Installing VMware Server on unRAID Box

[Joe L.]

Is there any workaround for the bug of unRAID 4.4.2, whereas unRAID is trying to move dirs from cache drive even if they named .something?

 

I've installed vmware server into .custom dir as the guide suggested.

My syslog is fully spammed with the unseccessful moves and the syslog file also gets huge in terms of size.

 

So do you have a workaound for this, or we have to live with this until next unRAID release comes out of Beta?

Tom posted his solution to that in this thread: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=3171.msg26783#msg26783

 

You can edit your own script, or you can download and un-zip the attached version that is from the 4.5beta6 version.

 

If you unzip it to the root of your flash drive, you can then add a line to your "go" file to copy it into place every time you reboot.

cp /boot/mover /usr/local/sbin/mover

 

Joe L.

[olympia]

Is there any workaround for the bug of unRAID 4.4.2, whereas unRAID is trying to move dirs from cache drive even if they named .something?

 

I've installed vmware server into .custom dir as the guide suggested.

My syslog is fully spammed with the unseccessful moves and the syslog file also gets huge in terms of size.

 

So do you have a workaound for this, or we have to live with this until next unRAID release comes out of Beta?

Tom posted his solution to that in this thread: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=3171.msg26783#msg26783

 

You can edit your own script, or you can download and un-zip the attached version that is from the 4.5beta6 version.

 

If you unzip it to the root of your flash drive, you can then add a line to your "go" file to copy it into place every time you reboot.

cp /boot/mover /usr/local/sbin/mover

 

Joe L.

 

Wow, Thank you Joe L.

I should have found this thread. Sorry for not properly doing my home work...

 

One more question:

I think if I edit my script, the changes will lost at the next reboot. Is that correct?

So whatever I do, this issue has to be handled from go script. Am I right?

 

Thank you!

[Joe L.]

I think if I edit my script, the changes will lost at the next reboot. Is that correct?

So whatever I do, this issue has to be handled from go script. Am I right?

correct.  any directly edited changes would be lost hen you reboot. 

Any fix you put into place will need to be done every time you reboot.

 

The new version (zipped and attached to my previous post) also deletes empty directories on the cache drive, so you might want to use it instead of editing your own.

If you do edit your own script, you must use an editor that does not add MS-DOS style carriage-returns to the ends of the lines.

 

Joe L.

[olympia]

I think if I edit my script, the changes will lost at the next reboot. Is that correct?

So whatever I do, this issue has to be handled from go script. Am I right?

correct.  any directly edited changes would be lost hen you reboot. 

Any fix you put into place will need to be done every time you reboot.

 

The new version (zipped and attached to my previous post) also deletes empty directories on the cache drive, so you might want to use it instead of editing your own.

If you do edit your own script, you must use an editor that does not add MS-DOS style carriage-returns to the ends of the lines.

 

Joe L.

 

Thank you Joe L., than I definitely go for your suggested solution to copy it. THANK YOU!

(ps. I always use vi from the console, so editing itself shouldn't be a problem)

[intoran]

I finally got this working thanks to everyone's input into this thread.

 

I do have a question about a swap partition though.  I've seen it referenced a few time and was wondering if that's something I need to create, or if it's already there how to move it to my cache disk.  I currently have VMWare running on my cache disk and will have 1-2 VM's running at at time with 1gb RAM assigned to each.  I have 4gb total physical ram in the box.

 

Thanks.

[flixxx]

Hello everyone, over the last couple of weeks thanks to these great instructions and unraid, I am becoming more familiar with Linux (never used it before). I have been able to do quite a bit and understand the steps that musicmann is instructing.

 

After several reinstallations of slackware and playing around with different tweaks, I finnaly got VMware running on the distro and succesfully installed Windows.

 

Once I create the packages and bring them over to unRAID, I get an error I can't figure out.

 

I have tried 2 approaches and they both get the same error;

 

1- Try to install Windows XP, everything checks out fine until the files start to copy over after the format. The console closes and the session has stopped.

2- Mount the VMX file from slackware that already has Windows installed. Boots up, the moment everything loads though, the console closes and the session has stopped.

 

During these 2 times, i ran a tail to the hostd.log file in /mnt/cache/.custom/vmware/var/log/vmware folder and the same error comes up:

 

[2009-08-29 12:12:37.382 'Proxysvc Req00806' 3066649488 warning] Connection to server localhost:8308 failed with error Connection refused.  Retrying...

[2009-08-29 12:12:37.392 'Proxysvc Req00806' 3066649488 warning] Connection to server localhost:8308 failed with error Connection refused.  Retrying...

[2009-08-29 12:12:37.402 'Proxysvc Req00806' 3066649488 warning] Connection to server localhost:8308 failed with error Connection refused.  Retrying...

[2009-08-29 12:12:37.433 'Proxysvc Req00806' 3066649488 warning] Exception while processing request: Connection refused

[2009-08-29 12:12:40.167 'Libs' 3068222352 info] vmdbPipe_Streams Couldn't read: OVL_STATUS_EOF

[2009-08-29 12:12:40.273 'Libs' 3068222352 info] SOCKET 4 (53)

[2009-08-29 12:12:40.274 'Libs' 3068222352 info] recv detected client closed connection

 

 

During the configuration I never put this port, and again when i log into the slackware with the modified unraid kernel, everything runs really smooth.

 

I've attempted to get help from the vmware community but no one has replied, i'm hoping someone here can she some light.

 

PS: I also note this error when the VMware service starts up:

 

[2009-08-29 11:44:03.896 'App' 3068484496 error] An error occurred while loading configuration "/mnt/cache/.custom/vmware/usr/lib/vmware/settings",not all entries are being read. It is strongly encouraged that you manually inspect the file and fix any corruptions.

 

That file doesn't exist though (not even on the hard drive that has the distribution linux with the unraid kernel installed)

[henris]

Is it possible to accomplish something similar to Windows Terminal Service with VMWare Server? I know very little about VMWare and currently trying to find the best way to manage my windows clients in our home (6 machines with different age children and wife using them). A perfect solution would be a client machine with "thin"-platform connecting to a Windows virtual machine running on an UnRAID WMWare Server. Even better would be client booting over network (some small Linux distro) and then connecting to the virtual machine. I have only used VMWare Player and Workstation and to my knowledge they are single host solutions.

 

Any comments? Thanks in advance!

[WeeboTech]

I have only used VMWare Player and Workstation and to my knowledge they are single host solutions.

VMWare runs multiple host operating solutions. It's dependent on the host solution if it is multiuser.

Windows XP/Vista, etc, etc is a single user system.  You could probably run Windows Server and run Terminal Services on it.

What I have done in the past is run a windows virtual machine and used a viewsonic airpanel to access the VMware hosted windows box via RDP.

I suppose you could do that with any thin client(linux, windows) that can do RDP.

There are also devices such as the Compaq Thin Clients which boot up internally to an OS (windows/linux) that are designed to be remote access terminals to terminal servers (or another machine).

Look into Linux Terminal Services.

As far as a single OS under VMWare to support multiple users... This may be a windows terminal services and/or citrix thing.

I know we use Citrix at work to virtualize windows sessions over a thin browser based client.

 

http://cgi.ebay.com/HP-Compaq-Mobile-Thin-Client-6720t-FR109AA-ABA_W0QQitemZ370251069770QQcmdZViewItemQQptZCOMP_EN_Workstations?hash=item5634aef94a&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14

 

I have one of these, it's kinda cool

http://cgi.ebay.com/HP-Compaq-Thin-Client-t5730_W0QQitemZ130327675054QQcmdZViewItemQQptZCOMP_EN_Workstations?hash=item1e582280ae&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14

 

 

[henris]

I have only used VMWare Player and Workstation and to my knowledge they are single host solutions.

VMWare runs multiple host operating solutions. It's dependent on the host solution if it is multiuser.

Windows XP/Vista, etc, etc is a single user system.  You could probably run Windows Server and run Terminal Services on it.

What I have done in the past is run a windows virtual machine and used a viewsonic airpanel to access the VMware hosted windows box via RDP.

I suppose you could do that with any thin client(linux, windows) that can do RDP.

What I was thinking was to run each client Windows (XP/Vista/Win8) separately on the VMWare Server (only few running concurrently). Doesn't VMWare offer RDP-like features in their free products? After reading a bit more about the VMWare-products I think I've misunderstood the "Server" word. It's not about a server providing virtualisation services to multiple clients but virtualising the server itself (ie. running multiple servers within one physical server). For a home user I didn't see much difference compared to VMWare Workstation (besides Server being free) or even compared to VMWare Player since they all provide the possiblity run multiple OS's at the same time. But then again I only scratched the surface of all the information available. I think what I would really need is VMWare View which is the current name of their product for desktop virtualisation.

 

Another option would be to have VMWare Player running on each host and have the virtualised images stored inside UnRAID array. But by reading this thread, the performance would not be great. I could of course use UnRAID just for backing up the images every once in a while.

 

Yet another option would be to use PXE to boot Linux over network and have the UnRAID serve as the TFTP-server (and DHCP-server). Found the below thread about this (Weebotech strongly present also there  ) There was no end result reported in that thread but it seemed possible to be done. The only problem is that most of my current systems and applications are windows-based.

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=1566.0

 

So it seems that the free VMWare products are not ideal for my use case.

[jimwhite]

Have you looked at the free offering from Sun called Virtual Box ?

 

[WeeboTech]

Doesn't VMWare offer RDP-like features in their free products?

Not in vmware server 1.0 or vmware workstation.

I believe vmware server 2.0 has a browser plugin to give you access to the console. However I've never used it.

I do not believe it's like a RDP or Citrix view.

I think there is a newer VNC remote interface.

 

http://www.solo-technology.com/blog/2009/02/12/connect-to-vmware-clients-with-vnc/

 

Have you looked at the free offering from Sun called Virtual Box ?

I remember looking into this product and it had an RDP in the commercial version (but not in the open source version).

 

The issue with RDP is the desktop can be remote and it works OK, (I've used it with the Viewsonic thin clients as I mentioned).

Multimedia over RDP is poorly supported. So it will work for regular applications.

Word, email basic browsing, but anything heavy multimedia wise and there is degradation if it even will work.

 

I do not know how the VNC option will work, so that may be a choice, run vnc server on each client, then use a laptop to access to client to get a feel for it.

 

The option of running vmware player locally is a cool option too.

It would let you virtual all the configuration making it easier to restore in emergency.

The performance hit will be 10-20%, but if you run in full screen mode, it may be a little less.

Again, the issue will be multimedia support. (but it will be better then RDP).

USB, DVD Writing may have issues.

 

As far as netbooting a PXE image under unRAID, Entirely possible. I'll be exploring it in the upcoming weeks.

I'm moving all my administrative  services to the unRAID box, Caching name server, http proxy, ftp proxy, dhcp/bootp server. etc. etc. 

 

It might be worthwhile to install a windows instance into a vmware server/player virtual machine, then try to virtual the desktop to another machine.

This will provide a feel for how well it will work in your application.

 

I've been running my windows machine virtualized in vmware since I had dual PIII800s. That's about 5 years.

When my windows machine died, I just made a vmware instance and have not gone back.

I do not do games or heavy multimedia, but it does work.

Today I am using a dual xeon 3.0 ghz machine and run XP, W2K, Slackware dev system for unRAID and a Windows XP instance to RIP/Convert DVD's all on the same machine.

 

 

 

 

[henris]

Doesn't VMWare offer RDP-like features in their free products?

Not in vmware server 1.0 or vmware workstation.

I believe vmware server 2.0 has a browser plugin to give you access to the console. However I've never used it.

I do not believe it's like a RDP or Citrix view.

I think there is a newer VNC remote interface.

 

http://www.solo-technology.com/blog/2009/02/12/connect-to-vmware-clients-with-vnc/

Lot's of information behind that link, especially the latter of the referenced external sources contained a further link to an overview of the different mechnisms to remotely access virtual machines.

http://www.petri.co.il/virtual_remote_manage_vmware_servers.htm

 

If I understood correctly VMWare does indeed have free remote access software to be used with VMWare Server. This is called VMWare Console and it comes also with VMWare Server (Linux and Windows). VMWare Server also has built in support for VNC so you can easily configure each of your virtual machines to run behind different ports to be accessed by VNC-clients. But with VNC, the virtual machine has to be already running where the Console gives more options. Web based interface (MUI) is only for management, it uses Console for actual remote desktop access.

 

I think it's time to test these two options: remote access of virtual machines desktops with VNC and VMWare Console. Would anyone be interested about the results? It will take some time, since I'm a bit pre-occupied building my house...

[WeeboTech]

I think it's time to test these two options: remote access of virtual machines desktops with VNC and VMWare Console. Would anyone be interested about the results? It will take some time, since I'm a bit pre-occupied building my house...

I'm sure others will be interested. Especially if the question  has already been presented.

As far as I know, the vmware-console provides access to ALL desktops. This may not be exactly what you want.

At least in version 1.0, it is a management console.

[dimes007]

I successfully connected to the web UI of vmware server 2.0.1 in my DEV environment using this thread as the guide.

 

I did not install PAM initially because I did a full 12.2 slackware install and a "whereis pam" found something I thought I'd be OK without.  everything compiled OK and install went well.  As predicted by your note "if you have auth issues pam is probably the problem."

 

One item I did not do was install unRAID to my dev environment.  This part just didn't seem necessary to me.  The end game is two vmware .tgz.  It isn't like unRAID was installed when on the machines of whomever make the packages for cpio, pam and all the other .tgz files we install on reboot.

 

--dimes

[musicmann]

One item I did not do was install unRAID to my dev environment. 

 

That's great to know.  It makes everything a ton easier.

 

For some reason, I was thinking the kernel name (e.g., 2.6.27.7-unRAID) needed to match the running kernel, but you do have a point about the other packages...and if yours is working, then that's proof.

 

 

[dimes007]

I apologize I was not clear:  vmware server is working ONLY in the DEV environment.  i'm copying off my two vmware .tgz and my pam .tgz now.  i'll have to wait until i'm home this evening to try on my unRAID box.  I will update you then. 

 

I can see the purpose of installing unRAID for a typical dev environment where one might look to modify or extend unraid functionality but since that wasn't really part of the vmware game I just bailed.

 

we'll see.....

[dimes007]

On the unRAID:

 

VMware Server is installed, but it has not been (correctly) configured

for the running kernel. To (re-)configure it, invoke the

following command: /mnt/cache/.vmware/usr/bin/vmware-config.pl.

 

Installed perl to try to run that it's looking for make so it seems the kernel recompile to include vmnet is necessary.  Can someone confirm that before I install unraid into my dev environment? 

 

When I boot the message at the console head is a bit more informative and does mention vmnet issues.

 

Can someone that understands linux better than I confirm that I must install unraid on my dev environment in order to install vmware on my unraid environment.  This part just doesn't make sense to me.

 

Thanks,

[musicmann]

I seem to remember errors like this when I didn't install an unRAID kernel onto the dev environment for creating the packages.  I never got these issues once my dev environment kernel matched the 2.6.27.7-unRAID naming.

 

You might have a point about other packages being able to run on various kernels, so there might be some kind of "force" option.  However, it's safest to just go ahead and put unRAID's kernel onto your dev environment given that it's a known working configuration. 

[dimes007]

I seem to remember errors like this when I didn't install an unRAID kernel onto the dev environment for creating the packages.  I never got these issues once my dev environment kernel matched the 2.6.27.7-unRAID naming.

 

You might have a point about other packages being able to run on various kernels, so there might be some kind of "force" option.  However, it's safest to just go ahead and put unRAID's kernel onto your dev environment given that it's a known working configuration. 

 

My apprehension is that future unraid updates will break vmware?

[WeeboTech]

My apprehension is that future unraid updates will break vmware?

 

This is something you will need to deal with anytime a new update/kernel is used.

[dimes007]

This is something you will need to deal with anytime a new update/kernel is used.

 

But must I modify my unRAID kernel and bzimage to install vmware (understanding that there is a known working solution)?  Is there not some way to install vmware by only modifying my go script with the REALTIME.tgz and having other persistent changes in "/mnt/cache/.something".  Installing what else is needed (e.g. vmnet) as modules perhaps? In other words, is there some very good reason this can't happen in Linux that I just don't understand.

 

[WeeboTech]

This is something you will need to deal with anytime a new update/kernel is used.

 

But must I modify my unRAID kernel and bzimage to install vmware (understanding that there is a known working solution)?  Is there not some way to install vmware by only modifying my go script with the REALTIME.tgz and having other persistent changes in "/mnt/cache/.something".   Installing what else is needed (e.g. vmnet) as modules perhaps? In other words, is there some very good reason this can't happen in Linux that I just don't understand.

 

 

I think at the very least you need the kernel headers and maybe even source available to compile the vmware modules.

Perl is required as will be the gcc development kit.

The development parts can be added as needed.

 

I have not done this on unRAID, but I know whenever my kernel changes on other hosts...

I have to recompile the vmware modules to coincide with the kernel version.

[musicmann]

This is something you will need to deal with anytime a new update/kernel is used.

 

But must I modify my unRAID kernel and bzimage to install vmware (understanding that there is a known working solution)?  Is there not some way to install vmware by only modifying my go script with the REALTIME.tgz and having other persistent changes in "/mnt/cache/.something".   Installing what else is needed (e.g. vmnet) as modules perhaps? In other words, is there some very good reason this can't happen in Linux that I just don't understand.

 

 

dimes, let me know if I'm misunderstanding your question.  If you build the packages (on your dev system setup to match the running unRAID kernel), then no, you will not need to modify the unRAID kernel and bzimage on your actual unRAID box.  The packages built from on the dev machine can be installed onto a stock unRAID.  Granted, you'll need to rebuild these packages if you want to upgrade unRAID to subsequent unRAID kernels.

[dimes007]

dimes, let me know if I'm misunderstanding your question.  If you build the packages (on your dev system setup to match the running unRAID kernel), then no, you will not need to modify the unRAID kernel and bzimage on your actual unRAID box.  The packages built from on the dev machine can be installed onto a stock unRAID.  Granted, you'll need to rebuild these packages if you want to upgrade unRAID to subsequent unRAID kernels.

 

You do understand me well.  My single biggest fear was vmware would break my unraid and irreparable data integrity issues would follow (e.g. i make some mistake and overwrite md device with non unraid device and proceed to lose it all!).  since one of the dev environment instructions includes "bzimage" i was phearful that when i install vmware i was somehow also overwriting my stock unraid bzimage.  now that i know that future unraid releases may break vmware but vmware is unlikely to break unraid I really do feel better. 

 

i will start from scratch with dev environment and make vmware happen.

 

thanks again.

 

[dimes007]

Done!  Moving over an xp vm to test but I'm connected to vmware web ui on production unraid and all seems well.  I pretty much just followed directions this time. 

 

Only slightly non-standard thing I did was start with a 1gb slackware 12.2 virtual appliance linked through vmware:  http://www.vmware.com/appliances/directory/63351.

This saves some time vs. downloading the 4gb slackware 12.2 dvd iso and then the time to create and install into a newly created VM.

 

Additionally, for the linux fearful it boots into a friendly GUI.

 

Once in the GUI I limited the amount of RAM available to vmware so that the host always has 1gb available to it.

 

All for now.  Thanks musicman, et al.