UnderworldLabs.org » virtualization

VirtualBox update woes

Takis Diakoumis — Thu, 19 May 2011 14:07:57 +0000

Not sure what happened here but upgrading from VirtualBox 3.x to 4.06 (with Oracle branding too – eek), killed a few of my VMs. First USB 2.0 support is now a part of some separate package, and then 4 out of 9 VMs would not start with messages like:

unknown configuration node //DB2

At this point i was thinking how the hell did VirtualBox know about my DB2 installation – assuming that my DB2 database installed on that VM was an issue. A little confusing here too given that i would get the VM window and then it would just close so it wasn’t getting anywhere near starting the OS – WindowsXP.

Anyway a bit of digging about and then this:

takisd@fitter:~> VBoxManage getextradata WindowsXP-1 enumerate
Key: GUI/LastCloseAction, Value: powerOff
Key: GUI/LastGuestSizeHint, Value: 640,480
Key: GUI/LastNormalWindowPosition, Value: 1437,47,640,527
Key: GUI/LastWindowPostion, Value: 1422,111,1224,867
Key: GUI/MiniToolBarAlignment, Value: bottom
Key: GUI/MiniToolBarAutoHide, Value: on
Key: GUI/SaveMountedAtRuntime, Value: yes
Key: GUI/ShowMiniToolBar, Value: yes
Key: VBoxInternal/Devices/pcnet/0/LUN#0/Config/DB2/GuestPort, Value: 50000
Key: VBoxInternal/Devices/pcnet/0/LUN#0/Config/DB2/HostPort, Value: 50000
Key: VBoxInternal/Devices/pcnet/0/LUN#0/Config/DB2/Protocol, Value: TCP
Key: VBoxInternal/Devices/pcnet/0/LUN#0/Config/Firebird/GuestPort, Value: 3050
Key: VBoxInternal/Devices/pcnet/0/LUN#0/Config/Firebird/HostPort, Value: 3050
Key: VBoxInternal/Devices/pcnet/0/LUN#0/Config/Firebird/Protocol, Value: TCP
Key: VBoxInternal/Devices/pcnet/0/LUN#0/Config/Oracle/GuestPort, Value: 1521
Key: VBoxInternal/Devices/pcnet/0/LUN#0/Config/Oracle/HostPort, Value: 1521
Key: VBoxInternal/Devices/pcnet/0/LUN#0/Config/Oracle/Protocol, Value: TCP
Key: VBoxInternal/Devices/pcnet/0/LUN#0/Config/SQLServer/GuestPort, Value: 1433
Key: VBoxInternal/Devices/pcnet/0/LUN#0/Config/SQLServer/HostPort, Value: 1433
Key: VBoxInternal/Devices/pcnet/0/LUN#0/Config/SQLServer/Protocol, Value: TCP

…where WindowsXP-1 is the name of the virtual machine.

So all my intalled DBs on that particular VM had a setting on them for respective ports. I use most VMs for testing against various databases for various apps and mainly for Execute Query.

I vaguely recalled setting these some time ago – probably as a network response for forwarding – either way i didn’t really remember and resetting these with empty values fixed the problem like this:

VBoxManage setextradata WindowsXP-1 "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcnet/0/LUN#0/Config/DB2/GuestPort"

…and so on for the other nodes. Restarting the OS worked just fine and I now have my VMs back. Not sure if this documented anywhere by Oracle – quite the gotcha for seemingly simple upgrade.

…and here i was thinking WTF did Oracle do now…

Bye-bye VMWare – hello VirtualBox

Takis Diakoumis — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 23:38:44 +0000

Well after some serious stuffing about i finally gave up on vmware. My latest kernel upgrade to 2.6.26.x just wouldn’t play nice regardless of what i did. Advice was sought from relevant places to no avail – even though the number of people with a similar issue was (is) growing. A colleague with an identical issue upgraded to the vmware 2 release candidate and the issue was not noticed there. There was no inclination to go down that road – its a 450MB+ download, runs in a browser window, and looks like a rather bloated setup compared to the 1.x releases No problem though as i’ve discovered VirtualBox.

After a little bit of stuffing around to get the bridge networking up and running (vmware did this for you on startup quite nicely), i’m all good now with a couple of guest operating systems installed and running with no issue. Some useful docs and info for setting up with Debian can be found on the Debian Virtual Box wiki here. A huge plus is also that it comes with a neat script to build the vbox module for the running kernel.

Overall, so far VirtualBox is more than a suitable replacement for vmware. Give it a shot if you haven’t already.

VMWare server 1.06 and kernel v2.6.26

Takis Diakoumis — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 15:23:24 +0000

Perhaps a recurring theme…

In any case take a look here: http://groups.google.com/group/vmkernelnewbies/web/how-to-install-vmware-in-2-6-26-linux-kernel

Theres a new vmware-any-any patch that fixes the build error under kernel 2.6.26.

VMWare server 1.05 and kernel v2.6.25

Takis Diakoumis — Sat, 03 May 2008 21:53:54 +0000

I recently upgraded my kernel from 2.6.24.4 to 2.6.25.1. In trying to rebuild vmware server against the new kernel, i came up with a few issues.

A bit of digging uncovered this: http://lenrek.wordpress.com/2008/04/24/vmware-105-and-kernel-2625/. It got me up and running quite nicely.

Small point to note – i used to apply the vmware-any-any-update-116 patch and then run /usr/bin/vmware-config.pl. Patches for the 2.6.25 kernel do not apply to a patched vmware-server install. i ran without the any-any patch and all worked fine nonetheless.

Finally, as i normally do i executed the following to ensure correct operation of the console:

cd /usr/lib/vmware/lib/libpng12.so.0 mv libpng12.so.0 libpng12.so.0.old ln -sf /usr/lib/libpng12.so.0 libpng12.so.0 cd /usr/lib/vmware/lib/libgcc_s.so.1 mv libgcc_s.so.1 libgcc_s.so.1.old ln -sf /lib/libgcc_s.so.1