John Wesorick

Getting Shutdown/Reboot to Work in KVM/QEMU

2012-02-01T10:30:00.002-05:00

I was having trouble getting shutdown/reboot in virt-manager to work with KVM/QEMU. I had to do a Force Off, which is basically like pulling the plug. It's actually pretty easy to fix.

All I had to do for an Ubuntu Server guest was install the acpid daemon.

sudo apt-get install acpid

That's all. This was tested on Ubuntu Server 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat) & Ubuntu Server 11.10 (Oneiric Ocelot), but I'm guessing it would work for all other modern flavors of Ubuntu. If you have fixes for other guest OS's, please leave them in the comments.

Setting Up a Bridged Network Interface for KVM in Ubuntu

2012-01-31T15:25:00.002-05:00

The process for setting up a network bridge for KVM in Ubuntu is actually fairly simple. For the purposes of this demo, we will assume that you already have KVM/QEMU installed from the Ubuntu Repos and that you are not using Network Manager. If you are using Network Manager, you must disable it prior to following these instructions. I am using Ubuntu Server 11.10 (Oneiric Ocelot), but this should work for 10.04 (Lucid Lynx), 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat) and 11.04 (Natty Narwhal).

Bridged mode is really important if you plan on using your VMs for any sort of server. In NAT mode they will not be able to communicate with any other machines on your local network. Bridged mode makes it so your VMs share the physical interface of your KVM host.

First, we need to install some software:
sudo apt-get install libcap2-bin bridge-utils

From (https://help.ubuntu.com/community/KVM/Networking):

Give qemu the inheritable CAP_NET_ADMIN capability, for 64-bit:
sudo setcap cap_net_admin=ei /usr/bin/qemu-system-x86_64

or for 32-bit:
sudo setcap cap_net_admin=ei /usr/bin/qemu

We will now edit /etc/network/interfaces to add the bridge. Assuming your current config looks like this:
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
address 192.168.0.10
network 192.168.0.0
netmask 255.255.255.0
broadcast 192.168.0.255
gateway 192.168.0.1

Change it to look like this:
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet manual

auto br0
iface br0 inet static
address 192.168.0.10
network 192.168.0.0
netmask 255.255.255.0
broadcast 192.168.0.255
gateway 192.168.0.1
bridge_ports eth0
bridge_stp off
bridge_fd 0
bridge_maxwait 0

If you are using DHCP, you would want it to look something like this:
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet manual

auto br0
iface br0 inet dhcp
bridge_ports eth0
bridge_stp off
bridge_fd 0
bridge_maxwait 0

Now we just need to restart networking:
sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart

That's it. You can now start using your new bridge with your VMs. All you have to do is select the bridge created in the VM settings in virt-manager.

check_esx3 error "Permission to perform this operation was denied"

2011-12-06T17:33:00.001-05:00

Today I was setting up VMware vSphere Hypervisor (ESXi 5.0) on a new server. Since I'm on the Kool-aid, the first thing I do when setting up a server is getting some kind of Nagios monitoring going. For several years, on ESXi servers, I have been using op5's check_esx3 plugin. Today was the first time I had set up an ESXi 5.0 server though, and when I first ran it after creating my Nagios user in ESXi I got the following error:

Permission to perform this operation was denied

The weird thing was that when I would run the check as root, it would work fine. I figured it must be a permissions issue, but my Nagios user was already a member of the root group. On to the fun. So after a lot of Googling, syslog reading and whatnot I figured out what the issue was. The authentication for handling the VMware vSphere SDK for Perl (which is what allows the check_esx3 plugin to work) is done in a file called /etc/vmware/hostd/authorization.xml. It looks like this:

<ConfigRoot>
  <ACEData id="10">
    <ACEDataEntity>ha-folder-root</ACEDataEntity>
    <ACEDataId>10</ACEDataId>
    <ACEDataIsGroup>false</ACEDataIsGroup>
    <ACEDataPropagate>true</ACEDataPropagate>
    <ACEDataRoleId>-1</ACEDataRoleId>
    <ACEDataUser>root</ACEDataUser>
  </ACEData>
  <NextAceId>11</NextAceId>
</ConfigRoot>

The quick among you may have noticed that when it authenticates, it expects root to be a user, and not a group. Well, we want it to authenticate with the root group, so we can use non-root users. You'll need to enable either SSH or console access to edit it. Just use:

vi /etc/vmware/hostd/authorization.xml

Change this line:

<ACEDataIsGroup>false</ACEDataIsGroup>

to this:

<ACEDataIsGroup>true</ACEDataIsGroup>

and save. From the DCUI (Direct Console User Interface), you know, the regular yellow and grey interface on the ESXi server, just restart the Management Agents (Troubleshooting Options -> Restart Management Agents). I think you can also restart the management agents with these two commands, but it isn't "supported", so don't say I didn't warn you.

/sbin/services.sh restart

/etc/init.d/sfcbd-watchdog restart

As always, if you found this helpful, drop me a comment. They make me feel all fuzzy.

Installing MongoDB with Replication on Ubuntu

2011-11-08T16:49:00.002-05:00

Here I describe how to install MongoDB on Ubuntu, with replication. I am using a replica set with 3 nodes (2 DB servers, and 1 arbiter).

This is incredibly easy, but I figured I'd put it here in case someone else finds it useful. We are going to set up MongoDB on 3 servers for our replica set. 2 of these will actually have databases, and the third one will just be an arbiter. The DB servers will have full replication between them, the arbiter just votes on the server(s) it can see, and makes it so we don't have two servers fighting to be primary. The arbiter doesn't have to do much, so you can just toss it on any server you have in your rack. I am using Ubuntu 11.10 (Oneiric Ocelot) for my DB nodes and Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx) for my arbiter, but these instructions should be good for any releases in between (10.10 - Maverick Meerkat, 11.04 - Natty Narwhal)

These first steps must be done on all three servers which I will refer to as dbserver1, dbserver2 and arbserver.

First we will need to add the repos. The versions of MongoDB in the official Ubuntu repos are too old to be useful. Lets create our .list file:

sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mongodb.list

Now put this one line our new .list file:

deb http://downloads-distro.mongodb.org/repo/ubuntu-upstart dist 10gen

We now need to add 10 Gen's GPG key:

sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv 7F0CEB10

Now, we can install:

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install mongodb-10gen

We now need to edit /etc/mongodb.conf on each server, to add our replica set info.

sudo nano /etc/mongodb.conf

Add these lines to turn on REST (so we can see the status of our replica set, amongst other things) anywhere in the config.

# enable rest

rest = true

At the bottom of the config, we need to uncomment the replSet option and define our replica set name(use whatever you want), like so:

replSet = myset

Restart the MongoDB service on each server.

sudo service mongodb restart

Now on dbserver1, we will set up the actual set, like so:

$ mongo --host 127.0.0.1
> rs.initiate()
{
    "info2" : "no configuration explicitly specified -- making one",

    "me" : "dbserver1:27017",
    "info" : "Config now saved locally.  Should come online in about a minute.",
    "ok" : 1
}
> rs.add("dbserver2")
{ "ok" : 1 }

PRIMARY> rs.addArb("arbserver")
{ "down" : [ "arbserver:27017" ], "ok" : 1 }

> exit

And that's it. You can check the status on the replica set from a web browser, http://dbserver1:28017/_replSet

You can also set one server with a higher priority, so it will always be primary when all servers are up (another server will become primary if it is down). To do that simply connect to your primary server again (dbserver1).

mongo --host 127.0.0.1

Now we will double-check the id:
PRIMARY> rs.conf()


{
        "_id" : "rdset",
        "version" : 4,
        "members" : [
                {
                        "_id" : 0,
                        "host" : "dbserver1:27017",
                        "priority" : 2
                },
                {
                        "_id" : 1,
                        "host" : "dbserver2:27017"
                },
                {
                        "_id" : 2,
                        "host" : "arbserver:27017",
                        "arbiterOnly" : true
                }
        ]
}

Now use that ID in the following command:

PRIMARY> cfg.members[0].priority = 2
2
PRIMARY> rs.reconfig(cfg)
{ "ok" : 1 }

PRIMARY> exit

Now you can check the status again by going to http://dbserver1:28017/_replSet. After setting up a new priority, my arbiter was having issues connecting. I think you may just have to wait a few minutes for it to come back up, because after ~5-10 minutes, it showed as connected again. If not, you may have to restart the service on the server that is not connecting:
sudo service mongodb restart

Issues Installing x2go

2011-11-03T17:52:00.000-04:00

I was having issues today after installing x2go. Here is was I did to fix them.

My first issue happened trying to install the x2gognomebindings. This is the error I was getting:

Setting up x2gognomebindings (2.0.1.3-0~47~oneiric1) ...
Settings menu not found in /etc/xdg/menus at /usr/sbin/update-gnome-menu-x2go li
ne 43.
dpkg: error processing x2gognomebindings (--configure):
 subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 2
Errors were encountered while processing:
 x2gognomebindings
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

This would happen every time I tried anything with apt. What I did to fix it was simple.

sudo cp /etc/xdg/menus/gnome-settings-x2go.menu /etc/xdg/menus/gnome-settings.menu

sudo apt-get install x2gognomebindings

My second issue happened when I tried to connect to x2go for the first time. I was getting this error:

Repeated here for the bots:

Authentification Failed

 The host key for this server was not found but an othertype of key exists.An Attacker might change the default server key toconfuse your client into thinking the key does not exist

This will happen if you SSH into the server before installing x2go. SSH by default likes ecdsa keys, and x2go doesn't. On the server, edit the ssh config:

sudo nano /etc/ssh/sshd_config

Then comment out this line with a #:

HostKey /etc/ssh/ssh_host_ecdsa_key

Now restart ssh:

sudo service ssh restart

On your client you need to remove your old key. I just removed all of them.

rm .ssh/known_hosts

Hopefully someone will find this useful. :-)

Installing PyLucene on Ubuntu 11.10 (Oneiric Ocelot)

2011-11-01T12:54:00.004-04:00

I recently needed to install PyLucene for our developers on a server running Ubuntu 11.10 (Oneiric Ocelot). Unfortunately the version in the repos was much too old, so I had to build it from source. Below I will describe what I did, in the hopes it will help someone else.

First, we need to install Java
sudo apt-get install openjdk-6-jre openjdk-6-jdk ant

Download the source
http://apache.cyberuse.com//lucene/pylucene/

Extract source
tar zxvf pylucene-x.x.x-x-src.tar.gz

Try to compile jcc (it will probably fail)
cd pylucene-x.x.x-x/jcc


sudo python setup.py build

It will fail and give you a command to add a patch to setuptools, like this:

sudo patch -d /usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages -Nup0 < /home/johnw/personal/pylucene-3.4.0-1/jcc/jcc/patches/patch.43.0.6c11

After running that, try again
sudo python setup.py build

cd to the root of the archive
cd ..

Run these commands
pushd jcc


python setup.py build
sudo python setup.py install
popd

Edit the Makefile to match your enviroment (i.e. I had to uncomment these lines)
# Linux (Ubuntu 8.10 64-bit, Python 2.5.2, OpenJDK 1.6, setuptools 0.6c9)


#PREFIX_PYTHON=/usr 
#ANT=ant 
#PYTHON=$(PREFIX_PYTHON)/bin/python 
#JCC=$(PYTHON) -m jcc --shared 
#NUM_FILES=3

to look like this:

# Linux     (Ubuntu 8.10 64-bit, Python 2.5.2, OpenJDK 1.6, setuptools 0.6c9) 
PREFIX_PYTHON=/usr 
ANT=ant 
PYTHON=$(PREFIX_PYTHON)/bin/python 
JCC=$(PYTHON) -m jcc --shared 
NUM_FILES=3

Install it
sudo make


sudo make install

Now we will run tests to make sure it installed correctly
sudo make test

If all tests complete okay, then you are all set. Enjoy!

If you feel this helped you, please leave a comment.

Nagios Plugin - check_rss

2011-10-04T17:43:00.001-04:00

As IT moves towards the cloud there are certain things we can't monitor effectively with Nagios, so I made a plugin to check RSS feeds. Many cloud services offer an RSS feed with their status. check_rss allows you to parse these feeds either looking for certain keywords that exist (or don't) or the date of the last post.

check_rss requires the feedparser and argparse python libraries. For Ubuntu you can install with

sudo apt-get install python-feedparser python-argparse

usage: check_rss [-h] -H RSSFEED [-c CRITICALIF] [-C CRITICALNOT] [-w WARNINGIF] [-W WARNINGNOT] [-t] [-p] [-v VERBOSITY]

optional arguments:

-h, --help - show this help message and exit

-H RSSFEED - URL of RSS feed to monitor

-c CRITICALIF, --criticalif CRITICALIF - Comma separated, quoted list of strings that will result in critical condition if PRESENT

-C CRITICALNOT, --criticalnot CRITICALNOT - Comma separated, quoted list of strings that will result in critical condition if MISSING

-w WARNINGIF, --warningif WARNINGIF - Comma separated, quoted list of strings that will result in warning condition if PRESENT

-W WARNINGNOT, --warningnot WARNINGNOT - Comma separated, quoted list of strings that will result in warning condition if MISSING
-T HOURS, --hours HOURS - Hours since last post. Will return critical if less than designated amount.

-t, --titleonly - Search the titles only. The default is to search for strings matching in either the title or description

-p, --perfdata - If used will keep very basic performance data (0 if OK, 1 if WARNING, 2 if CRITICAL, 3 if UNKNOWN)

-v VERBOSITY, --verbosity VERBOSITY - Verbosity level. 0 = Only the title is returned. 1 = Title and link are returned. 2 = Title, link and description are returned (Default)

If you do not specify any warning or critical conditions, it will

always return OK. This will only check the newest feed entry.

Changelog:
2011-11-02 - v 0.3 - Added check by time, fixed verbosity bug and changed data separators to semi-colons to not mess up performance data.

Login/Boot Scripts for Ubuntu/Gnome

2011-08-22T17:57:00.000-04:00

I couldn't find any good information on writing logon/boot scripts for Ubuntu/Gnome, so here you go.

Boot script location (runs before GDM login screen):

/etc/rc.local

Boot scripts run as root. Just change that file to your liking.

Login script location (runs after GDM login):

/etc/gdm/Default

There isn't a default login script, so you have to create it yourself, and make it executable (sudo chmod +x /etc/gdm/Default) and remember to put #!/bin/bash at the start (or whatever you want to use for the environment). Login scripts run as root.

Tiny Borders in Ubuntu

2011-04-27T09:17:00.001-04:00

**Update** - This also works in 11.04 (Natty Narwhal)

Maybe I'm a little late to the party, but I figured I would post a fix to the really annoying fact that the default Ubuntu theme (Ambiance) in 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat) has super tiny (1 pixel) borders, which makes resizing nigh impossible.

All you have to do is open up a terminal and type the following:

gksudo gedit /usr/share/themes/Ambiance/metacity-1/metacity-theme-1.xml

Now change the following values under frame_geometry_normal to 3 (or whatever you prefer)

<distance name="left_width" value="1"></distance>

<distance name="right_width" value="1"></distance>

<distance name="bottom_height" value="1"></distance>

Save and close the file. Now Open System->Preferences->Appearance and double-click on the Ambiance theme to refresh it. Play around with the values to find what works best for you. Enjoy your new easily resized windows! Note, this is explained in the Launchpad bug report. I'm just posting it here in hopes that it may be easier to find for those struggling. Let me know if you found this useful.

Nagios Check - check_temp_weathergoose

2011-03-08T10:10:00.002-05:00

I wrote a check for Nagios to check (and convert to Fahrenheit) the temperature for a Weathergoose environmental monitor.

This is a simple check that checks the temperature (and converts it to Fahrenheit) for Weathergoose environmental monitors. I would guess this would work fine with other IT Watchdogs environmental monitors, i.e. Supergoose, Microgoose, Minigoose.

Usage: check_temp_weathergoose.sh -H [-f] -w -c
-H - The IP address of the Weathergoose
-C - SNMP Community
-f - Convert output to Fahrenheit
-w - Warning Range
-c - Critical Range

Nagios Check - check_users (Windows)

2011-03-08T09:21:00.001-05:00

   I wrote a check for Nagios to tell you the number of users logged in to a machine, as well as the last person logged in.

   This check will check both the number of users logged in to a Windows system, as well as the last logged in user. It can return critical if the last logged in user does not match the one defined. It can also return warning/critical if the number of users logged in is not within range. You can also just use it for informational purposes, if warnings/criticals are not defined. It is very useful for servers that must have someone logged in.

   You must copy the check_users.exe file to the NSClient++ script folder. Then you must add the following line to the NRPE Handlers section of your NSC.ini file in the NSClient++ folder:

check_users=scripts\check_users.exe $ARG1$

   The arguments for the check are as follows:

check_users.exe [-l] [-u username] [-n] [-w warning] [-c critical]
-l Displays the last logged in user. You can define a critical return with the -u option, which will check if the defined user was NOT the last logged in user. If username is not defined, status will always be ok.
-n Displays the number of users currently logged in to the server. You can set warning or critical ranges with -w and -c respectively. You must set both a warning and a critical for the check to return a status other than OK.

Some sample checks would look like:

   This will check to see if there if at least one user logged in and return critical status if no one is logged in:
check_nrpe -H $HOSTADDRESS$ -c check_users -a "-n -w 1 -c 1"

   This will check to see if the user admin on domain mydomain was the last one logged in and return a critical status if someone else was:
check_nrpe -H $HOSTADDRESS$ -c check_users -a "-l -u mydomainadmin"

   This check will be for informational purposes and will just return the last user logged in (status will always be OK):
check_nrpe -H $HOSTADDRESS$ -c check_users -a "-l"

   Tested on Windows Server 2003/2008, and Windows XP.

Download check_users.exe
Source code (written in AutoIT):

AutoDVDEncoder

2011-03-04T20:01:00.001-05:00

I wrote a script to help me encode DVDs to to high quality Xvid videos in a Matroska container, with multiple AC3 audio streams (if the film is foreign), subtitles and chapters. The script was written in bash for GNU/Linux.

Here is the story behind the script, in case you are interested. Skip forward to the next paragraph if you just want teh codez. If you don't know me, I have an HTPC that I set up (XBMC FTW) and I've spent a lot of time ripping my DVD collection to video files. Before I was using Xvid .avi's for compatibility reasons. I recently decided to switch to using Matroska (.mkv) files for the added benefits of having multiple audio tracks, subtitles and chapters in one file. My original script to do this involved a lot of manual changes for each DVD I wanted to encode (it was basically just the actual mencoder line from this new script, copied for each DVD I wanted to encode). This worked fine, but was tedious. I'd have to look up the title for each movie, see if English was supported if it was a foreign film, etc. Now that I decided to package everything in MKVs, it created more steps to my process and I decided to rethink my script. A little while later, this is what I came up with.

This script was written to simplify encoding DVDs to high quality Xvid videos in a Matroska container, with multiple AC3 audio streams (if the film is foreign), subtitles and chapters. It can also encode all of the titles on a DVD over a certain length, in case you are encoding a DVD containing TV shows, or want to encode special features, etc. The script was written in bash for GNU/Linux. If you use Windows or Mac, too bad. In it’s simplest form it can be used like this:

AutoDVDEncoder.sh BestDVDEver

Before using it, you will need to change a few settings in the script. These are:

dvdpath - This is the path to the folder where your DVDs reside. This is not the folder that actually contains the DVD(s). i.e. /home/bob/DVDs not /home/bob/DVDs/SuperAwesomeDVD
moviepath - This is the path to the folder where you want the finished movies to go.
defaultlanguage - This is the default language. It uses the ISO 639-1 format.
cores - Specify the number of cores your processor has.
assumedlongesttitle - Specify the default title to use when the title cannot be determined.

The only required argument is the name of a singular DVD. You can also batch encode several DVDs like so:

AutoDVDEncoder.sh LameDVD "Octogenarian Paintball" TheLastChair

It will then try to automatically detect the longest track, crop settings, and use your default language to encode the movies. You can also specify the language of the DVD, if it is foreign with the -l argument, like so:

AutoDVDEncoder.sh "An Island of Crazy" -l ja "OMG Ponies" "It's Effing Cold - A Documentary" -l ru

When you leave out the -l argument for a movie, it will default to the language set in the script. Language codes use the ISO 639-1 format.

There are also a total of four ways to specify the title.

1.) Let the script detect it for you. The script will automatically try to find the longest title and use that as the title to rip. The main title isn't always the longest, and it can't always detect the titles, so I made optoions for other ways.

2.) Set it using the -t argument.

3.) Set the title to default to when it can't be found automatically in the script.

4.) Set the title to default to when it can't be found automatically with the -a argument (this overrides the default set in the script).

An example of these would be:

AutoDVDEncoder.sh -a 1 "Extreme Basket Weaving" "The Guy Who Did Something" -t 6

In the above example if the main title for "Extreme Basket Weaving" wasn't found, it would default to 1. The title for "The Guy Who Did Something" would be set at 6.

I'll try to make a list of dependencies later, but you will at least need libdvdcss, mencoder, mplayer, xvid, mkvtoolnix and lsdvd. Use at your own risk, there is very little error checking and I'm not responsible if you break anything. Anywho, here you go:

Compaq Evo N610 on Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx)

2010-05-15T20:48:00.001-04:00

   I upgraded to Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx) on launch day. I quickly noticed that my laptop (Compaq Evo N610c) was running very hot. I mean never having children, melting flesh hot. I had a spare laptop cooler so I started using that for a little while. It would then start to slow the computer down drastically. Not content with leaving well enough alone, I found out the issue.

   I noticed that the heat was coming from where I figured the graphics card was. I turned off all the compiz desktop effects to see if it would help. It didn't. I tried using the ATI non-free drivers to see if it would help. It didn't. They long stopped supporting this video card (ATI Radeon Mobility M7 7500).

   After removing the non-free drivers, I figured I would take a stab at hacking the xorg.conf file, but found none. Apparently they have stopped using it for the most part and hope that X knows what its doing. In my case it didn't. After researching a while, I found that you can still make your own xorg.conf, and place it in /etc/X11/ like normal and it will use that. I found the following xorg.conf file on a forum that someone else had made (sorry for not giving proper props, I don't remember where I found it) for an ATI Radeon Mobility M7 7500.

I believe the only part that actually made a difference was the line

Option "AccelMethod" "EXA"

At any rate, to hopefully fix this for you too, if you have a ATI Radeon Mobility M7 7500, all you have to do is fire up a terminal and type:

gksudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf

if you are using Kubuntu, then you would use:

kdesudo kate /etc/X11/xorg.conf

I'm sure this would work with other distros, just change the command accordingly.

   Once your text editor pops up, simply copy and paste the xorg.conf from above, and reboot your computer. Then be all happy with a much more responsive and cool system. I now run all sorts of Compiz desktop effects with no slowdown and haven't noticed my laptop running any hotter than normal. Note, this fix is for a Compaq Evo N610, with ATI Radeon Mobility M7 7500 graphics card. This may or may not work on other older ATI's, but I really have no idea. If this helped you out, please comment and let me know.

Geek-A-Thon

2009-08-15T07:51:00.002-04:00

On August 15 a bunch of geek volunteers in Grand Rapids tried to make a difference by setting up laptops to give away to underprivileged folks in the area. I was one of those geeks.

Okay, so I suck at this whole blogging thing. Here I am writing my blog almost a month after the fact. Anywho, Ellohay!, a non-profit group in West Michigan dedicated to bringing technology education to the masses had an event August 15 to set up laptops for those that are less fortunate. The goal was to set up 100 laptops to be given away.

   I got there shortly after it had started, not really knowing what to expect. There were about 20 or so people gathered around laptops and milling about, eating the provided munchies (of which there was an excellent assortment). After signing in, I was given a raffle ticket, and a zip lock bag containing a USB drive with a customized Ellohay install of Ubuntu, instructions on the install, and an Ellohay! t-shirt and sticker. I got to keep the t-shirt and sticker, which was a nice touch! I then grabbed a laptop and got to installing.
The install went really smooth (as Ubuntu installs usually do) except they accidentally left the last part off the instructions. The Ellohay! volunteers walking about were helpful and told us what to do though. After I had finished (it took a total of ~20 minutes), I went to grab another laptop, but they had all already been handed out. I don't know the exact number they had, but I think they had trouble getting the 100 donated laptops they were hoping for.
   With nothing else to do I milled about, and talked to John and Pat, that I knew from our Linux group, West Michigan Linux Users Group (wmlug.org). Ellohay then began a raffle at the top of every hour. They had neat prizes, mostly from Make: an awesome magazine for people with a DIY attitude, as I think they sponsored it quite heavily. They also had 4 Xbox 360s networked running Halo 3. I jumped on there for a little while, although Halo isn't really my bag. I'm more of a Call of Duty kind of guy myself. After getting pwned a few times I noticed they had a classic NES set up with the light gun and everything so I took a few minutes to hone my avian hunting skills.
   I noticed they were accepting applications for more full time volunteers to help teach people to use computers. I signed up, as I think I'm a fairly good teacher. I've taught Japanese to my friends and also taught my gramma to use her computer. After a while I bought another t-shirt and sticker, donated some money and left, being that there wasn't any more help I could provide and Kara had wanted me to help do some packing with her. All in all it was a really fun time and I plan on donating more money to the cause! Hopefully they will accept my volunteer application.

VMware ESXi Configuration File Encoding Error

2009-07-08T15:15:00.004-04:00

Today I had an error while trying to start up a VM on VMware ESXi 4.0 in the vSphere client after moving it from an ESXi 3.5 server with the VMware converter. This is how I fixed it. I put it here in the hopes it will help someone else.

First off, here is the error:

File "/vmfs/volumes/xxxxx/ServerName/ServerName.vmx" line 63: File already has an encoding "UTF-8". Cannot open configuration file /vmfs/volumes/xxxxx/ServerName/ServerName.vmx.
Now apparently the reason for this error is the way in which this VM was created. My VM started his life in VMware Server on my computer while I was testing. I then moved it to an ESXi 3.5 server after I figured it was ready. Now I am moving it to an ESXi 4.0 server. Sometime along the way, the config file had gotten two different encodings set for it, which causes it to panic. Anyway, lets get to fixing this. Don't worry its not too hard.
In a nutshell, all you have to do is download the offending file, delete the offending line and upload it back to where you found it. If you want a more detailed explanation, keep reading.

In the vSphere client, select the ESXi server (Not your VM!) and click the 'Configuration' tab on the right.

On the left, under 'Hardware', select 'Storage'. This should show your datastores to the right.

Right-click on the datastore on the right that contains your VM and select 'Browse Datastore...'. This will bring up the Datastore Browser.

Double-click on the ServerName (where ServerName is the name of your server) folder.

Right-click on ServerName.vmx and select 'Download...'. Save it to some temporary spot on your computer.

Open this file in your favorite text editor (I use SciTE. It's awesome, free and multi-platform) that supports Linux text files. (Linux and Windows use different newline characters)

Find the offending line and delete it. It should be something along the lines of: .encoding = "windows-1252"

Save the file.

Back at the Datastore Browser, click on the button that looks like a stack of coins with an up arrow and select 'Upload File...'.

Upload the file you made changes and enjoy a fully functional VM again.

If this helped you out at all, please leave me a comment and let me know.

I'm Engaged!

2009-02-09T19:02:00.003-05:00

The story of my engagement night. :-)

   When we were planning our family trip to Walt Disney World last year, Kara really wanted to eat at a 5-star restaurant. I had told her that it would most likely cost over $100 a plate. I'm not sure if she didn't believe me or what, but once it came time to make our reservations I showed her the menu prices for the one 5-star restaurant in the Orlando area, Victoria & Albert's, which is at the Grand Floridian Resort in Walt Disney World. It cost $125 + $65 for the wine pairing with each course. Kara quickly figured that it would not be in her Disney budget to go to Victoria & Albert's.    A week later I decided to pony up and make reservations for us without telling her. I thought it may be a good time to propose. I had it in my head that I was going to pop the question while I was in Disney when we started planning the vacation, but didn't have the details planned yet. Along the course of the months that followed I nan-chalantly asked Kara what dress she would have worn had we gone to the 5-star restaurant. I noted her response and a week before we left, I stole it from her wardrobe.
   I met with my mom and sister at my mom's house with dress in hand and we put it on a sewing mannequin my mom has. After hugging it and cuddling with it I figured it was pretty close to Kara's dimensions. We picked out jewelry to match the dress, but we were all a little worried that the dress may be a little snug. A few days later my sister and I went to Deb and I bought a backup dress. It looked better than the one she wanted to bring anyway.
   Once we had my suit, my shoes, her dress, some shoes we picked out for her and the jewelry all together we put it all in a garment bag and gave it to my brother to pack in the car before we left. He put it in before he picked Kara up, so she just figured it was his bag.
On Wednesday, January 28th we were at the Animal Kingdom. Right after breakfast my mom wasn't feeling well, so she went back to the hotel, after trading cameras with me, so I would have her really nice camera for 'the big moment'. She went back to the hotel room and laid out all our clothes and jewelry and washed and ironed my shirt. Around three, I told Kara we needed to head back to our resort to see the Villians & Animals show, which I had made up. I told her it was a show with animals that do stunts with people dressed up as Disney villians. Imagine Jafar with trained tigers or something. I told her we needed to leave pretty early, because the parade at the Animal Kingdom would start soon and block our exit. I then said we could take a nap in the hotel room while we waited for the show to start. She sounded very relieved as she was getting pretty tired after being in Disney for 5 days.
   Once I opened the door to our room, Kara saw all our clothes laid out and said, "This isn't our room." I then told her there was no Villians & Animals show and that I was taking her to Victoria & Albert's for her Christmas gift. She was very excited and kind of in shock.
   After we got all gussied up, we took the bus to the Magic Kingdom, and then the monorail to the Grand Floridian Resort, where Victoria & Albert's is. We had a little trouble with the transportation and ended up being ~15 minutes late. We were pretty worried that they wouldn't let us eat, but they never said anything about it. We were both pretty nervous at first, because neither of us had ever eaten at such a nice restaurant.
   The restaurant was much smaller than I had imagined and very dimly lit, probably to be more romantic or whatever. We had a waiter and a waitress helping us the whole time, although I couldn't tell the difference between their jobs. It was really weird having someone take your chair out and push it in for you. They also put our napkins on our laps, which just seemed odd. Our waitress explained what each dish was and where all the different parts of it came from. It was nice, but it got kind of old after a while. For each course we had two or three options. The food was amazing and we took pictures of each of the seven courses we ate.

   We got the wine pairings with each of the courses, which I was very glad for. Kara wasn't drinking fast enough to match each wine with her course, so I ended up downing hers too, which helped calm my nerves. Needless to say, I was getting a little nervous, knowing I was going to propose in just an hour or two. Our waitress also explained in detail each of our wines and where they came from, but I didn't really care. Wine tastes like wine to me.

   We decided to get coffee with our dessert, because I had heard the coffee was cool. And it was. When we started our dessert, they brought out this glass contraption with two glass bulbs. The top one was filled with coffee grounds and the bottom one had the water. Underneath the water, our waiter lit an oil candle, which boiled the water and made it go up a tube to the bulb with the coffee grounds. After a while he came back and blew out the candle and the water started getting sucked back down to the lower bulb. It was a pretty neat contraption. When we were done eating our waiter gave Kara a rose and left us with fancy cookies and a breakfast cake for the next morning.
After tax, tip and everything the dinner ended up being $500 for the two of us. I can't really say if it was worth it or not, because I don't go to fancy restaurants often, but I don't regret it. The food was simply amazing. There were all these different tastes to each course which made me excited for the next one. Even though the portions were absolutely tiny, I left stuffed after 7 rounds.
   After dinner our waitress took a few photos of us around the restaurant, which I thought was nice. I then told Kara that there was a beach at the resort and asked if she wanted to go take some pictures at the fancy resort. We walked around snapping pictures left and right and I kept trying to get closer to Cinderella's castle, because I knew there was a dock with the castle behind it, and that is where I was planning on doing the deed. After a while we found the dock and snapped a few more pictures. I then kind of stalled, because I wanted someone to take our picture when I was on one knee.

   After a few minutes, an older guy started walking down the dock and I ran up to him and asked if he would take our picture. I then told him what was going on and he seemed kind of excited. He took a couple pictures and then I looked at them and I was supposed to put the camera into sport mode here, so when he held the button down it would take a whole bunch of photos, but I was a little nervous and forgot. I then told him the cue "lets try just one more" and went back to Kara.
   Now, when I had this all planned out in my head, I had figured that this guy would be really far away from us and have the camera zoomed in and whatnot, but in actuality, he had to be only about 15 feet from us to take a good picture. I started shaking so bad you might of thought I had epilepsy or something. I got down to one knee and whipped out the ring, fearful I was going to drop it into the black water. My eyes started tearing up pretty bad and I presented the ring. I had a big speech planned out, but I could hardly speak I was so overcome with emotion, so I cut it really short. She of course said yes and we held eachother, both crying and tremblying, saying "I love you" to eachother repeatedly.
I then remembered that the guy was still over there holding my mom's camera, so I went and got it from him and thanked him. I was so happy that it all worked out and she was completely surprised. I hadn't told any of my friends I was doing any of this and it felt good to finally have it all out in the open and done.
   We both really needed a cigarette again then and were searching for a place to smoke. I texted my whole family (who were eagerly awaiting a response back at the hotel) and told them she said she'd have to think about it, being the sneaky devil that I am. We walked all around the Grand Floridian and didn't see anywhere, so we just kept walking to the Polynesian, which is right next to it and smoked on the path. Between the two resorts is, uncannily, the wedding pavillion. Once we got to the Polynesian we got all turned around in their gardens and whatnot, but finally made it to the monorail platform. About then I decided to text my family back and tell them the truth. From there we decided to go to the transportation and ticket center and get a bus back to our resort. We didn't realize that the TTC closes a couple hours after the Magic Kingdom and that it doesn't have any busses anyway. On the monorail a woman sitting behind us noticed Kara looking at her ring and talking about it. She asked if we were just engaged and she seemed very excited and congratulated us.

   We finally tracked down a worker who explained we would have to walk to the Polynesian, and take a bus to Downtown Disney and then another bus to the Coronado Springs. By now Kara's feet were killing her, because her strappy sandals were definately not made for walking in, so she started walking barefoot on our way to the Polynesian. We then walked right on by the bus stop to the valet and another worker pointed us back in the right direction. Luckily we didn't have to wait for the bus too long.
   The ride to Downtown seemed to take forever. Once we got there we hopped on another bus to Coronado which was packed. We had to stand up the whole time. Halfway back, we noticed the lady behind us was the same lady from the monorail. She threatened to tell everyone on the bus and embarass us, but luckily she didn't. We were both dead tired after our journey home.
   Jess was sleeping when we got back so Kara jumped on top of her and told her the news. My dad came in from his room (they had the cool adjoining door) and brought us wine and beer to celebrate. I guess when I texted them the first time they were walking out of the liquor store with the wine. I bet they felt kind of weird. My dad congratulated us and him and my mom welcomed Kara to the family and we went to bed, knowing we will be together forever.

McDPF - My First Multi-Developer Open Source Project!

2008-12-16T16:42:00.002-05:00

   I've started helping out on an open-source project! Woohoo!

   A few months ago I turned an old laptop into a digital picture frame. I installed a version of Linux called "Damn Small Linux" and then McDPF on top of it (both DSL and McDPF are open source :-) ). McDPF isn't exactly a program, but more a series of scripts that makes it easy to install the right programs on a laptop with DSL and some PHP to make it easy to administer. I was very impressed with how easy it was to turn an old laptop into a DPF using McDPF.

   After noticing that the single developer in charge of McDPF was having trouble making updates and getting bugs worked out I decided to help. I told the lead developer I wanted to help and would do anything needed to improve the McDPF project., whether it be testing, programming, designing a new website, etc. Last week I officially became a developer on the McDPF project. Woot woo!

   So far I've been working on pogramming and troubleshooting. It is nice getting to learn a new language. I have never programmed in PHP before, but I'm picking it up very quickly. I almost have my first contrbution done. It is a scheduler page that you access from any PC in your house. On it you can set up your digital picture frame to do certain tasks at certain times. This makes it so you can turn the screen on and off according to when people will actually be able to see it, display the days weather or anything else you can think of. It parses the crontab (the Linux equivalent of Scheduled Tasks) for all McDPF entries and displays them on the webpage where you can easily edit or delete them and add new tasks. Its been fun so far getting to dig into something new and learn from some hands on experience.

   I don't really have much more to say, I just wanted to share my good news. If you have an old laptop laying around, toss McDPF on it and turn it into a digital picture frame. I can assure you, the project will only get better from here!

-John