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Category: Virtualization

Vmware Workstation 6.5 and Linux (host) kernel update woes

Published by DB Cooper on 1/31/2009

Just another “quick tip” from the field.

Starting in Vmware Workstation 6.5 they removed the old (working) vmware-config.pl script.
If for some reason you need to force a reconfig/recompile of the vmmon modules etc.

Then simply run the following as root/sudo

vmware-modconfig --console --install-all

HTH

DB

Vmware – Linux Host / Linux Guest – Keyboard Mappings Issues

Published by DB Cooper on 1/21/2009

Quick Tips from the field.

If you’re running a Linux host with a Linux guest and are having issues with your keyboard keys being mapped wrong inside your VM. (Like my up arrow was remapped to “Print” etc)

Then you can try the following.
edit the following file: /etc/vmware/config

Add the following:
xkeymap.nokeycodeMap = true

save the file.

Make sure vmware isn’t running and restart the vmware services like….

#sudo /etc/init.d/vmware restart

Then launch vmware again.

HTH

RHEL – Xen vs. KVM

Published by DB Cooper on 1/18/2009

Let me just say I’m a big VMware fan. And since they started giving out ESXi for free, I try to pass on the love as much as possible.

However, sticking to open source values is very important to me for many reasons, and I recently discovered Xen is going away in RedHat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). I kinda figured it would die out as soon as Citrix bought up Xen.

So I dug around after a few emails with another virt guy.

Red Hat’s official statement:

http://www.redhat.com/about/news/prarchive/2008/virtualization.html

I guess if you’re sticking with RHEL’s way of doing things, you had better give up on Xen and start working with KVM / Ovirt etc.

It seems Xen will continue to be supported through the 5.x series, as they have lots of customers using it. (hmmm…)

So I guess there will be a tool or some article for transitioning later on.

Ovirt – http://ovirt.org/
KVM – http://kvm.qumranet.com/kvmwiki/Front_Page
FreeIPA – http://www.freeipa.org

However, this is all in a beta area for now.

My thoughts would be to simply go with VMware Server or ESXi server for production and then start testing the KVM solutions for future configurations. That’s just my two cents.

HTH