Cloning a VMWare Guest on the free VMWare Server

The free VMWare Server, unlike it's heavyweight cousin, VMWare Infrastructure Suite, doesn't include a facility for cloning guests. A copy guest function does exist in the nonfree VMWare Workstation, but this has been left out of all the free products. For those of us who began working with VMWare before even the fee-based products had this feature, the following simple method continues to work:

1. Create a new folder, named for the new copy;


2. Copy the files from the original guest into this folder;


3. Remove any .WRITELOCK files in the new folder, and rename the .vmx file for the new vm guest;


4. Run the following command to rename the disk folders in the new folder:
   
   vmware-vdiskmanager -n [OLDVMNAME].vmdk [NEWVMNAME].vmdk
   


5. Edit the new .vmx file and change the value for "scsi0:0.fileName" to reflect the NEWVMNAME, you might also want to conform the value for "displayName" to match the new name;


6. Go out and enjoy a cup of coffee with the time you just saved.
   

That's it!

Waiting for centosplus

The old Dell laptop has been performing very well since being upgraded to CentOS 5. It's still a pig on power consumption, or maybe it's just that I made a huge mistake in getting it with the standard instead of the hi-capacity battery. I've been waiting for release of a centosplus kernel for 5 before upgrading my workstation at home, mostly because I need FireWire (IEEE1394) support to interface with the tape side of our minicam (a Sony). Supposedly the first issue of that kernel has been completed and should be available on the mirrors any day now.

It's a mark of how spoiled I've become since switching to CentOS a couple of years ago. Back in the bad old days I would routinely spend hours rebuilding the stock kernel from source to get whatever additional device support I needed. Nowadays I wait for someone else to do it and just download their package. Another indicator is my irrational annoyance whenever I have to do an update on one of the Red Hat Enterprise boxes at work. With CentOS I can install a system and issue a "yum update" in relatively rapid succession. For the RHEL environment we need to first procure a subscription, which takes some time with our internal corporate bureaucracy, and then register the system after it's installed. I can buy time by downloading and mounting the latest respin disks, but even with RHEL 4.4 there are by now a staggering number of packages needed to bring a system up to date -- not the least of which is the latest tzdata covering the new DST (Daylight Savings Time) rules. RHEL 5 isn't as bad, but as of the date I'm writing this there isn't ANY commercial software certified to run on it -- leastways nothing from any of the major ISV's (Independant Software Vendors) we use (Oracle, CA, IBM, etc.).

So here I am, sitting out on the back porch typing this article in between visits to my favorite CentOS mirror.

Well, at least it's a nice warm, sunny, afternoon in North Carolina.

udevd[408]: add_to_rules: unknown key 'AT TRS{idProduct}' Error on CentOS 5 Bootup

Ever since I upgraded the one laptop to CentOS 5, I've been getting this annoying error on bootup:

udevd[408]: add_to_rules: unknown key 'ATTRS{idProduct}'

Finally found the cause. It was kino. Specifically /etc/udev/rules.d/kino.rules, which got installed when I originally setup kino back before the CentOS 5 upgrade. Here's a related post from a Fresh RPMS mail list.

Deleting the file cleared the error.

I used kino to do video editing on my main workstation, which has the necessary firewire (IEEE 1394) port. Although the laptop isn't equipped to firewire, I like to have kino there so I can do some off line editing.

Adobe Acrobat Reader on CentOS 5

CentOS 5 was released yesterday. Went over to my favorite mirror last night and used Bittorrent to download the DVD. Got working on installing it on our Dell Inspiron 1200 laptop this morning, mostly because under previous versions of RedHat Enterprise/CentOS important stuff like hibernation never worked right -- something you really need on a low end laptop like this, since even running the most agressive power saving settings under Windows you only get 2 hours on the battery.

Used the upgrade option, something I've only ever trusted Red Hat to get right. For the most part things went smoothly. I did have to reinstall ndiswrapper (allows use of Windows wireless card drivers on Linux) because of the new kernel. I also had to reconfigure VMWare for the same reason. The post-install updates were pretty extensive for a new release, but at least half the upgraded packages were for 3rd party apps I'd originally installed from RPMForge.

Surprisingly, the most aggravating bump in the road was Adobe Acrobat Reader. With CentOS 4, I'd been using the latest version (7.0.9) installed from the rpm package without incident. After installing CentOS 5 it acroread just stopped working. Reinstalling the package from tar.gz, I found that acroread returned a "expr: syntax error" ad infinitum. Googling around, I found a bunch of references to this from Fedora 6 users, but surprisingly nothing at all on the Red Hat Knowledgebase. The answer came in a series of questions and replies around a post in the Adobe user forum from Gaurav Khurana:

A workaround to run acroread on Fedora Core 6 is to edit the file < ReaderRoot>/bin/acroread and replace the following line (line-no 644):

check_gtk_ver_and_set_lib_path "$MIN_GTK_VERSION"

with

# check_gtk_ver_and_set_lib_path "$MIN_GTK_VERSION"

That post was dated December 21, 2006.

The complete solution is to edit the acroread script by:

1. Adding "export GTK_IM_MODULE=xim" to the top; and


2. Commenting line 644 (beginning "check_gtk_ver ...")

You've got to wonder why both Adobe and RedHat have failed to publish so much as a notification since then -- let alone a patch. It's not like we won't notice eventually. I pity the poor admin that does a mass upgrade of his orgs Red Hat workstations and discovers this problem the hard way, first thing the Monday morning after.

More About Me

A little more detail on who I am and where I am in the tech world.

Technology is a second career for me, by choice. Before learning how to pull DRAM or edit files with vi, I spent 12 years as a trial lawyer both in government and private practice. That experience taught me the importance of paying attention to detail, and how to learn most of what I need to know from self-study. Although I did pretty well at the bar, the work became all-consuming for me. As one of my mentors used to say, "the law is a jealous mistress". The search for a more balanced existence put me on the road that eventually led to Microsoft school, where I began learning how to be a tech professional.

For the last 7 years I've concentrated on directory services and identity management. Prior to that I worked mostly in desktop support and engineering. I have a technical blog on things LDAP at eldapo.blogspot.com, where I try to share some of what I've learned in my efforts to master the business of directory systems administration. I hope some people find it a useful resource.

In addition to some vendor certifications and my law degree, I've also done graduate work in history -- for the non-digital side of my brain.

Education

B.A., Humanities. State University of New York (1979)
J.D., Law. Rutgers University School of Law (1982)
M.A., History. Long Island University (1989)

Current Assignments

Information Systems Engineer, a Fortune 500 Company.
Morrisville, N.C.

Technical Lead on:

* Global Directory Architecture
* Web Applications Hosting
* Desktop Engineering

Associate engineer on:

* Oracle ERP
* Netegrity SiteMinder

Areas of Interest:

* Directory services design and maintenance
* Enterprise applications for Open Source software
* UNIX/Windows Integration and Interoperability

Certifications:

* Red Hat Certified Technician
* Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (Expired)