Introduction

By default, SSH is disabled on VMWare ESXi Server but you can enable SSH manually. It’s easy, just take a few minutes and few steps to enable SSH. On this example, I am going to show how to enable SSH on VMWare ESXi Server 3.5 on HP ProLiant BL25p G2.

Step-by-step

1. On VMWare ESXi Server, press “ALT+F1” to access VMWare ESXi console.
   
2. By default, VMWare ESXi is disabled console access. So you have to enable it by type the following text and press Enter.

   unsupported

   Note: You won’t see the text that you have typed on this step.
   

3. If you type the text correctly, there’ll be a message tells that

   You have activated Tech Support Mode.
   The time and date of this activation have been sent to the system logs.

   Then, it asks for the root’s password so type the password of the root account and press Enter.
   Note: You also won’t see the text that you have typed on this step either.
   

4. Now you have accessed to console on VMWare ESXi. Notice that you see “~ #” at the beginning which means that the console is waiting for a command from you.
   
5. To enable SSH, you have to edit /etc/inetd.conf. Type the command below in the console.

   vi /etc/inetd.conf

   Note: vi is the file editor tool in Linux platform as similar to Notepad in Windows.
   

6. Here, you see the content of inetd.conf.
   
7. Scroll down to the line that begins with the following text.

   #ssh   stream   tcp   nowait   root   /sbin/dropbearmulti   dropbear

   Then, press the character ‘x’ when the cursor is on the character ‘#’ to remove ‘#’ as the figure below.

   ssh   stream   tcp   nowait   root   /sbin/dropbearmulti   dropbear

   Note: The character ‘#’ at the beginning on a line means that the line is a comment, the program that associated with the file will not process the line.
   

8. Next, save the file by press ESC. Then, type

   :wq!

   and press Enter to save and exit the file editor at the same time.
   

9. Next, restart the management service. Type

   /sbin/services.sh restart

   Note: Since VMWare ESXi 3.5 Update 2, the “/sbin/services.sh restart” command is no longer restarts the inetd process so the configuration that you’ve just modified is not reflect to the system yet. Therfore, you need to do more steps.
   

10. Next, you need to kill the inetd process. First, you have to get the process id of inetd. Type the command below, you’ll see the process ID of inetd.

    ps | grep inetd

    

11. Kill the process. Type the command “kill -HUP” follow with the process ID that you get from the previous step as the figure below.

    kill -HUP 1288

    Note: The process ID of inetd of yours may not be the same as mine. You have to adjust by yourself.
    

12. That’s it. You have enabled SSH on VMWare ESXi Server already. Now you can SSH to the VMWare ESXi Server using tool such as putty, WinSCP, etc. Type the command below to exit the console.

    exit

    

13. Then, press “Alt+F2” to return to the GUI screen.
    

No related posts.

Configure Virtual Machine Settings

After 5 parts have been passed, you know how to create a virtual machine, install a new operating system, install virtual machine additions. But when you’re using a virtual machine, you may want to change configurations of the virtual machine. For instance, add new hard disk, increase RAM size of the virtual machine, configure network adapter, etc. You can change configurations in Virtual Machine Settings. Let’s see what you can do in a virtual machine’s settings.

• Change the virtual machine name.
• Adjust Memory (RAM) size.
• Add/Remove Hard Disks.
• Enable/Disable Undo Disks.
• Add/Remove ports (COM1, COM2 and LPT1).
• Configure Networking Interfaces.
• Enable/Disable Sound.
• Add/Remove Share Folders.

You can view the index of this series at Getting Started on Virtualization with Microsoft Virtual PC 2007, Part I: Introduction

In this part, I’ll show how to change only some configurations. You can try to change these configurations on your own. It’s not too difficult.

Step-by-step

1. Close a virtual machine if it is running. Click Close button to close the virtual machine.
   
2. You can choose how to close the virtual machine.
   • Save state. This option, it will save the current state of the virtual machine. So when you restore it back in a later time, you’ll see this screen again as if it weren’t close. But this option may requires additional spaces on the physical disk to keep the current state.
   • Shut down Windows XP. The virtual machine will shutdown a guest operating system (Windows XP).
   • Turn off. This option will turn off the virtual machine right now without shutting down the guest operating system. This similar to Power Off. You may lost all unsaved documents in the virtual machine

   In this sample, let do it in the common way. Select Shut down Windows XP.
   

3. When the guest operating system is shut down. On Virtual PC Console, select the virtual machine and click Settings.
   
4. On Settings, these are configurations of the virtual machine which you can change. Some may require you to shut down the virtual machine before editing them. That’s why I’ve shut down the guest operating system in the previous steps. On the first line, select File Name on the first line. Here you can change the name of this virtual machine.
   
5. On the second line, select Memory. You can adjust memory size of the virtual machine.
   
6. On the third to fifth lines, select Hard Disk. You can add/remove virtual hard disks. Currently, I have only one virtual hard disk. You can add more virtual hard disks if you need more drives on the virtual machine.
   
7. On the sixth line, select Undo Disks. Here you can enable or disable undo disks feature. If this feature is enabled, when you closing the virtual machine, you can choose to save all changes that you’ve made in the virtual machine to the disk or discard it. This feature is really useful if you want to test some applications or configurations. If something goes wrong, you can just discarded them.
   Note: When you enable this feature and you’re going to save changes to the disk, you notice that it takes more time to save changes to the disk compare when this feature is disabled.
   
8. If the Undo Disks feature is enabled, you’ll see these options when you’re closing the virtual machine.
   • Save state and save changes.
   • Shut down Windows XP and save changes.
   • Turn off and save changes.
   • Turn off and delete changes.

   These options are similar to the options before you’ve enabled undo disks feature. Only the last one is new. If you select the last options, all changes that you’ve made in the virtual machine will be discarded. So use it with caution.
   

9. On the ninth to eleventh lines, select COM1, COM2 or LPT1. You can add/remove COM and LPT ports to the virtual machine. Also, you can select whether to map to physical port, named pipe or text file to connect to these ports.
   
10. On the twelfth line, select Networking. You can add/remove virtual network adapters on the virtual machine. On each virtual network adapter, you can choose network adapter to be one of these types:
    • Not Connected. No connection.
    • Local only. If you select this type, the network card can only communicate with the localhost (host operating system) and other virtual machines running within this physical PC. You can’t communicate to others through physical network connection.
    • Intel(R) 82566DM Gigabit Network Connection. This is the physical network card and the name may different depends on the physical hardware. This type, the network card will connect to physical network using a new MAC Address generated within virtual machine (Different IP Address compares to physical machine).
    • Shared Networking(NAT). This type, the network card will connect to physical network using physical IP Address (Share same IP Address with physical machine).

    

11. Now, start the virtual machine. Next, I configure about shared folder between host and guest operating system.
    Note: This feature may not be need if you’ve installed a Virtual Machine Additions which I’ll show in the later post. You can drag and drop files or folders between host and guest operating system.
    
12. Open Settings again. There will be a pop-up message warn that some configurations cannot be changed while the virtual machine isn’t turn off.
    
13. On the sixteenth line, select Shared Folders. You can add/remove shared folders between host and guest operating systems. Click Share Folder to create a new one.
    
14. On Browse for Folder, select the physical folder you want to share. And select drive letter to map on the virtual machine.
    Note: You can check Share every time to make this share persistent.
    
15. Now you have a shared folder.
    
16. Open My Computer in the virtual machine, you notice a network drive which mapped to the path on host operating system.
    

Related posts:

1. Getting Started on Virtualization with Microsoft Virtual PC 2007, Part III: New Virtual Machine
2. Getting Started on Virtualization with Microsoft Virtual PC 2007, Part V: Install Virtual Machine Additions
3. Getting Started on Virtualization with Microsoft Virtual PC 2007, Part IV: Install Guest OS

Install Virtual Machine Additions

After you’ve installed an operating system on the virtual machine, you would want to install Virtual Machine Additions on the virtual machine to enhance functionality on a guest operating system. The major capabilities are

• Integrated use of the mouse. You don’t have to press right ALT to release mouse from guest operating system anymore.
• Drag-and-drop capabilities. You can drag and drop files or folders between guest operating system and host operating system without setting up any networking.
• Clipboard sharing. You can copy and paste clipboards between guest operating system and host operating system.

You can view more detail of Virtual Machine Additions in part I. In this part, I’ll show how to install Virtual Machine Additions on a virtual machine which has Windows XP as an operating system.
Note: The Virtual Machine Additions have to be installed on a guest operating system in virtual machines.

You can view the index of this series at Getting Started on Virtualization with Microsoft Virtual PC 2007, Part I: Introduction

Step-by-step

1. Before installing Virtual Machine Additions on the virtual machine, first let see some major functionality which you can’t do before installing Virtual Machine Additions. You have to press right ALT every time to release mouse from guest operating system. You can’t move mouse pointer between host operating system and guest operating system.
   
2. You can’t drag and drop folder from host operating system to guest operating system.
   
3. Now let’s install Virtual Machine Additions. On the virtual machine, select Action -> Install or Update Virtual Machine Additions.
   
4. It shows a warning message, click Continue.
   
5. The setup program will be launched on the guest operating system. On Virtual Machine Additions, click Next.
   
6. It’s installing Virtual Machine Additions.
   
7. When setup completed, click Finish.
   
8. Click Yes to restart the guest operating system to take effect of the Virtual Machine Additions.
   
9. Now you’ve finished install Virtual Machine Additions on the guest operating system. You can try to move your mouse between host operating system and guest operating system. This time, you don’t have to press right ALT to release mouse from guest operating system anymore.
   
10. Next, try to use drag and drop capability. Drag a folder from host operating system to guest operating system.
    
11. There will be a new windows showing copying status.
    
12. The files and folders are copied to the guest operating system.
    

Related posts:

1. Getting Started on Virtualization with Microsoft Virtual PC 2007, Part IV: Install Guest OS
2. Getting Started on Virtualization with Microsoft Virtual PC 2007, Part VI: Configure Virtual Machine Settings
3. Getting Started on Virtualization with Microsoft Virtual PC 2007, Part III: New Virtual Machine

Install Guest OS

Now you have a virtual machine which hasn’t installed any operating system yet. It like you have a new another PC but it is in the virtual machine. So this part I show how install Windows XP on the virtual machine. But I won’t include full detail of how to install Windows XP.
Note: The operating system which is on virtual machine called Guest Operating System (Guest OS). The operating system on the physical PC is called Host Operating System (Host OS).

You can view the index of this series at Getting Started on Virtualization with Microsoft Virtual PC 2007, Part I: Introduction

Step-by-step

1. Start the virtual machine. On Virtual PC Console, double-click on the virtual machine to start it or you can select the virtual machine and click Start button.
   
2. The virtual machine will be started. You’ll see the screen as similar as when you boot the physical PC (loading BIOS, detecting HDD, etc).
   
3. At this time, there is no operating system was installed on the virtual machine yet. So it keep finding a bootable system.
   
4. Start install an Operating System. Insert your Windows XP CD-ROM. But in this example, I use an ISO (image file) of Windows XP instead of a Windows XP CD. So I select CD -> Capture ISO Image.
   Note: If you want to use Windows XP CD, you have to select CD -> Use Physical Drive after inserting a Windows XP CD.
   
5. In case you’re using Windows XP ISO Image. Browse to the ISO Image file. Click Open.
   
6. Reboot the virtual machine to boot into Windows XP installation CD or ISO Image file. Select Action -> CTRL+ALT+DELETE.
   
7. Now it will boot from CD (or ISO Image file).
   Note: If the virtual machine isn’t loading Windows XP installation. You may need to configure boot sequence in BIOS on the virtual machine.
   
8. The Windows Setup is loading.
   
9. Select drive to install Windows XP.
   
10. Continue installing Windows XP.
    
11. When you working in the virtual machine, you notice that you can’t move your mouse outside the virtual machine. It is a different system. To release mouse from the virtual machine, press Right ALT.
    Note: You can install Virtual Machine Additions on virtual machine to solve this annoyance issue which I’ll show in the next part.
    
12. After the installation finishes, now you have a guest operating system on your first virtual machine. You can work in the virtual machine as it is an another PC.
    

Related posts:

1. Getting Started on Virtualization with Microsoft Virtual PC 2007, Part V: Install Virtual Machine Additions
2. Getting Started on Virtualization with Microsoft Virtual PC 2007, Part III: New Virtual Machine
3. Getting Started on Virtualization with Microsoft Virtual PC 2007, Part VI: Configure Virtual Machine Settings

New Virtual Machine

From first 2 parts, you have already installed Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 SP1 on your PC. Now you can create your own virtual machine which I’ll show in this part.

You can view the index of this series at Getting Started on Virtualization with Microsoft Virtual PC 2007, Part I: Introduction

Step-by-step

1. Open Microsoft Virtual PC 2007. Click Start -> Programs -> Microsoft Virtual PC.
   
2. When Microsoft Virtual PC is loading up for the first time, it hasn’t any virtual machine so it automatically runs a wizard for create a new virtual machine. Click Next to continue.
   
3. On Options, you can one of these 3 options:
   1. Create a virtual machine which you can define basic configurations for a virtual machine.
   2. Use default settings to create a virtual machine.
   3. Add an existing virtual machine. If you duplicate a virtual machine or have an existing one, you can choose this option to import it.

   In this example, I’ll create a new virtual machine so I select the first option. Select Create a virtual machine. Click Next.
   

4. On Virtual Machine Name and Location, you can name the virtual machine and its location to keep the virtual machine file. In this example, I only name it to WindowsXP so it will store the virtual machine file in a default location.
   The default location is in My Virtual Machines folder (For example, C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\My Documents\My Virtual Machines). You can click Browse if you would like to change the location. Then, click Next.
   
5. On Operating System, you have to choose the operating system which you’re going to install on the virtual machine. I’ll install Windows XP so I choose Windows XP. Click Next.
   Note: If you’re going to install other operating system besides Microsoft’s products for example, Ubuntu, Red Hat, Fedora, Solaris, FreeBSD, etc., you have to select Other. But Microsoft isn’t officially supports these operating system on Microsoft Virtual PC. Therefore, if you willing to install them in virtual machine, I would recommend you try VMWare. See www.vmware.com for more information.
   
6. On Memory, you can adjust memory (RAM) for the virtual machine. It’ll consume the memory (RAM) of the physical system so you should better have enough memory for both host and guest operating system. In this example, I have 2560 MB. of memory on my PC so I decide to give memory for the virtual machine 512 MB. Select Adjusting the RAM and type 512 in the text box and click Next.
   Note: You shouldn’t assign memory to the maximum size for the virtual machine because the host operating system may lacks memory when you run this virtual machine.
   
7. On Virtual Harddisk Options, select A new virtual hard disk. Click Next.
   
8. On Virtual Hard Disk Location, you can specify where to keep this virtual hard disk file and virtual hard disk size. In this example, I leave these values to default. Click Next.
   
9. Click Finish to complete creating a new virtual machine.
   
10. Now, you’ll see a new virtual machine is shown up on Virtual PC Console. In this example, its name is WindowsXP and the status is Not running. I’ll show how to installing an operating system on the virtual machine in next part.
    

Related posts:

1. Getting Started on Virtualization with Microsoft Virtual PC 2007, Part VI: Configure Virtual Machine Settings
2. Getting Started on Virtualization with Microsoft Virtual PC 2007, Part V: Install Virtual Machine Additions
3. Getting Started on Virtualization with Microsoft Virtual PC 2007, Part IV: Install Guest OS

Installation

This post shows you how to install Microsoft Virtual PC 2007. The steps are easy, simply click next. But I decide to keep this post to make the series complete. By the time I writing this, the latest version is Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 SP1.
Note: The PC that is being installed the Virtual PC should has more than single core (Dual or Quad cores) and has enough memory for virtual machines. Otherwise, it may be slow when you run a virtual machine.

You can view the index of this series at Getting Started on Virtualization with Microsoft Virtual PC 2007, Part I: Introduction

In this example, I’ve selected HP DX 7400 SFF as a sample PC for this series. The spec is Intel Dual Core E8400 (3.00 GHz) with customized RAM to 3.5 GB since Windows XP 32-bit can see maximum at 3.5 GB and hard disk 250 GB. With lot of RAM, I’ve tested that I can run up to 4 virtual machines on this PC simultaneously.

Step-by-step

1. Download Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 SP1 from Microsoft website.
   
2. Double-click on setup.exe to start the installation wizard. Click Next to continue.
   
3. Select I accept the terms in the license agreement. Click Next.
   
4. Enter Customer Information and click Next.
   
5. Click Install to start the installation.
   
6. Waiting the installation to finish.
   
7. Click Finish to complete the installation.
   
8. Now you have installed Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 SP1. Next, I’ll show how to create a new virtual machine. Continue on part III – New Virtual Machine.

Related posts:

1. Getting Started on Virtualization with Microsoft Virtual PC 2007, Part III: New Virtual Machine
2. Getting Started on Virtualization with Microsoft Virtual PC 2007, Part V: Install Virtual Machine Additions
3. Getting Started on Virtualization with Microsoft Virtual PC 2007, Part VI: Configure Virtual Machine Settings

Introduction

Hello, this post is the first part of the series that I’ll give you an introduction to the Virtualization Technology which is an interesting topic and becoming interested to many organizations in these days. This series I’ll focus on using Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 which is a free virtualization software from Microsoft.
Note: In this series, I focus about virtualization software for Workstation only, not for Server or Enterprise.

The series are divided into 7 parts:

1. Getting Started on Virtualization with Microsoft Virtual PC 2007, Part I: Introduction
2. Getting Started on Virtualization with Microsoft Virtual PC 2007, Part II: Installation
3. Getting Started on Virtualization with Microsoft Virtual PC 2007, Part III: New Virtual Machine
4. Getting Started on Virtualization with Microsoft Virtual PC 2007, Part IV: Install Guest OS
5. Getting Started on Virtualization with Microsoft Virtual PC 2007, Part V: Install Virtual Machine Additions
6. Getting Started on Virtualization with Microsoft Virtual PC 2007, Part VI: Configure Virtual Machine Settings

Section

• What’s Virtualization
• Why implements Virtualization Technology
• Virtualization Software
• Microsoft Virtual PC
• Let’s start

What’s Virtualization

Nowadays, a computer have much higher performance than before, it can do more tasks at the time. It has dual or quad cores, large memory size, huge storage disk, etc. With a high performance PC like this, it is suitable to run more than a system on a single PC. So it comes to virtualization term.

Virtualization software is software which virtualizes processor, memory, storage and networking resources of a single PC into multiple virtual machines. So you can run multiple operating systems and multiple applications on a single physical PC at the same time.
Back to top

Why implements Virtualization Technology

With Virtualization Technology, you can

1. Improve the utilization of PCs or servers. You can have multiple operating systems and multiple applications.
2. Increase flexibility of hardware. Virtual machine is independent hardware since it simulate hardware resources so that you can move your virtual machine between PCs or Servers really faster and simpler.
3. Save money and energy. Services and applications can be run simultaneously on each virtual machines in a single servers or PCs so you can reduce the number of Servers or PCs.
4. Increase services and applications availability. You can recover virtual machines faster and easier.

Back to top

Virtualization Software

The popular virtualization software for personal use are Microsoft Virtual PC (Free), VMWare Workstation (Not Free) and Sun VirtualBox (Free).
Note: VMWare also has VMWare Player which is free but you can only run virtual machines but not be able to create or modify virtual machines.

If you are a Windows user, I would recommend you to try Microsoft Virtual PC because it’s free and easiest to use. Therefore, I’ll use Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 as a demonstration software throughout this series.

If you are a corporate staff and consider to implementing virtualization technology, you should try software from VMWare which has many products for enterprise business. For example, VMWare Server, VMWare ESX, etc.
Back to top

Microsoft Virtual PC

(This section was quoted and slightly rearranged from Microsoft Virtual PC, Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

1. Emulated environment

   Virtual PC emulates the following.

   • 32-bit Intel Pentium II processor (but virtualizes the host processor on Windows versions) with an Intel 440BX chipset.
   • Standard SVGA VESA graphics card (S3 Trio 32 PCI with 4 MB Video RAM, adjustable in later versions up to 16 MB).
   • System BIOS from American Megatrends (AMI)
   • Creative Labs Sound Blaster 16 ISA PnP (when Vista is installed as both the host (main) and guest (virtual) Operating systems, then the need to set audio configuration is removed, as the guest (Virtual) OS automatically synchronizes the settings with the host (main) Operating System.)
   • DEC 21041 (DEC 21140 in newer versions) Ethernet network card.

   USB is not supported. Programs which use undocumented features of hardware, exotic timings, or unsupported opcodes may not work, although overall compatibility can be considered satisfactory.

   • The Macintosh version of Virtual PC uses dynamic recompilation to translate the x86 code used by a standard PC into equivalent PowerPC code used by a Mac.
   • The Windows version of Virtual PC also uses dynamic recompilation, but only to translate kernel mode and real mode x86 code into x86 user mode code, while original user mode and virtual 8086 mode code run natively.

   It also uses some guest call traps (especially when using the guest extensions) to accelerate emulation or offer additional features, such as integration with the host environment.

   Virtual Hard Disk (VHD) is the file format used by Virtual PC and Virtual Server, for which Microsoft has made available all documentation under the Open Specification Promise.

2. Virtual Machine Additions

   To facilitate exchange and sharing of files, folders and data between the host operating system and the guest operating system, Virtual PC supports installing Virtual Machine Additions. These are installed in the guest operating system and provide the following functionality across the host and guest operating systems:

   • Better performance of the guest OS.
   • Integrated use of the mouse.
   • Optimized video drivers.
   • Dynamic Screen Resolution (the ability to use any screen resolution in the guest by resizing the Virtual Machine window).
   • Time synchronization with the host.
   • Clipboard sharing.
   • Drag-and-drop capabilities.
   • Possibility to share files and folders between the host system and the guest system.

3. Supported host operating systems

   • Windows Vista (32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows Vista Ultimate, Enterprise, Business editions and European Business only, not Windows Vista Starter, Windows Vista Home Basic or Home Premium or European Vista Home editions)
   • Windows XP Professional and Tablet PC Edition (32-bit) and Windows XP Professional x64 Edition, not Windows XP Home Edition or Windows XP Media Center Edition)
   • Windows Server 2003
   • Windows Server 2008

4. Supported Guest operating systems

   • Windows Vista (All 32-bit editions)
   • Windows XP (All 32-bit only)
   • Windows Server 2008 (Virtual PC 2007 SP1 onwards)
   • Windows 2000 Professional and Server
   • Windows 98 Second Edition
   • Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition
   • Windows NT 4.0 Server
   • Certain editions of IBM OS/2

   Note: Support for Windows 95, the Windows 98 original release, Windows Me, Windows NT 4.0 Workstation and MS-DOS 6.22 as guests has been discontinued in Virtual PC 2007 but they may run regardless, although Virtual PC Additions are not available on early operating systems such as Windows 95 or MS-DOS 6.22.

   Other operating systems like Linux may run, but are not officially supported (for example, Ubuntu, a popular Linux distribution, can only get past the boot screen of the Live CD when using Safe Graphics Mode).

Reference: Virtual PC 2007 Release Notes
Back to top

Let’s start!

By the time that I writing this part, the latest version is Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 SP1. You can download at Microsoft website.

To begin installation, continue on Part II: Installation.
Back to top

Related posts:

1. Getting Started on Virtualization with Microsoft Virtual PC 2007, Part V: Install Virtual Machine Additions
2. Getting Started on Virtualization with Microsoft Virtual PC 2007, Part III: New Virtual Machine
3. Getting Started on Virtualization with Microsoft Virtual PC 2007, Part VI: Configure Virtual Machine Settings

Introduction

Nowadays, virtualization is a solution which is interested by many IT manager. By converting existing system to virtual, you can save lot of money from buying new hardware every year, avoid hardware conflicts when you move virtual to another computer, etc. But when you convert system to virtual, you still need OS to run virtual software (VMWare, Virtual PC, etc).

The best practice is to have Linux operationg system running on host so that you won’t have to pay an additional license. Then, you can have whatever OS you want on virtual. For virtual software, VMWare is the one I recommend to try. There are some free licenses if you want to try. Like VMWare Server, you can have many virtual on a PC and you can connect to manage your virtuals remotely by using VMWare Server Console. This article shows how to install VMWare Server on Redhat Enterprise 4.

Step-by-step

1. Install prerequisite program on Redhat. To install VMWare Server on Linux, you need to install gcc compiler and xinetd before install VMWare Server. By default, xinetd is already installed on Redhat Enterprise 4 so you only need to install gcc.
   • To install gcc, click Application -> System Settings -> Add/Remove Applications
     
   • Browse to ‘Development’ section and check ‘Development Tools’. Click update.
     
   • This will show what are going to install.
     Note: To install this, you may requires Redhat installation CD (disc 3).
     
2. Now download VMWare Server for Linux from vmware.com. Also, you need to register for a free serial number. When writing this article, the latest version is 1.0.4. I have copied the setup file to my desktop. In this example, I logged in as ‘root’ for installation and configuration VMWare Server.
   
3. Open terminal, extract the zipped file by type ‘tar xvfz “your-file-name.tar.gz”‘.
   

   tar xvfz VMWare-server-1.0.4-56528.tar.gz

   

4. When extract finishes, you’ll see the VMWare Server on desktop or at the same place with your zipped file.
   
5. Run the installation file. Open Terminal and change directory to the extracted folder and execute vmware-install.pl.
   

   cd vmware-server-distrib/
   ./vmware-install.pl

   

6. This is the steps for installation and configuration VMWare Server. If you don’t know what value to enter, you can simply press Enter button to accept the default value in the bracket [ ] which is provided by the installation file. In this example, I install and configure as default value setting so I only press Enter on each question.
   • The installation file asks for paths to install files (1-7).
     
   • The installation file asks for path to install documentation (8-9). Also, it asks for configure VMWare Server now (10). If yes, press Enter to view End User License Agreement (10).
     
   • Press Ctrl + C to exit the EULA and type ‘y’ or ‘yes’ to accept the EULA (11).
     
   • The configuration continue asks for path to install file (12-14) and whether to configure NAT network for VMWare Server now (15-16).
     
   • The configuration asks for configure Host-only network for VMWare Server (19-20).
     
   • The configuration asks for port which for remotely connection to this VMWare Server Console (22).
     
   • The configuration asks for path to keep virtual machine files (23) and serial number for VMWare Server (25). You can get one by register at vmware.com for free. If you don’t have now, you can enter this number later but it suggest you should enter it now. Otherwise, you need to re-run the config file again.
     
   • Whether you enter the serial number now or not, the configuration is finished. You’ll see VMWare service is starting.
     
7. Try open VMWare Server Console, select Applications -> System Tools -> VMWare Server Console.
   
8. VMWare Server Console ask you to connect to which VMWare Server. Select Localhost and click connect.
   
9. That’s it. You can manage your virtual machine here.
   

Related posts:

1. How to setup Stand-Alone Kaspersky Anti-Virus 5.7 Workstation on Linux RedHat
2. How to change IP Address on Linux Redhat

Problem

When you use virtualization software such as Microsoft Virtual PC, VMWare, etc. Most of the time, you’ll duplicate (copy and paste) Windows virtual disk for creating a new system instead of grab a Windows CD and install it from scratch because it’s really fast and simple. But the problem occured on the duplicated disk that it contains the same Computer Security Identifier (SID) with the original so that if you try to join the domain on the new system, you can’t login to the domain and the error message show as below

“The system cannot log you on due to the following error:

The name or security ID (SID) of the domain specified is inconsistent with the trust information for that domain.”

The event log also show error as
“The computer or domain computername trusts domain domainname. This may be an indirect trust. However, computername and domainname have the same security identifier. NT should be reinstalled on domainname or computername. ”

Microsoft states that “Computers running the Windows operating system use a Security ID (SID) to uniquely identify themselves. When you use disk-duplicating software, it is important to take steps to ensure the uniqueness of these Security IDs.”

Note: The problem will not occured if you use System Preparation Tool (Sysprep.exe) or some system duplication tools such as Symantec’s Ghost, Altiris’s RapiDeploy, etc. These tools will change a computer’s SID after a system has been cloned automatically.

For more infmation on Windows System Preparation Tool, visit at Desktop Deployment Center Windows – Imaging: System Preparation Tool

Solution

You can solve the problem by run newsid program on the duplicated system. The program will generates new sid for the sytem so that it’s no longer duplicate with the original one.

1. If you have already join the domain, disjoined the domain before apply newsid program in the next step.
   Note: If you apply the program without disjoined the domain, permissions of all users on the domain won’t be set on the computer. For example, if you have applied newsid program without disjoined the domain and you try to use domain admin account to login to the computer. The account won’t have permission as an administrator but only as a user.
2. Download NewSID v4.10 from sysinternal.com or at here.
3. Extract the zipped file and run newsid.exe
4. Click Next.
   
5. Select Random SID. Click Next.
   
6. You can also rename the computer name if you want.
   
7. Click Next and wait a few minutes for applying new sid. Then the system will automatically restarts.
   
8. Now join the domain again and now you can use the system without the error as stated at the beginning.

Reference

• Microsoft TechNet – NewSID v4.10
• Microsoft Knowledgebase – Do not disk duplicate installed versions of Windows

No related posts.