MacLochlainns Weblog

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.

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 …

Customizing the toolbar is one of the things that I’ve found important in using VMWare Fusion to test various Linux distributions. It’s nice they put Suspend by default on the toolbar but it would be nicer still if they put Shut Down. I got tired of looking for the PID to manually kill the virtualization from the Terminal command line. It is so much easier to add a Shut Down widget before trying to install VMWare Tools because that’s where some distributions hang.

Here are the steps to customize the toolbar:

1. Right click on the toolbar before running the VMWare instance, and you’ll see this context menu. Choose the Customize Toolbar… choice from the list.

2. The prior step lets you customize the toolbar though the following menu option dialog. Just click on the icon you want and drag it on to the toolbar. I’d suggest dragging Shut Down and Full Screen on to the toolbar.

I prefer putting the Shut Down to the left of the Suspend button, like this:

Hope this helps somebody.

I was looking for a cool post to point my students to about overriding the ed tool in SQL*Plus but couldn’t find one. A number of posts showed how to set vi as the default editor in Linux or Unix but none showed how to replace Microsoft Notepad with something else. Instructions for both operating environments are here.

Linux or Unix:

This is simple because all you need to do is open a terminal session and type the following command:

# which -a vi

vi is typically a symbolic link to /usr/bin/vi, and it points to /usr/bin/vim in many cases, like Linux or Mac OS X. You can now add that to your SQL*Plus session interactively by typing:

SQL> define _editor=vi

You can set this in your Oracle Database 10g or 11g home, or in the Oracle Database Instant Client. It is found in the $ORACLE_HOME/sqlplus/admin/glogin.sql file, and example is noted at the end of this blog.

Windows:

This is actually quite easy but different releases of Windows provide different behaviors. Some of those behaviors provide alternatives that don’t work in all Windows releases. The off-beat approaches let you launch the alternate editor but they don’t always edit the active buffer. The ones I’ve chosen to show you should work in all Windows releases, but let me know if they don’t in your environment.

1. Install the editor(s) you want to use. I’ve installed and tested GVIM (a vi editor) and Notepad++ on Windows XP and Vista with Oracle Database 10g and 11g.

2. Add the directory path to these products to your system path. This takes four steps. First, you open your System Properties dialog box. Click the Environment Variables button to set an environment variable.

In the Environment Variables dialog box, you should select the PATH variable from the System variables list. Click the Edit button to change the PATH variable.

Add the following in the Edit System Variable dialog box. You should note that you use a semi-colon to separate path elements in Windows (not a colon like Linux or Unix). After you add the editor path, click the OK button. You can append any number of editors if you’ve got a bunch that you like to use.

You should now click the OK button on the Environment Variables and System Properties dialog boxes in turn. Now you can open any command prompt and type the executable name to run the program, like gvim72.exe.

3. The Oracle Database 10g and 11g expect the executable for the default or override ed (editor) utility exists in the %SystemRoot%\System32 directory, which is the C:\WINDOWS\System32 directory. Copy only the executable, like GVIM.EXE, to the C:\WINDOWS\System32 directory.

4. You can now interactively type the following each time you log into the database at the SQL command prompt:

SQL> define _editor=gvim

Alternatively, you can place that command in the following file:

%ORACLE_HOME%\sqlplus\admin\glogin.sql

It is run each time you login to the database. The file would look like this if you wanted to run gvim as your override editor, which means when you type ed to change the SQL buffer file. The SQL buffer file contains the last SQL statement executed. That file is named afiedt.buf, which stands for A File Eidtor Buffer (debunked by Niall in the comment, the AFI stands for AFI Advanced Friendly Interface). As pointed to by Laurent’s comment, you should change the file extension to take advantage of GeSHi (Generic Syntax Highlighter) for your code.

5. After you’ve done all that. If you’d like to include your USER name and TNS alias, you can run the following command interactively or put it in your glogin.sql script. Caution, this only works for Oracle 10g forward.

SQL> SET sqlprompt _user"@"_connect_identifier>

This sets the SQLPROMPT to the following for a user account named STUDENT at the standard orcl TNS alias:

STUDENT@orcl>

The rules for setting the SQLPROMPT aren’t intuitive. You can only use one set of double quotes. In the preceding example, the quotes surround the @ symbol between two SQL*Plus macros, which are the _USER and _CONNECT_IDENTIFIER. There’s no magic in that symbol and you can replace it with another. When you want text before, in between, and after a macro or two, you surround the whole thing with double quotes, and allow a white space before macros or use single quotes around string literals.

The white space example works like this:

SQL> SET sqlprompt "SQL: _user at _connect_identifier>"

This sets the SQLPROMPT to the following for a user account named STUDENT at the standard orcl TNS alias:

SQL: STUDENT at orcl>

The nested single quotes example works like this:

SQL> SET sqlprompt "'SQL:'_user at _connect_identifier>"

This sets the SQLPROMPT to the following for a user account named STUDENT at the standard orcl TNS alias:

SQL:STUDENT at orcl>

The single quotes around the SQL: lets you remove the space between the colon and user name. I’ve never seen a way to control case for the macro return values but there may be one. Perhaps somebody will add a comment about it. If you put more than two double quotes in the descriptor passed to SQLPROMPT environment variable, SQL*Plus raises an SP2-0735 error.

6. Here is a sample of the glogin.sql file:

--
-- Copyright (c) 1988, 2005, Oracle.  All Rights Reserved.
--
-- NAME
--   glogin.sql
--
-- DESCRIPTION
--   SQL*Plus global login "site profile" file
--
--   Add any SQL*Plus commands here that are to be executed when a
--   user starts SQL*Plus, or uses the SQL*Plus CONNECT command.
--
-- USAGE
--   This script is automatically run
--
-- Define the override or default editor.
define _editor=gvim
-- Set the edit file to allow GeSHI highlighting.
SET editfile=afiedt.sql
-- Set the SQL*Plus prompt to show user and TNS Alias.
SET sqlprompt "'SQL:'_user at _connect_identifier>"

Hope this helps a few folks stuck with Windows as the operating system for Oracle.

It seemed like a good day to test VMWare Fusion 2.0.1 on my Mac, but while it works well with Microsoft Windows XP VM, it doesn’t work as well with Ubuntu 8.04.1 or 8.10 VM. It wasn’t too surprising to see that VMWare Tools (VMwareTools-7.9.3-128865.tar.gz) don’t work with Ubuntu 8.04.1. There’s a mismatch between the gcc compiler and the kernel. You need gcc 4.2.3 to compile the kernel but gcc 4.2.4 to compile the modules for VMWare Tools.

You see it right away when the VMWare Tools script prompts you to compile the vmmemctl modules, like this:

None of the pre-built vmmemctl modules for VMware Tools is suitable for your
running kernel.  Do you want this program to try to build the vmmemctl module
for your system (you need to have a C compiler installed on your system)?
[yes] 
 
Using compiler "/usr/bin/gcc". Use environment variable CC to override.
 
Your kernel was built with "gcc" version "4.2.3", while you are trying to use
"/usr/bin/gcc" version "4.2.4". This configuration is not recommended and
VMware Tools may crash if you'll continue. Please try to use exactly same
compiler as one used for building your kernel. Do you want to go with compiler
"/usr/bin/gcc" version "4.2.4" anyway? [no]

At this point, upgrading Ubuntu appears ideal. Upgrading was tedious, and resulted in two failures. The first failure requires you shut down the instance by using the VMWare Fusion menu – Virtual Machine, Shut Down Guest. Don’t expect it to work as fast as it did in 2.0.0, at least with Ubuntu.

The second failure is that vsock.o can’t be made due to missing header files. That’s really as good as it gets because a fresh install produces the same error. The failure shown is:

Using 2.6.x kernel build system.
make: Entering directory `/tmp/vmware-config0/vsock-only'
make -C /lib/modules/2.6.27-7-generic/build/include/.. SUBDIRS=$PWD SRCROOT=$PWD/. modules
make[1]: Entering directory `/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.27-7-generic'
  CC [M]  /tmp/vmware-config0/vsock-only/linuxaf_vsock.o
  CC [M]  /tmp/vmware-config0/vsock-only/driverLog.o
  CC [M]  /tmp/vmware-config0/vsock-only/util.o
/tmp/vmware-config0/vsock-only/linux/util.c: In function 'VSockVmciLogPkt':
/tmp/vmware-config0/vsock-only/linux/util.c:157: warning: format not a string literal and no format arguments
  CC [M]  /tmp/vmware-config0/vsock-only/linuxaf_vsock.o
  LD [M]  /tmp/vmware-config0/vsock-only/vsock.o
  MODPOST 1 modules
WARNING: "VMCIDatagram_CreateHnd" [/tmp/vmware-config0/vsock-only/vsock.ko] undefinied!
WARNING: "VMCIDatagram_DestroyHnd" [/tmp/vmware-config0/vsock-only/vsock.ko] undefinied!
WARNING: "VMCIEvent_Subscribe" [/tmp/vmware-config0/vsock-only/vsock.ko] undefinied!
WARNING: "VMCI_DeviceGet" [/tmp/vmware-config0/vsock-only/vsock.ko] undefinied!
WARNING: "VMCIEvent_Subscribe" [/tmp/vmware-config0/vsock-only/vsock.ko] undefinied!
WARNING: "VMCIDevice_Get" [/tmp/vmware-config0/vsock-only/vsock.ko] undefinied!
WARNING: "VMCIMemcpyFromQueueV" [/tmp/vmware-config0/vsock-only/vsock.ko] undefinied!
WARNING: "VMCIQueuePair_Detach" [/tmp/vmware-config0/vsock-only/vsock.ko] undefinied!
WARNING: "VMCI_GetConextID" [/tmp/vmware-config0/vsock-only/vsock.ko] undefinied!
WARNING: "VMCIDatagram_Send" [/tmp/vmware-config0/vsock-only/vsock.ko] undefinied!
WARNING: "VMCIQueuePair_Alloc" [/tmp/vmware-config0/vsock-only/vsock.ko] undefinied!
WARNING: "VMCIEvent_Unsubscribe" [/tmp/vmware-config0/vsock-only/vsock.ko] undefinied!
WARNING: "VMCIMemcpyToQueueV" [/tmp/vmware-config0/vsock-only/vsock.ko] undefinied!
  CC      /tmp/vmware-config0/vsock-only/vsock.mod.o
  LD [M]  /tmp/vmware-config0/vsock-only/vsock.ko
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.27-7-generic'
cp -f vsock.ko ./../vsock.o
make: Leaving directory `/tmp/vmware-config0/vsock-only'
Unable to make a vsock module that can be loaded in the running kernel:
insmod: error inserting '/tmp/vmware-config0/vsock.o': -1 Unknown symbol in module
 
There is probably a slight difference in the kernel configuration beetween the
set of C header files you specified and your running kernel. You may want to
rebuild a kernel based on that directory, or specify another directory.
 
The VM communication interface socket family is used in conjunction with the VM
communication interface to provide a new communication path among guests and
host. The rest of this software provided by VMWare Tools is designed to work
independently of this feature. If you with to have the VSOCK feature you can
install the driver by running the vmware-config-tools.pl again after making sure
that gcc, binutils, make and the kernel sources for your running kernel are
installed on your machine. These packages are available on your distribution's
installation CD.
[ Press the Enter key to continue.]

Wouldn’t it be nice if they pointed to a specific file. It didn’t take much effort to find them, after all it’s Linux. I found that they’re defined in the vmci_queue_pair.h and vmciGuestKernelAPI.h files. Those files are found inside the vsock-only.tar file. You can find the vsock-only.tar file in the vmware-tools-distrib/lib/modules/source directory. You can read more about the Virtual Machine Communication Interface on VMWare’s web site.

The only pre-built VMWare Fusion 2.0.1 pre-built tool modules for Ubuntu are compatible with the listed kernels. Unfortunately, as noted above they don’t work because of a gcc difference.

bld-2.6.24-16-i386generic-Ubuntu8.04
bld-2.6.24-16-i386server-Ubuntu8.04
bld-2.6.24-16-i386virtual-Ubuntu8.04
bld-2.6.24-16-x86_64generic-Ubuntu8.04
bld-2.6.24-16-x86_64server-Ubuntu8.04
bld-2.6.24-19-i386generic-Ubuntu8.04.1
bld-2.6.24-19-i386server-Ubuntu8.04.1
bld-2.6.24-19-i386virtual-Ubuntu8.04.1
bld-2.6.24-19-x86_64generic-Ubuntu8.04.1
bld-2.6.24-19-x86_64server-Ubuntu8.04.1

The only question I’m left with is do I troubleshoot this or downgrade VMWare back to 2.0.0? I’m inclined to the latter given the lack of energy in the VMWare forum.

Ultimately, this was fixed with the next release of VMWare. They simply lag a bit in getting the libraries straight. In fact, I ran into a similar problem with Ubuntu 9.04 and the page.c file. I hacked it and got everything working but really, you should probably just use the last release of Ubuntu a little longer because VMWare looks to lag release by about 4 months.

A number of friends wanted me to do things that weren’t possible while keeping my blog on WordPress.com’s web site. Things like code formatting, downloads for software, et cetera …

You can find the new blog at: http://blog.mclaughlinsoftware.com

So, I’ve migrated it to my own domain. I’m in the process of configuring the rest of the domain. I’ll update you through the blog as I complete the process.

I’ve got grand plans (lets hope there’s time). For example, I’m planning to migrate and update the TechTinker.com domain too. I’ll plan tutorials on Java, PL/SQL, and PHP initially as well as administration tips, techniques and walk through steps for my favorite platforms. As time allows, I’ve got some stuff comparing SQL across platforms – much beyond the trivial Oracle’s SPOOL is MySQL’s tee (not herbal tea).

While my perspective may change over time, I’m quite fond of Mac OS X, Ubuntu, and Red Hat. I won’t exclude Microsoft because we must live with it, but isn’t CrossOver sweet! I’d actually tried to get Oracle to run through it. I may yet, I’m still playing with it.

I’m trilled that Chris Jones and Justin Kestelyn got me blogg’n. I’ve always wanted to contribute more but the forums have mavens with much more time than I have to answer questions. The blog lets me share ideas and concepts as they travel with me on a daily basis.

Stats on the blog pages may not migrate but if time allows maybe I’ll write a plugin if I can’t find one. Generally, I don’t think anybody cares about the stats. It’s the information to solve problems, and I hope that’s what you find useful in my blog.

By the way, it wasn’t just the ability to have my blog pages look cool on my iPhone that drove the change, but it does look nice!!!

As I mentioned before, working in the virtual machine is a great solution when you need to work in multiple operating systems. Setting up printing is a step that goes with the operating system. It is very easy to configure in Ubuntu running in VMWare on a Mac OS X machine.

I found that the standard printer in the virtual machine wouldn’t work. I tried it in both VMWare 1.x and 2.x but without any luck. It did work ineffectively in VMWare 2.x but it embedded characters in simple documents that shouldn’t be there. Finally, I pursued this course. It has the benefit of working like you’d expect! It lets you print your native Ubuntu documents when you’ve configured the VMWare machine in NAT or bridged networking mode. The only difference is that a bridged network doesn’t require you to share the printer on the Mac OS because it directly accesses it.

The first step using a NAT network requires that you share you printer setup on the Mac OS. You do that by launching System Preferences, then click on Sharing. In Sharing, you enable print sharing by chosing the network printer …

After you’ve enabled sharing on the Mac OS, you can take the following steps in Ubuntu:

1. Click the System menu choice, choose Administration. and Printing, as shown in screen shot:

2. You’ll then see the following screen but not gray scaled. If you don’t, you’ll also see the following form. a gray scaled version indicates that you’ve run VMWare Tools before updating the Ubuntu OS CUPS service:

As mentioned, this means there’s a problem with a disabled service – typically cups (Common Unix Printing Service). You can click the Help, then Troubleshoot to further diagnose the problem. In the first screen click the Forward button to continue. In this screen, click the Not Listed (because it should be an empty list), and then click the Forward button to continue. You most likely will see the following dialog box, which tells you that the cups service is stopped (a general occurrence when you upgrade from VMWare Fusion 1.x to 2.x).

There’s a temptation to follow the instructions, and I yielded to it without a positive outcome. What you’ll find is that the cups (cupsys) service is enabled but if you use the VMWare Fusion menu, you’ll find that it isn’t, as shown:

If you stop here and check in a terminal session, you’ll see that life isn’t rosy after the upgrade. Even if you check it and restart the VM, the printing problem won’t resolve. This appears to be a part of the recompilation of cups by the VMWare Tools. It appears to happen when you opt to compile Ubuntu CUPS while running the VMWare Tools. You’re only prompted to compile these if you’re not on the most current CUPS release by Ubuntu.

You use the following command to check the status of the printer service:

# sudo /etc/init.d/cupsys status

You will most likely get something like this if you have a problem:

Status of Common Unix Printing System: cupsd is not running but /var/run/cups/cupsd.pid exists.

This is where it becomes obvious that the VMWare Fusion 2.x upgrade can introduce the problem. It is simple to avoid the problem by ensuring that the Ubuntu OS is patched to the most current CUPs version before running the VMWare Tools. I fixed the problem by reinstalling Ubuntu from scratch, and patching it to the current level. Then, you won’t have a failure of the CUPS process.

When you fix any errors from the upgrade or provided you’re on VMWare Fusion 2.x, you should click the Show printers shared by other systems check box, then click the Refresh button to display any network printers if they don’t refresh automatically.

3. You click on the desired network printer, which displays the following screen. Click the Make Default button after you click the Print Test Page button.

If you caught my post on doing this in a Microsoft Windows environment, isn’t it stuning how easy Ubuntu is compared to the “user-friendly” Windows interface (unless you’re upgrading). If you need the Windows instructions, you can find them here.