Blue Knight Sojourn of the Mind

Well I hit a little snag when I decided to boot two systems at one time so had to solve that problem.

Not really that hard, but here is the difference.

You need to bring up a tap interface for each of the systems and then you need to assign a bridge to the systems. This is not a big deal, and also lets you set up systems easily for bridging, but I need to look in to that more and do testing as I need it.

For now here is the way to fix it and the config file for /etc/conf.d/net

Read the rest…

So why do I want to share out Samba Shares. This is for VirtualBox, to increase the speed of writing, and also to keep VirtualBox disks small as they can be a bit of a pain to compress.

So to start things off you need to make sure that Samba is on the system. If you have installed Samba before then that is great, if not then this is your chance to emerge it.

After Samba is emerged we need to modify the configuration file. By default there is no configuration file in /etc/samba but there is an example file that can be copied over. For me I copied the file over, but since it is huge I am only going to cut out the pertinent parts and explain them.

Read the rest…

Ok.. first little stumble when trying out Virtual Box but it is not the fault of Sun/VirtualBox.

The virtual folder sharing works but is slow. The way to fix that is actually simple turn up network sharing on a regular virtual interface.

Here is a way to do that!
Read the rest…

Well I now have a default windows (winxp) based image. I want to separate the virtual machines that I use. For work I need a virtual machine that I will use to give demonstrations, presentations and webex’s. I also want it to do PPTP VPN which is my work standard (god knows why), I know there might be a problem with PPTP based on what I was reading but I am not ready to tackle that yet.

For home I need a Virtual Machine that has some things that I can not run on Linux or can not run through Wine.

So I created a default image and then I needed to replicate it. Well I did it the VmWare way which was to copy the disk image over. Unfortunately this does not work with Virtualbox. You can copy the disk image as much as you want but it will have problems and can not get added.

To add the image you need to execute the following command:

VBoxManage internalcommands setvdiuuid NAME_Of_New_Image.vdi

This will assign a new ID to the disk and you can now add it in the new virtual machine. This is nice because you can take snapshots so to speak even without the software and then boot them in another system easily.

So on my quest to test out VirtualBox on Gentoo. It is simple to do actually!

Download the binary from SUN. I used the Binary because I need certain options that are only available in the binary version.

The installation was easy due to the virtualbox overlays. Virtualbox is in the system, but the overlays add and correct a few things so that the install is flawless.

After that just start the services, add the users to the group and it starts up like a charm. The options are interesting, and I have to try them all out.

So far it looks good!

Installed VmWare 6.0.4 as said in my previous post. Then had pre-existing Virtual machines start showing as troublesome.

For one the link keeps dropping on the NAT connection, so when I try to do join a webex or any other kind of a connection I get constant drops. There is no information on this anywhere. So if I would open up a trouble ticket it would go no where anyway.

The other thing that is happening is that I am unable to use the Bridging mode on wireless cards. This was working for me a while ago, so it is something new. Theoretically there is a fix for it that someone put together on the boards but at this point I have reached some frustration levels with VmWare.

So while I am not deleting the VmWare off my system yet, I have installed VirtualBox to give it a try on my system.

If you try to install VmWare 6.0.4.93057 on Gentoo there are a few things you need to know.

1. VmWare 6.0.4.93057 is masked, to unmask it you need to add the files that it requests in to /etc/portage/package.keywords. The way I aways do it is by first running emerge vmware-workstation –pretend and see what the build wants to be masked and then add it to the file.

2. Your Kernel MUST have the following enabled:
CONFIG_UNUSED_SYMBOLS in the Kernel Hacking section.
This is because there are some symbols that 2.6.25 kernels have removed that VmWare needs.

3. You will need to modify the startup file “/opt/vmware/workstation/bin/vmware” which is the default startup file for the system and include:

export VMWARE_USE_SHIPPED_GTK=no

as one of the top lines, this is a trial an error based on the GTK engine but if you are using and updating your system then you will have to use the same one as I have above. The other settings are “yes and force”.

4. For sound to work it is very simple. First make sure that you have media-libs/alsa-oss installed. If it is installed make sure that you have alsa running and added to the boot level.

To check if alsa is running do /etc/init.d/alsasound status. Look at this page here for further alsa documentations: http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/alsa-guide.xml

The next software that I need so that I can load my VmWare systems that I have created for work and other means. To do so takes the following steps.

1. Edit or create the file called package.keywords in the /etc/portage directory.
2. Add the following lines to the File:
   app-emulation/vmware-workstation ~x86
   app-emulation/vmware-modules ~x86
   dev-cpp/libsexymm ~x86
   x11-libs/libview ~x86
3. Go to the VmWare site and download the Vmware Workstation that is the latest copy supported by portage.
4. Move the file in to /usr/portage/distfiles/ so that it will work during emerge.
5. Check that you have “accessibility” keyword in your /etc/make.conf, if you do not you will need to recompile gtkmm with accessibility
6. emerge app-emulation/vmware-workstation - This will emerge the needed files.
7. After the emerge you need to run /opt/vmware/workstation/bin/vmware-config.pl as root (or using sudo).
8. You will also need to add vmware to start up automatically. To do so type the following: rc-update add vmware default, as root of course.
9. If you want to use VmWare before the next reboot then start vmware manually by running: /etc/init.d/vmware start
10. Now you need to add the users to the vmware group to be able to use vmware.
11. More then likely you will get an error that is something like this:
    /opt/vmware/workstation/lib/bin/vmware: symbol lookup error: /opt/vmware/workstation/lib/lib/libvmwareui.so.0/libvmwareui.so.0: undefined symbol: _ZThn12_N4view10FieldEntry17delete_text_vfuncEii
12. To fix the error is very simple, edit your vmware start script in /opt/vmware/workstation/bin/vmware  and add the following line in the beginning of the script :

    # BEGINNING_OF_DB_DOT_SH
    #!/bin/sh

    # Export the settings
    export VMWARE_USE_SHIPPED_GTK=yes

13. Run Vmware as a user or as root.