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Getting RDP not PCoIP with View 4

guyrleech — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 16:14:27 GMT

I did actually RTFM, which is rare for me, but I didn't see that bit. Thanks - so at least it is expected if not ideal.

Guy Leech
VMware vExpert 2009

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The VMware Server 2 community does not exist!

guyrleech — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 09:31:43 GMT

Looking good once more - thanks everyone.

Guy Leech
VMware vExpert 2009

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Error 25085.Setup failed to register VMware vCenter Update Manager extension to VMware vCenter Server

guyrleech — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 19:56:35 GMT

Thought I'd share this as its taken me a while to figure out why an Update Manager install on top of a working vCenter 4.0 kept failing with the above error. This was on x64 but I suspect it will be the same on x86.

Although you can generate an MSI log from the update manager installer executable (it doesn't like you running the msi directly), this doesn't help as it just gives the error message without any detail or context. The key log file was vminst.log which is found in %TEMP% for the user running the installer. In there it gives the command line given to the vciInstallUtils.exe program (which is run by a custom action) which when run manually shows me that I've been a muppet and given the account that I specified for VC access in the installer the wrong permissions in VC. A quick change of the permissions, rerun the installer and it's working.

It's also interesting because it shows why you need to have no special characters, such as spaces or quote marks, in the password you specify since it is passed unquoted, via the -P option, to the vciInstallUtils.exe program so spaces will be interpreted as a separate command line option.

VMware Update Manager-build-162871: 10/21/09 19:44:55

Begin Logging

VMware Update Manager-build-162871: 10/21/09 19:44:55 --- CA exec: VMRegisterExtension
VMware Update Manager-build-162871: 10/21/09 19:44:55 INFO: Reg/UnReg extn command: "-v 192.168.0.30 -p 80 -U "leech\svc_vmware" -P *** -S "C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\Infrastructure\Update Manager\extension.xml" -C "C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\Infrastructure\Update Manager
" -L "C:\DOCUME~1\admingl\LOCALS~1\Temp
" -O extupdate"
VMware Update Manager-build-162871: 10/21/09 19:44:55 AppendPath::done Path: C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\Infrastructure\Update Manager\vciInstallUtils.exe
VMware Update Manager-build-162871: 10/21/09 19:44:55 Found "C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\Infrastructure\Update Manager\vciInstallUtils.exe"
VMware Update Manager-build-162871: 10/21/09 19:45:00 Process returned 199
VMware Update Manager-build-162871: 10/21/09 19:45:00 Error:: Unknown VC error
VMware Update Manager-build-162871: 10/21/09 19:45:00 ERROR: VUM registeration with VC failed
VMware Update Manager-build-162871: 10/21/09 19:45:00 Posting error message 25085

The vciInstallUtils.exe run manually with the command line from the log file gave:

logUtil, 250 Product = VMware UpdateManager, Version = 4.0.0, Build = 162871
VC server URL: http://192.168.0.30:80
~~2009-10-21 20:16:05.931 03892 info 'Extension'~~ Connecting to host 192.168.0.30 on port 80 using protocol http

~~2009-10-21 20:16:05.978 03892 info 'Extension'~~ Authenticating user leech\svc_vmware
~~2009-10-21 20:16:06.009 03892 info 'Extension'~~ Logged in!
MethodFault error: vim.fault.NoPermission
installerRunVCCommand, 381 VCSERVER The extension registration failed
installerRunVCCommand, 384 VCSERVER Register extension failed 1066

I hope this saves someone else the few hours it has taken me to get to the bottom of it.

Guy Leech
VMware vExpert 2009

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Getting the View client's IP address

wbarnes — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 15:25:06 GMT

I'm looking for this functionality as well.

I can script a fair amount of things if I know where the client is on our network. (closet printer, etc.)

my temporary workaround is to carefully name my thin clients, and use that in my scripts if the IP address comes back as 127.0.0.1

(I'm using WTSManager.shell in my scripts)

here's a snippet of what I'm doing:

if ( ipaddress = "127.0.0.1" ) then
ClientName = WTS.MyClientName
matchClientName = left(ClientName,6)
Select Case matchClientName
Case "XX-F1-": Vlan = 189
Case "XX-F2-": Vlan = 182
Case "XX-F3-": Vlan = 186
Case "XX-F4-": Vlan = 184
End Select

somethign like that.

IE8 seems ok with VMware Infrastructure Web Access

guyrleech — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 19:13:02 GMT

I've installed the release build of IE8 on a Vista x86 SP1 system, over IE7, and it seems absolutely fine in acccessing Server 2.0, running on an openSUSE 11.1 host. In fact, it feels crisper and certainly doesn't have the client certificate prompts at initial connect/logon.

I wouldn't like to say that it is an exhaustive test but I changed some host settings, created and booted a VM, got a remote console to it (previously installed with IE7), powered it off and deleted it from inventory and disk. Also changed settings successfully of a running VM. In fact, didn't find anything that didn't work.

Cloning a snapshotted VM and restoring to the exact point of the snapshot

guyrleech — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 10:22:46 GMT

If you snapshot a running VM and then just copy the base disk away then you lose the running information and may corrupt a VM restored from this disk particularly if the VM is stateful like a database server. The method below will work to allow you to take a snapshot of a live machine, copy away the files and create a cloned VM that can be resumed from the exact point of the snapshot. This technique can be used for backup and restore purposes and is obviously scriptable. The reason we do this is because the disk files of a running VM are locked and therefore cannot be copied, particularly on Linux hosts where there is no VSS functionality. Note that the disk files in use after the snapshot are called *-000001.vmdk where there may be more than one depending on how many disks you have and whether they are split into 2GB chunks or not. The .vmdk disk files that are not named *-000001.vmdk are the base, original disks, and are no longer locked after a snapshot since they are read-only.

1) Create a new folder for the cloned VM

2) Copy in here the following files from the running, snapshotted VM you want to live backup:

*-Snapshot1.vmem renamed to drop the "-Snapshot1" part
*-Snapshot1.vmsn renamed to drop the "-Snapshot1" part and change ".vmsn" to ".vmss"
Disk files (obviously more than one file if 2GB split) - don't copy the *-000001.vmdk files as these are the post snapshot disk files and will be in use
*.vmx
*.vmxf
*.nvram

3) Add this line to the .vmx which is the key to making VMware realise that this VM that you add to the inventory is suspended:

checkpoint.vmState = "Whatever it is called.vmss"

4) Change the reference to the disk in the .vmx from *-000001.vmdk to the base .vmdk(s) that you have copied over

5) Add the .vmx to the inventory and check that it shows as suspended

5) Start it - note that it will ask if you have copied or moved it but you can safely answer "copied" and it will retain the suspended state and not clash with the other VM at the VMware layer but may do network, SID, etc wise if the original VM is still running

I have tested this on an openSUSE host but beleive it should work too on Windows hosts.

Server 2.0 Tips and Tricks Guide

guyrleech — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 08:30:36 GMT

In the discussions listing view, rather than in a specific post, there is an "Actions" section on the right hand side which has a "Start a Discussion" link.

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VMware Server 2.0 Tips and Tricks

guyrleech — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 23:16:26 GMT

Creating isolated host-only networks

guyrleech — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 18:33:30 GMT

The default host-only networking in Server 2.0 and Workstation allows the guests to talk to each other and also to the host itself. What you may want or need to do is to have host-only networking where the guests can talk to teach other but not to the host and vice versa. This is actually very easy to setup. I would suggest that you create a new host-only network adapter for this so that you can also have "traditional" host-only networking available too.

For Windows hosts (I tested this with Workstation 6.5.1 running on Vista SP1 x86), it is simply a case of disabling the VMware NIC on the host.

For Linux hosts (I tested this with Server 2.0 build 122956 on openSUSE 10.3 x64) , I found that if you just take the network interface down (e.g. "ifconfig vmnet3 down"), although the guests cannot ping the host's IP address, the host can ping its own ip address. I therefore also removed the IP address from the interface on the host. This is achieved thus (obviously substituting the correct IP address, subnet mask length and network interface):

ip address del 192.168.188.1/24 dev vmnet3

I've not exhaustively tested this, just used WinPE bootable ISOs and pinging another host-only VM and checked that they cannot ping the host's host-only IP address. Note that the guests still get IP addresses via DHCP (if configured that way). There may also still be some communication possible between host and guest but simple IP based stuff seems to be disabled.

Given the similarity between Workstation and Server 2.0 at the network level, I would assume that each of the methods above will work on both Windows and Linux.

Script to set priorities of VM processes on Linux

guyrleech — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 14:05:20 GMT

I finally got around to knocking up the attached which takes an input file of VMs and will set their priorities, via the renice command, on a Linux host. Ideally, this would be hooked into the init.d scripts to run automatically at boot. Whether it actually makes a difference or not, is another question and another thread.

My Unix/Linux scripting is a little rusty to say the least but although it was written on openSUSE 10.3, I've hopefully kept it fairly generic to aid portability to other distributions.

It takes a single argument which is the name of a file that contains lines with two comma separated fields. The first is the part of the VM that will be matched against the process listing of vmware-vmx processes. Note that it is case sensitive (although you could do a grep -i instead) and will take folder names too (a lot of my VMs use the same vmx name since are copied from "templates"). A sample input file might look like this:

XP Pro SP3 - Media Player/XP Pro SP3 - Sysprep.vmx,-5
Backup DC x64/Windows Server 2003 Enterprise x64 Edition.vmx,5
PDC/Windows Server 2003 Enterprise x64 Edition.vmx,10

Note that negative nice values given to the renice command give higher priorities and greater than zero (the default) give lower priorities.

Message was edited by: guyrleech

ESXi host will occasionally not power down

guyrleech — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 18:46:36 GMT

Most of the time it powers off fine, as I would expect with an ACPI equipped machine and recent software. Just shut it down now from the VI client and it has powered off just fine.

Seems like we may be getting a new (release?) version

tkra — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 20:34:55 GMT

I love this. I have been getting used to Linux for the past year and finally figured out Workstation, Server 1, and the beta for Server 2.

Server 2 is excellent, and the web interface is fine with me. I can use (free) UltraVNC with the virtual machines, and this solves the
clipboard and file transfer problems I have had so far. RealVNC has a free client that will actually connect to the VNC server and
run in full screen mode. Therefore, I can run a virtual XP box off of linux on my second monitor, and pile Vista windows overtop of
the fullsize XP desktop. I just move the cursor, and I'm on XP. No KVM switches or hassles.

I'm just learning, but this is awesome... and it looks like version 2 in full will be out to coincide when I'm ready to install on my
Linux server. I'm on a test machine now. Talk about timing! Some guys have all the luck.

I tried Virtualbox and it is quite promising, but the USB functions were all screwed up. Server 2 has USB 2.0 working and it's
smooth.

P.S. I know there is built-in remote networking, but I'm trying to figure out the best all-around solution that will also allow remote
users to come visit if need be... Anway, this is my first posting here so I had to type something!

New VI Client won't connect to Server running on SuSE 10.3 x64

guyrleech — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 19:17:11 GMT

Set them back to 8222/8333 and the VI client did indeed connect ok on :8333. Thanks very much. Obviously the web UI works ok again too.

Pity then that I've got to revert to Server 1.0 since I've just read that the USB support isn't working, and I've tried it without success, which is what I need, even if it is only at 1.1 speeds.:-(

64 bit guests on HP nx6325 laptop

larstr — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 11:10:48 GMT

It seems HP has finally come to it's senses: "If the CPU supports VT we will support it."

New bioses will be released, but at different times for different models.

Lars