 2.5 and none of the applications in the suite allow me to do what you have suggested? also, why does VMware converter say that it supports gho files if it does not???

2) "Ghost the image inside a virtual machine as if it were physical and then use the reconfigure option on the virtual machine to make it bootable" Can you please explain in more detail how to do this? Sounds like it requires a boot disk prior to imaging the gho file?

Skybound has been accepted into the “Accelerator Center” in Waterloo, Ontario. It’s a government-funded building occupied by startup technology companies. Residents have access to scalable office space, free consultation, and most importantly, connections with anybody in the industry. It’s located in the Research and Innovation park. Literally across the street is the Institute for Quantum Computing, the RIM headquarters, the University of Waterloo (one of the top software engineering schools in the world), Google, OpenText and Sybase.

Waterloo is a unique community that is relatively low on population but busting at the seams with technology, innovation, and overall intelligent people. The population is only around 120,000, but it is home to over 400 technology companies. There could not be a better location for Skybound.

In continuation to the Library VMware Icons and Diagrams posted on VIOPS recently several people have made requests for using these wonderful graphics for designing Visio documents. These are the same Graphics from the official VMware Branding Team.

20/March/08 - Small Icons now available for documentation - Small VMware Icons

Virtualization professionals that need to present documents and designs.

The Stencils have been separated into groups

1. ThinApp-Stencil- Objects for ThinApp

2. Build your Own-Stencil - Stand-alone objectsto create your own diagrams

3. VM-STencil - Objects that are related Virtual Machines

4. VMware-Stencil - General Objects for VMware

5. Products-Stencil - Diagrams and objects that are related to VMware products or technologies

1. Download the Attached Files below.

2. Extract the Stencils from both files.

3. Open Visio and open the all the Stencils.

4. Use the Stencils to create a visio diagram of your infrastructure

1. This doc on the web @ VMware Icons and Diagrams - Visio Stencils

2. Original PowerPoint Presentation with Graphics - Library VMware Icons and Diagrams.

3. Visio Stencils Bundle - 1 (zip file) for your use - Attached to this document.

4. Small VMware Icons

Stencils Created and sorted by Maish Saidel-Keesing

All Graphics are from - VMware Corporate Branding

VMware (NYSE: VMW) is the global leader in virtualization solutions from the desktop to the datacenter. Customers of all sizes rely on VMware to reduce capital and operating expenses, ensure business continuity, strengthen security and go green. With 2008 revenues of $1.9 billion, more than 130,000 customers and more than 22,000 partners, VMware is one of the fastest-growing public software companies. Headquartered in Palo Alto, California, VMware is majority-owned by EMC Corporation (NYSE: EMC). For more information, visit www.vmware.com.

You use this proven practice at your discretion. VMware and the author do not guarantee any results from the use of this proven practice. This proven practice is provided on an as-is basis and is for demonstration purposes only.

These graphics have not been optimized for Visio. They are not vector-based and are not guaranteed to resize at best quality.

1. The HDTV Converter is the only software that allows you to convert digital camera pictures, which have been edited in photo editors, such as Photoshop, back into a format that will be accepted by:

• Photo players, such as the Panasonic HDTV Photo Player
• HDTVs with built-in memory card sockets.
• Digital photo frames of all sizes.

2. The HDTV Converter is the only software that allows you to convert JPG or TIFF images, which were created from camera RAW files, into a DCF compatible format, which is required by many HDTVs and digital photo frames.

3. The HDTV Converter is the only software that allows you to convert JPG or TIFF images, which were created by film scanners, into a DCF compatible format, which is required by many by HDTVs and digital photo frames.

4. The HDTV Converter converts digital camera images into one of four formats:

• HDTV - full-screen 16:9 format meeting 1920x1080 HDTV requirements.
• HDTV vertical or horizontal letter-boxed 16:9 wide-screen format retaining the aspect-ratio of original image.
• Original image size is retained without decoding and re-encoding the JPEG image data, but DCF conformance is restored.
• A customer specified image size for full-screen display on digital picture frames.

1. The HDTV Converter is the only software that allows you to convert digital camera pictures, which have been edited in photo editors, such as Photoshop, back into a format that will be accepted by:

• Photo players, such as the Panasonic HDTV Photo Player
• HDTVs with built-in memory card sockets.
• Digital photo frames of all sizes.

2. The HDTV Converter is the only software that allows you to convert JPG or TIFF images, which were created from camera RAW files, into a DCF compatible format, which is required by many HDTVs and digital photo frames.

3. The HDTV Converter is the only software that allows you to convert JPG or TIFF images, which were created by film scanners, into a DCF compatible format, which is required by many by HDTVs and digital photo frames.

4. The HDTV Converter converts digital camera images into one of four formats:

• HDTV - full-screen 16:9 format meeting 1920x1080 HDTV requirements.
• HDTV vertical or horizontal letter-boxed 16:9 wide-screen format retaining the aspect-ratio of original image.
• Original image size is retained without decoding and re-encoding the JPEG image data, but DCF conformance is restored.
• A customer specified image size for full-screen display on digital picture frames.

1. The HDTV Converter is the only software that allows you to convert digital camera pictures, which have been edited in photo editors, such as Photoshop, back into a format that will be accepted by:

• Photo players, such as the Panasonic HDTV Photo Player
• HDTVs with built-in memory card sockets.
• Digital photo frames of all sizes.

2. The HDTV Converter is the only software that allows you to convert JPG or TIFF images, which were created from camera RAW files, into a DCF compatible format, which is required by many HDTVs and digital photo frames.

3. The HDTV Converter is the only software that allows you to convert JPG or TIFF images, which were created by film scanners, into a DCF compatible format, which is required by many by HDTVs and digital photo frames.

4. The HDTV Converter converts digital camera images into one of four formats:

• HDTV - full-screen 16:9 format meeting 1920x1080 HDTV requirements.
• HDTV vertical or horizontal letter-boxed 16:9 wide-screen format retaining the aspect-ratio of original image.
• Original image size is retained without decoding and re-encoding the JPEG image data, but DCF conformance is restored.
• A customer specified image size for full-screen display on digital picture frames.

Support tells me that there's only two ways to manage the updates on ESXi embedded systems, using the "VMware Infrastructure Update" application (which requires manually logging into each and every ESXi host), or using some command-line tool. This, frankly, seems insane to me considering the Update Manager seems to be orders of magnitude more powerful in terms of what it can do, and I can't picture ESXi users being forced to do things "the very hard way" like that.

Does anyone have experience with this they'd like to share? I'm beginning to get very frustrated....

Cheers,

Derek

• Shining Requirements -

By the way, MapleStory gold is important to you level up quickly, so you can store enough more to play.

• Skylar Requirements -

Thank you for reading, and we can offer you cheap MapleStory Mesos if you want to buy it.

I agree with Julian. SMVI is not needed. We have over 300 VMs running on our NetApp 3170. The vast majority are running over NFS, with a few FC and iSCSI exceptions. When we first started with VI3, we created a custom script to take a VMware snapshot of all the VMs on a volume, take the NetApp snapshot, then release the VMware snapshots. Granted this was still using the VCB 1.0 framework, but we ran into a lot of failures where releasing the VMware snapshot would timeout and cause the VM to crash.

We scrapped the script a long time ago and have since just relied on NetApp snapshots to take care of our backups. We have yet to not be able to bring back a VM in a bootable state by just relying on the NetApp snapshots. For VMs running applications with structured data (such as SQL), we use other tools to back up that data. That way if we had to restore a SQL VM, if the SQL DB was corrupt after the restore, we could use SQL to restore from its own backup. (A few months ago, we had to restore a Microsoft Office SharePoint Server with a local DB, and it came back in an operational state from just the NetApp snapshot.)

We keep 7 days of NetApp snapshots locally on our 3170, as well as using NetApp to snapvault the VMs to our DR facility (where we keep 30 days). As I mentioned, we run the majority of our VMs on NFS. Single file restores are a breeze using UFS Explorer. Just create a CIFS share (preferably hidden) to the volume(s) holding your VMs (on either your local or DR Filer). UFS Explorer can browse the share and open the snapshoted VMDKs to restore any files needed. If we need to restore entire VMs, we just SSH into the ESX host, cd to the snapshot folder, and copy the VMDK back to the production folder. Restoration with iSCSI or FC VMs takes some extra effort since you have to make the snapshot or snapvault writable, point an ESX box at it, configure it to see snapshot LUNs, then pull the disk out (or mount it to another VM to restore files).

We also use NetApp snapmirror in combination with SnapDrive to provide failover to a DR facility for 2 of our most critical apps. Each application has a VM at our primary facility with its OS drive running over FC to our NetApp 3170. Each VM also has a SnapDrive (also running over FC) that resides in a different volume on the Filer from the OS drive. The application also has an Oracle instance. We keep it in the same volume as the SnapDrive, just in a different qtree. We then snapmirror this volume out to a DR facility. There is a standby VM for each app running at the DR facility. Using some scripts and the SnapDrive CLI, we are able to provide double-click failover for these apps. The app support team can RDP to the VM at the DR facility and double-click on the script. The snapmirror is then update, quiesced, and broken-off (making it read/write on the DR Filer), the SnapDrive is then mounted, the Oracle DB is started, some app cleanup is performed...and they are up and running in a matter of minutes.

I just completed testing another storage vendor's array and their equivalent to SMVI (looking for alternatives to NetApp for very small remote offices where we don't need all the functionality of the NetApp). They follow the "traditional" model of creating the VMware snapshot, taking the array snapshot, then releasing the VMware snapshot. One thing I found was that when I restored a VM there was a VMware snapshot hanging out there (since there was a VMware snapshot present when the array snapshot was taken). I have never used SMVI and they may do a better job at cleaning up after themselves. However, I would make sure that no matter what, if you take a VMware snapshot prior to your array snapshot (no matter what the array is), make sure to delete the VMware snapshot before moving on.

Am I the only one having this issue? Is there some tuning I should be doing?

i have disabled the isci initiator rescan renable then rescan still the same problem.

The files that I have are below. I am masked parts of the file for my own purpse.
foo WinXp.nvram
foo WinXp.vmsd
foo WinXp.vmx
foo WinXp.vmxf
vmware.log
Windows XP Professional-0....cl1-.....-cl1.vmdk
Windows XP Professional-0....cl1-.....-cl1.vmdk_part 2.vmdk
Windows XP Professional-0....cl1-.....-cl1.vmdk_part 3.vmdk
Windows XP Professional-0....cl1-.....-cl1.vmdk_part 4.vmdk
Windows XP Professional-0....cl1-.....-cl1.vmdk_part 5.vmdk
Windows XP Professional-0....cl1-.....-cl1.vmdk_part 6.vmdk

Are there other files that are needed for this image to startup? Or is there something in the App (vmware desktop) that I can override?

Thanks