How to increase disk space on a Windows VM

Wow, look at this! Two posts in one week! What the hell happened? I used to bring you daily geeky goodness, but now you are reduced to two lousy articles a week? I digress.

Anyway, back to the purpose of this article which is how one goes about adding more disk space to a Windows virtual machine in VMWare. Now I found this article which talks about doing this using a Knoppix live CD, however I found an easier way, and it is built into Windows.

All you have to do is the following:

1. Power down you virtual machine
2. In your VMWare manager (vSphere, etc.) edit the VM’s settings
3. Increase the provisioned size of the disk and click OK
4. Power on the virtual machine
5. Verify in Disk management that the VM sees the new unformatted disk space
6. Open a command prompt (In Vista/2008 as Administrator)
7. Run diskpart
8. Type list volume
9. Type select volume <volume number>
10. Type extend
11. Type exit

That’s it. No live CD. No nothin’! Just more disk space!

Technorati Tags: how to,increase,extend,expand,disk space,windows,vmware,virtual

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How To Install VMWare Server 2 on Ubuntu 9.04 Server

I just finished installed Ubuntu 9.04 server, and VMWare Server 2 and I can't be more pleased with this pair! The last time I wrote about installing VMWare server was back in Ubuntu 8.04. With that you had to install VMWare server using the VMWare-any-any patch. I can tell you that this is NOT the case in VMWare server 2 on Ubuntu 9.04!

No, I guess the VMWare team finally decided to make an Ubuntu friendly version of their software, and made installation relatively easy! Also, they have done away with the VMWare server console and have gone with a very easy to use Web console! That means less headache for you and me!

So lets get to the nitty gritty. This is what you need to do to install VMWare Server 2 on Ubuntu 9.04:


Note: Since ubuntu server doesn't have a GUI, I had to register for the download then download it to my Windows machine. after that I transferred the VMWare server TAR ball over to a SAMBA share on my Ubuntu 9.04 server. Feel free to get the tarball onto your server any way you see fit ;-)

Now, to the install steps:

1. Install the necesarry prerequisites


sudo apt-get install linux-headers-`uname -r` build-essential xinetd


2. Now change into the directory where you saved your VMWare TAR ball. I saved mine in /home/paul/vm
   
   cd /home/paul/vm
   
   
   
3. Now Extract the TAR ball and run the installer
   
   tar xvfz VMware-server-*.tar.gz
   
   cd vmware-server-distrib
   
   sudo ./vmware-install.pl
   
   
4. You can hit enter for all of the defaults, except when asked for a name of an alternate administrator. For that enter your username. If you don't, you will have to reset the root password as that is the default administrator for VMWare Server. Also, when asked for the direcrory of virtual machines, you have the option of saving them in a different directory. I for instance like to save mine in /home/paul/vm.
5. Near the end, you will have to enter your serial number which you received when you first registered for the download.
6. Done! Now you are ready to login! You can login to the web console by browsing to http://servername:8222
   
   
   

After building your first machine, you can view it through the web console in IE and Firefox after installing the correct plugins which you will be prompted for in the web console.

That is it! Seriously! Can you believe it? In just about all previous Ubuntu versions, and VMWare Server versions it has been 1.5 bitches to install. This time it is really really easy!

After installing it, let me know what you think in the comments!

[EDIT 6/2/09] - A Lot of you have been experiencing the vsock error. I have not experienced this, but for those of you that have, I found a Pearl script that should resolve your problem. You can download it here: (VSOCK FIX)

To run it open a terminal, and do the following:

1. CD into the directory where the Pearl script is
   
   >cd /path/to/vmware-config.pl
   
   
2. Make the script executable
   
   >chmod +x vmware-config.pl
   
   
3. Patch!
   
   >sudo patch /usr/bin/vmware-config.pl /path/to/vmware-config.pl

Let me know if that works or not. If not, and if you found a better solution, let me know!

Technorati Tags: vmware, ubuntu 9.04, server, how-to

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VMWare Server ESX Free!

Actually, VMWare ESXi server to be exact! I am serious as a heart attack people! I just happened upon it today. I have downloaded the ISO, and I am burning it as I frantically type out this quick blog announcement.

This may just be the solution your shop has been looking for, especially if you have been stuck using their free VMWare server for the last few years. Now they are making their enterprise OS absolutely free!

From their website:

Run all your production applications at near-native performance on VMware’s next-generation OS-independent hypervisor, now available for free. VMware ESXi has the same functionality and performance as VMware ESX but with a 32 MB disk footprint. With the ability to seamlessly upgrade to VMware Infrastructure 3, customers can add the benefits of server consolidation, automatic load balancing and business continuity to VMware ESXi.

Have any of you out there tried it yet? Hit me up in the comments!

[EDIT] Here is a link to the full press release: (VMWare ESXi Press Release)

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VMWare: Failed to configure disk ide0:0...

I was receiving the error mentioned in the title on one of my home VMWare machines. This happened after we had a power outage which shutdown my home VMWare server box expectantly. The outage didn't hurt the other Virtual server running on that machine. The one that it did affect was my secondary domain controller.

When I SSH'd into my VMWare server I found that two files had the appendage of .writelock after them. There was the problem I was having. After doing some Googling, I found on electrictoolbox.com that the writelock was caused because:

VMWare was shut down without powering down the virtual machine and left behind some files which lock the virtual disk files.

To fix my problem I had to delete the files with the .writelock appendage. After that, my virtual machine powered up just fine.

Have you experienced this at all? Do you have any more info to add to the writelock problem? Please kick down some knowlege in the comments.

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Install VMWare Tools on Ubuntu 8.04

Hello out there in Ubuntu land! I thought I would write a tip today on how to install VMWare tools on Ubuntu 8.04. The reason I am writing is it occurs to me that not everyone knows how to do this. I had a former colleague write me and tell me that Bauer-Power shows up in a lot of his Ubuntu searches. He was looking for instructions on how to install VMWare tools, but couldn't find anything.

Actually, it is pretty easy. Like most binary packages, you need to have two things installed first, Linux Headers, and the Build Essentials package. Before trying to install VMWare tools run the following from command line:

sudo apt-get install build-essential

Then run

sudo apt-get install linux-headers-`uname -r`

After that is finished, click on the VM menu, and select Install VMWare Tools. When you click that, Ubuntu will mount a virtual CD. Browse the CD and extract the VMWare tools tar ball to your desktop. In the terminal, cd into that newly extracted directory and run the following:

sudo ./vmware-install.pl

Accept all defaults, and you are set just reboot once. Now keep in mind that VMWare tools on Ubuntu doesn't really act the same way as it does on a Windows VM. There will be no icon in the tray, or anything like that. It basically runs transparently. It also give some good benefits like:

• Improved video compatibility & performance
• Mouse synchronization with the host operating system so that you don't have to keep releasing your mouse from the guest to go back to the host
• Improved network compatibility & performance
• Copy and paste between the host and guest

Have you had any problems installing VMWare tools on Ubuntu or any other Linux platform? Did you find a fix? Hit me up in the comments.

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Making the switch to Open Source Vitualization

I know my last post talked about how to install VMWare server on Ubuntu 8.04, which is great, but I decided to do away with it anyway. I installed VMWare server on my test box at work, but on Friday night when I went to do the same thing on my laptop, conveniently VMWare was doing maintenance on the download page of their website so I couldn't download it. Me being the impatient man I am decided to look elsewhere.

I had took a quick look at Innotek's VirtualBox (Now owned by Sun Microsystems) a little while back, and then promptly went back to VMWare's loving arms. I decided last weekend to give them another go, and you know what, I don't think I will be looking back. I can't say that I am doing away with VMWare 100%. We have an ESX server here at my real job, but for my workstation, and Ubuntu use, you better believe I have switched over.

Since the switch I have setup a couple of virtual boxes (Windows XP, and a Gentoo box). Both installed fairly easily (As easily as one can with Gentoo). The interface is very intuitive, and it offers all of the same features of VMWare including a VMWare Tools like program for the guest OS called "Guest Additions."

The thing I like the best though is the low overhead. When running VMWare server on either my Windows XP host, or my Ubuntu Host, it seemed to really drain resources. VirtualBox seems to run much lighter, which is good because I can still work on other things while my guest OS is running.

Lets talk about installation now. Of course installation is straight forward in Windows for both VMWare and VirtualBox. The same thing can't really be said about VMWare on Ubuntu. VirtualBox on the otherhand is really easy to install. You can either get it through Synaptic:

sudo apt-get install virtualbox

However, the repository version isn't really ready for prime time in my opinion. I downloaded the "Gutsy" version direct from the VirtualBox website, and ran the deb installer. Very easy to install. I had it up and running in just a minute or two. Also, the VirtualBox installer for Windows is an MSI file which makes it easy for silent deployments.

If you are still having problems with VMWare in Ubuntu, you should give VirtualBox a try. I think it is safe to say you won't be disappointed.

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