MacLochlainns Weblog

This is to correct an earlier omission and provide instructions for configuring static and dynamic IP addresses for Virtual Machines runing on VMWare Fusion on Mac OS X. The benefit of static IP address is important for those installing multiple development and test instances of Oracle Databases in virtual environments.

Back in September 2008, I blogged about how to configure the Oracle Client 10g on Mac OS X. It’s been used a lot but in hindsight it could have been organized more effectively. One thing that I noticed (through somebody bringing it to my attention) is that explaining the VMWare Fusion component by itself would have been more helpful then listing the IP ranges for releases through the date of my post. Hopefully, this corrects that omission.

VMWare NAT Configuration

There are only a few steps that you must do. These are they:

1. Read the subnet value from the dhcpd.conf file.
2. Dynamic IP address only require you to set the guest operating system to DHCP.
3. Static IP addresses require you to set the IP address, subnet, default gateway, and preferred DNS server.
4. Add assigned IP address and the guest operating system hostname to your Mac OS X /etc/hosts file.

The next sections gives the details of where to find all the things that you may want to experiment with. Remember if you make an error that damages these configuration files, you have to fix it or re-install VMWare Fusion.

VMWare NAT Files and Configurations

You can find the IP ranges for the Network Address Translation (NAT) here:

/Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion/vmnet8/dhcpd.conf

You can open the file for editing like this:

sudo vi "/Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion/vmnet8/dhcpd.conf"

The file contains the subnet, which I’ve found changes with release. You can configure this file and assign fixed addresses in it. However, you don’t need to install fixed addresses in this file unless you want to reserve addresses in the dynamic range.

The dynamic range is between xxx.xxx.xxx.128 and xxx.xxx.xxx.254. The range of xxx.xxx.xxx.3 to xxx.xxx.xxx.127 is available for static IP addresses. You can set a static IP address inside the native operating system of the VM.

The dhcpd.conf file with it’s instructions, looks like this:

# Configuration file for ISC 2.0 vmnet-dhcpd operating on vmnet8.
#
# This file was automatically generated by the VMware configuration program.
# See Instructions below if you want to modify it.
#
# We set domain-name-servers to make some DHCP clients happy
# (dhclient as configured in SuSE, TurboLinux, etc.).
# We also supply a domain name to make pump (Red Hat 6.x) happy.
#
 
###### VMNET DHCP Configuration. Start of "DO NOT MODIFY SECTION" #####
# Modification Instructions: This section of the configuration file contains
# information generated by the configuration program. Do not modify this
# section.
# You are free to modify everything else. Also, this section must start 
# on a new line 
# This file will get backed up with a different name in the same directory 
# if this section is edited and you try to configure DHCP again.
 
# Written at: 02/18/2010 23:30:54
allow unknown-clients;
default-lease-time 1800;                # default is 30 minutes
max-lease-time 7200;                    # default is 2 hours
 
subnet 172.16.123.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 {
	range 172.16.123.128 172.16.123.254;
	option broadcast-address 172.16.123.255;
	option domain-name-servers 172.16.123.2;
	option domain-name localdomain;
	default-lease-time 1800;                # default is 30 minutes
	max-lease-time 7200;                    # default is 2 hours
	option routers 172.16.123.2;
}
host vmnet8 {
	hardware ethernet 00:50:56:C0:00:08;
	fixed-address 172.16.123.1;
	option domain-name-servers 0.0.0.0;
	option domain-name "";
	option routers 0.0.0.0;
}
####### VMNET DHCP Configuration. End of "DO NOT MODIFY SECTION" #######

Unless you’ve changed the location of your VM repository on your Mac OS X, you can set a fixed-address for the virtual machine. You add the following lines at the bottom of the dhcpd.conf file:

host mclaughlinxp32 {
	hardware ethernet 00:0c:29:55:38:1b;
        fixed-address 172.16.123.21;
}

You pick whichever IP address you’d like to use. You also need to configure the guest opearting system in the VM with that same IP address. You can find the ethernet hardware value in the following file:

~/Documents/Virtual Machines/VMName/VMName.vmx

You can open the file and hunt for it, or simply run this command from the directory where the file exists:

grep ethernet0.generatedAddress *.vmx

As always, I hope this helps some folks.

A couple months ago, I tried to install Oracle Database 10g, Release 2 for Mac OS X on Intel x86-64 on a MacBook running generic Snow Leopard. It didn’t work because you must have the Mac OS X Server. Somebody asked me to post more of what I found when I tried to hack the installation. Oracle’s documentation Oracle™ Database Installation Guide 10g Release 2 (10.2) for Apple Mac OS X (Intel), B25286-01 clearly states that the installation requires Mac OS X Server edition. By the way, this is one of the best installation guides I’ve seen from Oracle because it is very complete.

You can determine which version of Mac OS X you’re running with the following:

# sw_vers

It won’t work when you’re on a generic Snow Leopard release, like this:

ProductName:	Mac OS X
ProductVersion:	10.6.2
BuildVersion:	10C540

The first place you’ll get stopped cold is during the installation. You can specify the kern.sysv.shmmni value in the sysctl.conf file at the required 4096 but it won’t allow reconfiguration from the default value of 32. The inability to override this value stops the Oracle installer. You can see the default value of the shared memory parameters by running this command in a terminal session:

# /usr/sbin/sysctl -a | grep \\.shm

You should see the following:

kern.sysv.shmmax: 4194304
kern.sysv.shmmin: 1
kern.sysv.shmmni: 32
kern.sysv.shmseg: 8
kern.sysv.shmall: 1024

I haven’t tested it on the Mac OS X Server edition yet. I’ve a hunch that it’ll work like a charm. When I do get to that, I’ll update the post. Here’s the Apple support note on kern.sysv.shmmni for the Server version.

I’d upgraded from VMWare Fusion 2 to 3 and taken care of most instances. A NASTY surprise awaited me when I tried to upgrade my Linux installations this morning.

You MUST to uninstall VMWare tools from your repository of Linux operating systems before upgrading your VMWare Fusion or ESX server. If you don’t, you can’t access the console because the drivers make the console look like this:

Perhaps I missed this note when, as an early adopted I opted to move straight to VMWare Fusion 3. I would have complied with these instructions to avoid this headache.

All that’s required now, is that: (a) I export 500 GBs worth of virtual machines to another machine running VMWare Fusion 2; (b) Individually start each machine and run the uninstall VMWare Tools command individually; and, (c) Shutdown and reposition all virtual machines on the original server.

As stated in the note, the command to remove it is:

/usr/bin/vmware-tools-uninstall.pl

Click on the note in the event the link fails to resolve, which would mean the note vanishes into oblivion some day in the future …

While I’ve another machine that’s not yet upgraded, this is a major inconvenience. It’s a shame that the Linux components don’t install automatically. It’s a shame that the install didn’t say something like, “Don’t do this if you’ve Linux virtual machines, unless you’ve removed their VMWare Tools installation.”

Another word to the wise, you don’t get the Linux Tools automatically when you download the product. The software prompts you to download the additional components when you attempt to launch a Linux environment. A cruel irony since by the time you see the prompt, you can’t! This is a change from the prior upgrade process.

Yes, haste makes waste but now I know. In the future, treat all VMWare upgrades like those from Microsoft test, re-test, re-authenticate in a small way before upgrading. Do you think VMWare really want to send that message to its customer base?

I got back to this tonight, and thanks to Red Hat’s Session Manager I was able to fix the Red Hat VMs. Launching it, I simply switched to the Failsafe Terminal and ran the following command, as per the note:

# /usr/bin/vmware-uninstall.pl

After that, I rebooted. Then, installed (mounted the VMWare Tools disk) from the VMWare Fusion menu. Opening a terminal as root, I then re-installed and configured VMWare Fusion. Those are done. As more time allows, I’ll update about the others.

I’m now reconfiguring the network since the VMWare Fusion 2 bridged at a 172.16.153 subdomain and VMWare Fusion 3 bridges at a 172.16.123 subdomain.

This is probably defensive because I’ve had to answer the question about two dozen times since the iPad product announcement. The question is naturally, what do yo think about the iPad?

My perspective is biased by the fact that I’ve been using both DOS/Windows PCs and Macs since the 1980s. They each have merits but in short, unlike the media, I have a bias toward Apple products. In fact, I’m an old NeXT system administrator (software gone from the scene because as rumors have it, Steve wouldn’t think of letting the company become ONLY a software company).

I think the idea of the iPad for eBooks is awesome, the features are terrific. It clearly is a better opportunity for my digital movies but a bit awkward because of its size.

I can’t travel with an iPad by itself because it doesn’t support Microsoft Excel, Word, or Visio. That means I’d have to have my MacBook Pro and iPad. Ouch, the security folks will go nuts at the airport, and my bags are now heavier by about 2 pounds. The iPad is 1.5 pounds but the charger has weight too.

I understand all the logic for the device but there’s an underlying assumption in placing everything on the web. Some data can’t be on the web because of legal limits. This goes to my sticking point. Apple’s Office Suite isn’t as robust as Microsoft’s Office Suite. Keynote is easier to use and easily preferred over PowerPoint, but Numbers isn’t even close to Excel (here Apple fails). The problem with Pages is that many companies have templates built around Word and there’s no easy migration back and forth.

Perhaps Apple will reach out to Power Excel users and invest in Numbers to bring it into this millennium; and maybe they’ll also fix the portability between Word and Pages too. For example, one company I work with insists that I use Word 2003 because they’ve never updated their templates to Word 2007 (easy to do through VMWare Fusion). Then, all that’s needed is a rock solid replacement for Visio on Mac OS X.

I think that I might buy one to experiment with, just so I’m current with the product and new features. I’ve also got some product ideas that I’d like to explore but I don’t think this is a home-run like the iPod and iPhone without vitualization software to enable Windows. As an afterthought, maybe the announcement this summer will be “you can have it all now” when they port most features to the core OS X operating system. That would induce me to upgrade my MacBook Pro, wouldn’t it get you to do so too?

Coming from Solaris Unix and Red Hat Linux to Ubuntu, Mac OS X and other distributions of Linux was interesting a couple years ago. The fact that you couldn’t su to the root account was tedious. It didn’t take too long (a couple momentes) to recall that I could assume those privileges in a shell, like:

admin_user@machine_name:~$ sudo sh
#

Naturally, this avoids entering sudo before a series of commands and makes administering any box simpler. It should work on all distributions but I’ve not checked ALL of them because they’re too numerous anymore. I know it works on the Mac OS X, Ubuntu, and now Fedora distributions.

Today, I got a kick from the message provided by Fedora 10 when you assume root permissions. It’s been over 20 years since I got that lecture on an AT&T box at First Interstate Bank. I imagine that any equivalent box to that is in a museum, while that bank was acquired by Wells Fargo in the early 1990s. The message from Fedora is just too funny to pass on making a comment. Here’s the screen shot:

Hope it brought a smile to some faces …

Another faculty member asked me how to convert a DVD to an ISO on his Mac. Here are the instructions for everybody.

He needed to convert it because he wanted to deploy it on a Netbook from a USB drive. We all know you shouldn’t do this unless you’ve paid for the license and are only installing it on a single machine, like the Adobe license specifies.

The only tricky part to this is the last command-line step, which I borrowed from Mac OS X hints.

1. Open Disk Utility on your Mac OS X. It’ll look something like this:

2. Click the New Image icon in the tool bar, and save it as a compressed file. This writes it as a .dmg file, which is an Apple format .iso file.

It’ll take a while to write. The length of time is relevant to the size of the image on the DVD.

3. This is the first of two tricky steps. There tricky because you need to use the command-line. If you followed the instructions, you’ve saved the .dmg file on the Desktop. Now, you need to convert the .dmg formatted file to an .iso formatted file. You open Terminal, and change the directory to the Desktop or where you put the file. You must do this before running this command because I’ve used relative file syntax. Alternatively, you could provide fully qualified file names.

MacPro:~ mclaughlinm$ cd Desktop
MacPro:Desktop mclaughlinm$ ls *.dmg
Acrobat9.dmg
MacPro:Desktop mclaughlinm$ hdiutil convert Acrobat9.dmg -format UDTO -o Acrobat9.iso
Reading Acrobat9                         (Apple_ISO : 0)…
...............................................................................................................
Elapsed Time: 27.655s
Speed: 22.2Mbytes/sec
Savings: 0.0%
created: /Users/mclaughlinm/Desktop/Acrobat9.iso.cdr

4. Before you copy it to your Windows USB, you need to remove the trailing .cdr from the file name. The syntax at the command-line is:

MacPro:Desktop mclaughlin$ mv Acrobat9.iso.cdr Acrobat9.iso

5. Open Finder, and copy the .iso to your USB drive, and delete the temporary copy.

Hope this helps some folks.

Working on my stuff today, and the Belkin Flip DVI KVM Switch went nuts. First, I lost the keyboard, and then video. After a couple fruitless minutes, I did the unthinkable and opted for the 7 second to oblivion restart while two VMWare instances were up and running. By the way, I disconnected the Belkin Flip DVI KVM Switch because that was the last straw. For those looking at the product, I’d advise against it because infrequently the device transmits haze or golden flashing pixels. Also, this wasn’t the first time the keyboard disconnected itself without rhyme or reason.

All my VMs were locked when I rebooted. It didn’t matter whether they were running or not when I did the forced shutdown. This is not the image you want to see when you’re short on time against a fixed deadline.

The fix was simple. You go to the directory where each VM is located and find if you have locked files. You can run this command to find them:

$ ls *.lck

If they’re locked you’ll see something this:

564df021-1de5-dec0-942a-37635b35361b.vmem.lck:
M00680.lck
 
Windows XP Professional 32-bit.vmdk.lck:
M25400.lck
 
Windows XP Professional 32-bit.vmx.lck:
M47433.lck

You need to delete all three files, I used this command:

$ rm -rf *.lck

When you restart VMWare Fusion, everything will be fine. Hope this helps a few folks.

About 8 months ago I published how to set up a shared network printer in Windows XP, using VMWare Fusion on a Mac OS X. Recently, I went to follow my own instructions and found they failed with an older Windows XP media – OUCH!

When I checked whether or not the version of Windows XP knew about my much newer printer, the problem became clear. If you want to set up a newer printer than Windows recognizes, you’ll need the vendors media.

Here are the steps to install a printer when Windows can’t recognize the network printer:

1. First make sure you navigate to Virtual Machine on the VMWare Fusion menu, choose CD/DVD and then Connect CD/DVD to proceed.

2. Insert the disk that came with your printer. My disk is for my HP 2420 duplex printer on Windows XP, 32-bit. If you’re installing to a 64-bit version of Windows, the installer will die and the complexity rises as you download the media from HP and manually install the driver files.

The screen shots are those for configuring a printer because I neglected to capture the driver install shots earlier and didn’t have the time to do so. When I have to setup another similar version, I’ll add those. The first screen shot after the welcome screen and choosing your language follows. Click the Next button to continue.

3. Choose the Add an additional printer on printer driver radio button, then click the Next button to proceed.

4. Choose the Connected via the network radio button, and then click the Next button to continue.

5. Choose the Basic network setup for a PC or server (recommended) radio button, and then click Next button to continue.

6. Choose a method to search by enabling the Search from a list of detected printers (recommended). This choice fails from the normal process that adds a printer because it can’t detect newer printers. Click the Next button to continue.

7. This next screen is a progress bar, and it takes enough time that you’ll notice it. Click the Next button to continue.

8. Hopefully, you’ll find your printer. Click the Yes, install this printer. Click the Next button to continue.

9. The following confirms the settings. Unless you’ve manually assigned the Network Interface Card for the printer to a fixed IP address, I’d leave these settings alone. Click the Next button to continue.

10. If you’ve manually installed the Post Script driver you may want to enable it here. As to the HP LaserJet Toolbox, I would definitely leave it alone. Click the Next button to continue.

11. This is where you can rename your printer if you have a desired name. Enter any change from the default, and then click Next to continue.

12. Generally, it’s a very bad idea to share a printer from a virtual machine instance. The only time I’d even think about it would be if I were trying to replicate a problem with a nested virtual machine. Therefore, I’d suggest you choose Not Shared, and then click Next to continue.

13. Here you can put a location in for the printer and any comment you’d like to have for it. Click the Next button to continue.

14. Everything to here as been choosing the configuration. Click the Install button to install the printer.

15. This progress bar fills four times, so take a break. When it is done, click Next to continue. Don’t click that Cancel button when it hangs for bit because it may do that. You’ll need to be patient, after all it is Microsoft’s operating system and most likely an HP driver.

16. You’ve now completed the installation, click the Finish button to complete the process.

Hopefully, this helps a couple folks that are configuring a Windows XP printer inside a 32-bit Windows XP installation.

I noticed today working with my students on downloads for the new term that Oracle finally released Oracle Database 10g Release 2 for Mac OS X Intel. That’s awesome until you see what it doesn’t include. You can find the installation instructions along with a list of unsupported products here. The real instructions are inside the zip file that you download.

If you’re like me, you’re asking: “When does Oracle Database 11g Release 1 for Mac OS X Intel ship?” However, I’m downloading it right now to test.

It sometimes gets tiresome to sort the VMWare compatibility issues with Linux release-by-release but at the end of the cycle it’s fine. I downloaded the current Fedora 10 Live release because it is so much smaller than the install disk. It uses a kernel of 2.6.27.5-117.fc10.i686. I encountered a critical errors when I tried to install the VMWare Toolkit from VMWare Fusion, version 2.0.3 (156731). The only error guidance you’ll get is that there isn’t any make file.

There’s a twist here if you’re most familiar with Ubuntu and sudo command execution. You need to su to the root account and run everything as root user. An alternative would be to edit the /etc/inittab file to allow the root user to boot the instance. The default is 5 (X11). You enable the root user by changing it to 3 (full multiuser mode). Don’t forget to change it back, you really shouldn’t log in as the root user. Anyway, you’ll have to do it to run the VMWare Toolkit successfully as shown later in the post.

You fix the incompatibility of the VMWare Fusion Toolkit by downloading the following two missing RPMs. You should be able to find them here. As to why they’re not in the Live DVD distribution, who knows.

binutils-2.18.50.0.9-8.fc10.i386.rpm
gcc-4.3.2-7.i386.rpm
glibc-2.9-2.i686.rpm
glibc-devel-2.9-2.i386.rpm
glibc-headers-2.9-2.i386.rpm
kernel-devel-2.6.27.5-117.fc10.i686.rpm
kernel-headers-2.6.27.5-117.fc10.i386.rpm
libgomp-4.3.2-7.i386.rpm

You can’t run some of them through the RPM utility, so you should probably run them all at the command line. The command line syntax and sequence for these packages is:

rpm -ivh kernel-headers-2.6.27.5-117.fc10.i386.rpm
rpm -ivh kernel-devel-2.6.27.5-117.fc10.i686.rpm
rpm -ivh binutils-2.18.50.0.9-8.fc10.i386.rpm
rpm -ivh libgomp-4.3.2-7.i386.rpm
rpm -ivh glibc-headers-2.9-2.i386.rpm
rpm -ivh glibc-devel-2.9-2.i386.rpm
rpm -ivh glibc-2.9-2.i686.rpm
rpm -ivh gcc-4.3.2-7.i386.rpm

As the root user, you can now install the VMWare Toolkit. While running the installation, you’ll receive a prompt to confirm the /usr/src/linux/include. Don’t accept the default path because it won’t work unless you created a symbolic link. The kernel header files require you to enter the following path:

/usr/src/kernels/2.6.27.5-117.fc10.i686/include

Everything should work finxs e when you compile the modules. Hope this helps a couple folks.