Category Archives: VMware

VMware Workstation 10&gtk2 Errors on RHEL

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When executing the vmware workstation bundle, the following gtk2 errors are displayed:

# ./VMware-Workstation-Full-10.0.4-2249910.x86_64.bundle 
Extracting VMware Installer...done.
Gtk-Message: Failed to load module "pk-gtk-module": libpk-gtk-module.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
Gtk-Message: Failed to load module "canberra-gtk-module": libcanberra-gtk-module.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

Fix:

# echo "/usr/lib64/gtk-2.0/modules" > /etc/ld.so.conf.d/gtk2.conf
# ldconfig

Enable Clipboard Copy and Paste in VMware console

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Log in to a vCenter Server system using the vSphere Client and power off the virtual machine.
Select the virtual machine and click the Summary tab.
Click Edit Settings.
Navigate to Options > Advanced > General and click Configuration Parameters.
Click Add Row.
Type these values in the Name and Value columns:

    Name	Value
    isolation.tools.copy.disable	FALSE
    isolation.tools.paste.disable	FALSE

Note: These options override any settings made in the VMware Tools control panel of the guest operating system.

Click OK to close the Configuration Parameters dialog, and click OK again to close the Virtual Machine Properties dialog.
Power on the virtual machine.

Note: If you vMotion a virtual machine to a host where the isolation.tools.*=”FALSE” is already set, the copy and paste options are automatically activated for that virtual machine.

To enable this option for all the virtual machines in the ESX/ESXi host:

Log in to the ESX/ESXi host as a root user.
Take a backup of the /etc/vmware/config file.
Open the /etc/vmware/config file using a text editor.
Add these entries to the file:

    vmx.fullpath = "/bin/vmx"
    isolation.tools.copy.disable="FALSE"
    isolation.tools.paste.disable="FALSE"

Save and close the file.

The Copy and Paste options are only enabled when the virtual machines restart or resume the next time or shutdown and power-on the virtual machine for changes to take effect. This must be done on the virtual machine side, not the guest OS side.

Update ESXi from version 3.5 to 4.0

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This page documents the process to update ESXi from version 3.5 to 4.0 if you have a standalone host or do not use vCenter Update Manager. After you have completed the firmware upgrade, you should also upgrade the virtual hardware version of your VMs as shown at the bottom of the page and also upgrade VMware Tools. Upgrading the virtual hardware version will allow you to take advantage of new VM features like 10 virtual NICs per VM, IDE virtual hard drives and VMDirectPath.

This procedure to upgrade an ESXi host from version 3.5 to 4.0 requires version 4.0 of the VMware vSphere client. Typically the vSphere client is installed after your ESXi host is installed. if you don’t have an existing install of the vSphere client v 4.0 you can extract it from the ESXi 4.0 upgrade ZIP package (VMware-viclient.vibdata.tar.gzdata.tar.4.0.0clientVMware-viclient.exe) as shown in the below image.

upgrade1

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Installing Windows XP on ESX/ESXi using LSI Logic driver

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By default, ESX will use the LSI Logic driver when deploying a new Windows XP virtual machine. The LSI Logic driver is not found on the CD-ROM media, so Windows XP will not continue with the installation if this driver is not found.

WinXP

  1. The steps:
    Create a new Windows XP Virtual Machine
    Upload a Windows XP .iso file to your datastore/ISOstore (preferably a VLK version) and link it via the CD-ROM options in your Virtual Machine. Make sure it is connected / at power on
    Go to http://www.lsilogic.com/cm/DownloadSearch.do and search for a driver for the LSI20320-R controller.
    Extract all files in the symmpi_wXP_1201800.ZIP
    Use a program such as WinImage to create an LSILogic.flp file and include the extracted files in the .flp image.
    Upload the newly created LSILogic.flp to your datastore/ISO store
    Link the .flp file via the Floppy options => use existing floppy image in datastore in your Virtual Machine. Do NOT connect it yet.
    Power On your Windows XP machine. The installation of Windows XP should begin.
    During setup, press F6 to select additional SCSI drivers
    Now is the time to connect your floppy and use S during Windows Setup when prompted to connect to the floppy drive.

S-Command

The LSILogic drive should appear. Press ENTER to continue
Setup will continue as normal
Install VMware tools
Done!

NOTE: when using the BusLogic driver instead, you can download & use a preconfigured .flp file from the VMware site: http://download3.vmware.com/software/vmscsi-1.2.0.4.flp. Follow the same procedure as described above. The driver should be name VMware SCSI Controller in Windows XP.

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