VMware Virtual Center Server failing to start at boot

I recently moved vCenter Server 4 from running on bare metal to a virtual machine. The vCenter Server is not starting successfully at bootup and the Windows Event Log has a message that doesn't provide much insight:

Event Type:    Error
Event Source:    VMware VirtualCenter Server
Event Category:    None
Event ID:    1000
Date:        2/1/2010
Time:        9:38:03 AM
User:        N/A
Computer:    VCENTER
Description:
The description for Event ID ( 1000 ) in Source ( VMware VirtualCenter Server ) cannot be found. The local computer may not have the necessary registry information or message DLL files to display messages from a remote computer. You may be able to use the /AUXSOURCE= flag to retrieve this description; see Help and Support for details. The following information is part of the event: Error getting configuration info from the database.

I found one site that resolved this issue by manually copying SSL certs to "C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\VMware\VMware VirtualCenter\SSL", however in my case, the directory and keys exist:
http://www.networknet.nl/apps/wp/archives/846

I believe that the issue is related to the timing of the services starting, in particular, the vCenter components are trying to start too soon before SQL Express is ready.

This VMware Forum posting may provide the workaround (creating a batch file to start the services):
http://communities.vmware.com/thread/208888

1. Create a new batch file called C:\Scripts\vc-start.bat (goofy that Windows doesn't provide a 'sleep' command)
   

   sc config MSSQL$SQLEXP_VIM start= demand
   net start MSSQL$SQLEXP_VIM
   ping 127.0.0.1 -n 10 -w 1000 > nul
   sc config vpxd start= demand
   net start vpxd
   ping 127.0.0.1 -n 10 -w 1000 > nul
   sc config vctomcat start= demand
   net start vctomcat

2. Set the following services to start manually in the "services.msc" MMC program
• SQL Server (SQLEXP_VIM)
  
• VMware VirtualCenter Server
• VMware VirtualCenter Management Webservices
3. Test the new batch file from the command line
4. Set the batch file to start on boot (procedure for Windows XP Pro and Win2k3)
• Open local computer policy: Start -> Run -> gpedit.msc
• Expand Computer Configuration\Windows Settings\Scripts
• In the right-hand pane, double-click Startup
• Click Add...
• Browse to C:\Scripts and double click vc-start.bat
• Leave script parameters empty
• Click OK and reboot

The vCenter server and tomcat components should now start at boot.

Expand that File System

The other day I received several 1 TB disks to add to an existing Dell MD1000. The user purchased the drives to expand a single file system on their RHEL4 server.

I figured I'd share the notes from the expansion in case they might prove useful to someone.

The existing layout:

• Server running RHEL4 x86_64
• MD1000 storage currently configured with several 1 TB drives allocated to a single virtual RAID 5 disk with a single hot spare
  
• The storage is treated as a block device (not partitioned via fdisk) as /dev/sdb
  
• The device is the sole member of a volume group and is entirely allocated to a single logical volume
• The lvm is formatted using ext3
  

The task:

• Physically add the new drives to the MD1000
• Assign the drives to the virtual disk and change the RAID from 5 to 6
• Resize the physical volume (pvresize)
• Extend the logical volume to use all of the additional extents (lvextend)
• Grow the file system to use the additional space

Backup all of the data, just in case!

Physically adding the disks can be done with the system online, just insert the caddies and allow a few minutes for the drives to be identified by the RAID controller.

Once the drives are installed restart Dell OpenManage (the server is a Dell, so we will use OpenManage to manage the RAID array) on the server so that it identifies the new hardware.

$ sudo srvadmin-services.sh restart

Log into the OpenManage web page (https://:1311/) and navigate to Storage -> PERC 6/E -> Virtual Disks

Select 'Reconfigure' from the drop down box next to the virtual disk that will be expanded. On the next screens, select all of the drives to add to the virtual disk and change the RAID level from 5 to 6. Once complete, the array will begin rebuilding. This will probably take several days to complete.

Once complete, I had to reboot the server before it would see the additional capacity.

Now for the Linux specific steps.

1. The file system has to be unmounted. In my case, the partition is used to store user data and is not needed for the system to function. Thus it can be safely unmounted with the system in runlevel 3. If we were performing this on the root partition or other system partition, you'd need to boot to the rescue mode using the install media.

# umount /data

2. Display the current size of the physical volume

# pvdisplay /dev/sdb | grep PE

PE Size (KByte)       4096
Total PE              1191679
Free PE               0
Allocated PE          1191679

3. Resize the physical volume
   

# pvresize -v -d /dev/sdb

Using physical volume(s) on command line
Archiving volume group "vg_md1000" metadata (seqno 2).
Resizing physical volume /dev/sdb from 1191679 to 2860031 extents.
Resizing volume "/dev/sdb" to 23429381760 sectors.
Updating physical volume "/dev/sdb"
Creating volume group backup "/etc/lvm/backup/vg_md1000" (seqno 3).
Physical volume "/dev/sdb" changed
1 physical volume(s) resized / 0 physical volume(s) not resized

4. Running pvdisplay again will show the new free extents

# pvdisplay /dev/sdb |grep PE

PE Size (KByte)       4096
Total PE              2860031
Free PE               1668352
Allocated PE          1191679

5. Now extend the logical volume by the number of free extents

# lvextend -l +1668352 /dev/vg_md1000/lv_data

Extending logical volume lv_data to 10.91 TB
Logical volume lv_data successfully resized

6. The lvdisplay command will confirm that that the logical volume is now expanded

# lvdisplay /dev/vg_md1000/lv_data
--- Logical volume ---
LV Name                /dev/vg_md1000/lv_data
VG Name                vg_md1000
LV UUID                xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
LV Write Access        read/write
LV Status              available
# open                 1
LV Size                10.91 TB
Current LE             2860031
Segments               1
Allocation             inherit
Read ahead sectors     0
Block device           253:0

7. Running a file system check isn't such a back idea (this will take a long time to complete on a multi TB file system)
   

# e2fsck -f /dev/vg_md1000/lv_data

e2fsck 1.35 (28-Feb-2004)
Pass 1: Checking inodes, blocks, and sizes
Pass 2: Checking directory structure
Pass 3: Checking directory connectivity
Pass 4: Checking reference counts
Pass 5: Checking group summary information
/dev/vg_md1000/lv_data: 827839/610140160 files (2.4% non-contiguous), 1060122031/1220279296 blocks

8. Grow the file system (ext3)

# ext2online /dev/vg_md1000/lv_data

9. Mount it and let the users know they can begin to fill it up (that's their purpose in life, isn't it?)
   

How To Encrypt Home on Fedora

Encrypt Your Linux Home Partition ¶

This how to explains the process of encrypting a partition on an existing system.

If you are installing a new Linux box, or reinstalling, the graphical installation for RHEL5.4 and later, Fedora, Ubuntu, OpenSuSE now all provide easy GUI tools to accomplish this.

Doing so on an existing system takes a bit of care so as not to destroy data.

The following are notes that I took while running through the process for the first time. Some steps may be redundant or unnecessary, if so, feel free to add comments and I'll adjust the process.

1. Identify the partition that should be encrypted. In this example, I'm going to encrypt the partition (/dev/sdb1) that is mounted as /home
   
2. Backup the data before proceeding. The process of encrypting requires a format, since this is /home, it makes sense to log out of the desktop, log in as root to the terminal (CTRL ALT F2) and 'init 3'. The /home directory can be safely unmounted

   # init 3
   # mkdir -p /backup/$(hostname -s)
   # rsync -a /home /backup/$(hostname -s)
   # umount /home
   

3. Use cryptsetup to initialize the LUKS partition (again, make sure it is umounted) and set the initial key / passphrase. Use whatever good passphrase you want to unlock this device in the future. If necessary, additional keys can be added for multi user support.

   # cryptsetup luksFormat /dev/sdb1
   

4. Identify the UUID of the partition

   # blkid /dev/sdb1
   
   /dev/sdb1: UUID="186f67df-9872-44d5-947c-a010d831f570" TYPE="crypto_LUKS"
   

5. Open the LUKS partition setting up a mapping named based on the UUID (this is the default naming convention used by the Fedora installer)
   

   # cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/sdb1 luks-186f67df-9872-44d5-947c-a010d831f570
   

6. Format the device, I'll use ext4 since it's the new standard on Fedora and Ubuntu
   

   # mkfs.ext4 /dev/mapper/luks-186f67df-9872-44d5-947c-a010d831f570
   

7. Once again, verify the UUID for the device, if you don't get this correct, the system will hang at bootup as it attempts to mount the device

   # blkid /dev/sdb1
   
   /dev/sdb1: UUID="186f67df-9872-44d5-947c-a010d831f570" TYPE="crypto_LUKS"
   

8. Add the device to crypttab to map it to the correct UUID

   # vi /etc/crypttab
   
   luks-186f67df-9872-44d5-947c-a010d831f570 UUID=186f67df-9872-44d5-947c-a010d831f570 none
   

9. Add the new mount to /etc/fstab so that it mounts at boot (make sure to comment or remove the existing /home entry). If you choose to automount encrypted partitions the boot process will pause prompting for the passphrase. This may be undesireable, especially in the case of a server where you might choose to mount manually following boot!

   # vi /etc/fstab
   
   /dev/mapper/luks-186f67df-9872-44d5-947c-a010d831f570  /home       ext4   defaults  1 2
   

10. Before you reboot, make sure to locate a copy of the installation media just in case you need to enter recovery mode (most likely due to a typo in fstab or crypttab)

    # /sbin/shutdown -r now
    

11. During the boot process you'll be prompted to enter a passphrase to unlock the partition.
12. If you need multiple keys (maybe this is a shared workstation or laptop), you can add new keys as follows
    

    # cryptsetup luksAddKey /dev/sdb1
    

    
    

Chromium on Fedora 12

Update: Google now has an official repo for Linux that work for Fedora 12 and 13

20100917 - Updated the contents of this post to replace 'beta' package references to 'stable'.

Create the Google yum repository configuration file (replace x86_64 with i386 in the repo file to use the 32bit Google repository)

$ sudo vim /etc/yum.repos.d/google-chrome.repo

[google]
name=google - x86_64
baseurl=http://dl.google.com/linux/rpm/stable/x86_64
enabled=1
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=https://dl-ssl.google.com/linux/linux_signing_key.pub

Then install Google Chrome

$ sudo yum install google-chrome-stable

====================================================================================================================================
Package                                    Arch                          Version                                      Repository   
====================================================================================================================================
Installing:
google-chrome-stable                       x86_64                        5.0.307.11-39572                             google-chrome
Installing for dependencies:
cvs                                        x86_64                        1.11.23-8.fc12                               fedora       
foomatic                                   x86_64                        4.0.3-8.fc12                                 updates      
foomatic-db                                noarch                        4.0-8.20091126.fc12                          updates      
gettext                                    x86_64                        0.17-16.fc12                                 updates      
libmodplug                                 x86_64                        1:0.8.7-2.fc12                               fedora       
libmpcdec                                  x86_64                        1.2.6-6.fc12                                 fedora       
patch                                      x86_64                        2.6.1-1.fc12                                 updates      
pax                                        x86_64                        3.4-10.fc12                                  fedora       
phonon                                     x86_64                        4.3.80-5.fc12                                updates      
phonon-backend-xine                        x86_64                        4.3.80-5.fc12                                updates      
qt                                         x86_64                        1:4.6.2-3.fc12                               updates      
qt-sqlite                                  x86_64                        1:4.6.2-3.fc12                               updates      
qt-x11                                     x86_64                        1:4.6.2-3.fc12                               updates      
qt3                                        x86_64                        3.3.8b-28.fc12                               fedora       
redhat-lsb                                 x86_64                        3.2-7.fc12                                   fedora       
xine-lib                                   x86_64                        1.1.16.3-5.fc12                              updates

Original content:
Want to run Google Chrome web browser on your Fedora workstation? Not exactly Chrome, but you can install and run the open source browser (devoid of Google branding), Chromium, of which Google Chrome is based.

Chromium will install on both 32bit and 64bit systems.

First, create a new yum repository configuration file (/etc/yum.repos.d/chromium.repo):

[chromium]
name=Chromium Test Packages
baseurl=http://spot.fedorapeople.org/chromium/F$releasever/
enabled=1
gpgcheck=0

Next install chromium, 2 packages will come from the chromium repo, chromium and v8:

$ sudo yum install chromium

Dependencies Resolved

==============================================================================
Package      Arch      Version                            Repository     Size
==============================================================================
Installing:
chromium    x86_64  4.0.252.0-0.1.20091119svn32498.fc12   chromium      9.7 M
Installing for dependencies:
minizip     x86_64  1.2.3-23.fc12                         fedora         24 k
nss-mdns    x86_64  0.10-8.fc12                           fedora         21 k
v8          x86_64  2.0.0-1.20091118svn3334.fc12          chromium      810 k

Once installed, you'll find Chromium on the Applications menu under Internet.

v8 is Google's open source JavaScript engine.

Major NFSv4 issue with CentOS 5.4 / RHEL 5.4

I updated my NFS server yesterday to EL5.4 (kernel 2.6.18-164.el5) as well as the client workstations. The clients mount /home via NFSv4.

Shortly there after my users began reporting odd behavior like "Firefox bookmarks won't load".

I decided to test it remotely and encountered a file locking problem with .Xauthority:

$ ssh -X wkstation01
/usr/bin/xauth:  error in locking authority file /home/flakrat/.Xauthority

After much digging, an IRC user in #RHEL pointed me to the following bug:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=524520

Three immediate solutions:

• Reboot to the previous 2.6.18-128.7.1.el5 kernel until the new kernel is released
• Download the patches in the bug and rebuild the kernel
• Get RH support to send you the interim patched kernel

Looking for a Replacement for Notepad++ on Linux? Try Geany!

There are many nice text editors / IDEs out there for Windows, Linux, and Mac. On the Windows front, one of the best (IMHO) is Notepad++.

Unfortunately, NP++ is not available for Linux. Sure you can get it working via WINE, but I'd rather have something that provides similar features that just works in Linux. Notepad++ uses Scintilla as it's core editing component.

Luckily, there are several IDEs for Linux that use Scintilla, so the features and feel of Notepad++ are not lost to the Linux world.

Geany is the editor that I've been using lately (along with vi/vim). Currently at version 0.18, Geany has a long list of features and supports many of the common scripting and programming languages. One of the primary goals of the development was to limit dependencies, thus Geany only requires the GTK2 runtime libraries and is agnostic to the desktop (Gnome, KDE, etc...).

Here are some of the features listed on the website:

• Syntax highlighting
• Code folding
• Symbol name auto-completion
• Construct completion/snippets
• Auto-closing of XML and HTML tags
• Call tips
• Many supported filetypes including C, Java, PHP, HTML, Python, Perl, Pascal (full list)
• Symbol lists
• Code navigation
• Build system to compile and execute your code
• Simple project management
• Plugin interface (see Plugins)

Up to now, I've been using KDevelop (in Gnome :-) as my IDE. It's a nice editor, but a little clunky for my scripting needs. So far, I'm very impressed with Geany.

If you are running Fedora, Geany and various plugins can be installed using the following Yum command:

$ sudo yum install geany geany-plugins-*

If you'd like to stick to Gedit, you can pimp it out using this guide. The advantage here, Gedit is available on most distributions right out of the box (assuming a graphical install).

iPhone OS 3.1 and iTunes 9 Released Today

The Apple website has announced that iTunes 9.0 and iPhone OS 3.1 have been released. Apple also has information related to their new line of iPods.

The new iTunes has a nifty feature that lets you organize your apps from within iTunes (rather than on the device itself).

See this InformationWeek article for more details.

The feature I'm eagerly anticipating, the ability to skip song tracks using the controls on my Motorola S9 stereo bluetooth head set. OS 3.0 introduced stereo bluetooth to the iPhone, but for some reason did not include the ability to skip forward / back song tracks.

iTunes 9.0 is ready to download now, the OS update is supposed to be out today (Wed) but it's not yet shown up in iTunes.