Virtualize.dk

I had to add another harddrive to a test VM and wondered how to take advantage of thin provisioning in linux. On Windows VM’s you have to do a “Quick Format” to use thin provisioning. Here is what you do on a linux (ubuntu) VM.

1. Shutdown the VM (if you dont have Hotadd-feature licensed)
2. Add a new harddrive with thin provisioning
3. Start the VM
4. Log in
5. Check the dmesg to find the devicename of the new harddrive ( in my case /dev/sdb )
6. sudo mkfs.ext3 /dev/sdb (use another mkfs-command to use the filesystem of your choise)
7. /dev/sdb is entire device, not just one partition!
   Proceed anyway? (y,n) y
8. Wait for it to finish
9. Mount the harddrive (sudo mount /dev/sdb /home/newharddrive)

This is the way it worked for me

1. Upgrade all apps (sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade)
2. Reboot
3. Upgrade the kernel (sudo apt-get dist-upgrade)
4. Reboot
5. Install new kernel headers ( sudo apt-get install linux-headers-`uname -r` )
6. Choose “Install/update vmware tools” in the VI-client
7. Mount the CD (sudo mkdir /mnt/cdrom && sudo mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom )
8. Copy the tar to your homefolder ( cp /mnt/cdrom/VMwareTools-x.x.x-yyyyyy.tar.gz /home/username)
9. Untar (cd /home/username && tar zxvf VMwareTools-x.x.x-yyyyyy.tar.gz)
10. Install the upgrade (sudo /home/username/vmware-tools-distrib/vmware-install.pl)
11. Follow the instructions on the screen
12. Reboot

Done

Is now ver 0.3

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For the console:
User: root
Password: vmw@re

For the backup appliance
User: vmware
Password: vmware

I recently upgraded to Vsphere an began upgrading VMware tools. I had a problem on a Windows 2008 VM, that would not install the new version of VMware tools. I could not uninstall the old version either. I found this solution.

1) Switch to the CD-ROM with the VMware Tools ISO mounted.
2) Run setup.exe /c to do a manually removal of the registry keys from the previous VMware Tools version
3) Re-run the setup.

I modded my VCB-script a little to work with a standalone esxi. Check it out

1. Convert the VM using the coldclone-cd (comes with Converter Enterprise)
2. Boot a Freesbie CD on the ESX-VM
3. Mount da0s1a by doing the following (as root)
4. mkdir /home/mnt
5. mount -t ufs /dev/da0s1a /home/mnt
6. ee /home/mnt/etc/fstab
7. change ad0xxx in all lines to da0xxx
8. save and reboot

Here is a few tips for running freebsd on ESX: http://ivoras.sharanet.org/freebsd/vmware.html

Remember FreeBSD +4.11 i NOT supported by Vmware.

Check out the changelog

Check out the changelog

My first script is online, i hope someone else can use it to. Please provide some feedbackup. It is located here