With upgrading to RHEL 5.4, CentOS 5.4 and Ubuntu 9.10, the latest 2.x.x versions of VMware Server are having serious Web Access GUI connection failures, specifically vmware-hostd crashing repeatedly. This has been found with VMware Server 2.0.0, Vmware Server 2.0.1 and VMware Server 2.0.2. VMware Server 2.x.x was stable in the previous revisions of the mentioned OS’s. Below are two solutions that “appear” to make for a stable vmware-hostd process. You are advised strongly to satisfy your own assuredness of the stability of vmware-hostd using these solutions before deployment to a mission critical environment.

Both solutions do not require you to stop all vmware related processes on the host server. The following steps assume vmware-hostd has crashed and left VMware clients still running.

Verify vmware-host Process has Failed

Note: If you get the below from the ps command you have another issue and this document is not for you.

Regaining VMware Server 2 Web Access GUI Control

If you want to start the vmware-hostd process to manage your VMware Server 2 guest operating systems again you may do so with the following commands.

nohup is not needed in this instance as vmware-hostd runs as a daemon but the ampersand “&” is. Otherwise you’ll get logged output to the screen and when you exit your session vmware-hostd will stop too.

Solving the VMware Server 2 Web Access GUI Connection Failure

I recommend looking at both solutions. I’m currently employing solution #2 but I’ll leave that decision up to you. Both allow you to use the start/stop /etc/init.d/vmware script as you normally would and are permanent unlike the quick fix above to get the vmware-hostd process up and running again. Again with both solutions you need to determine if they, in fact, produce a stable VMware Server 2 environment before deployment to a mission critical environment.

SOLUTION #1 (libc-2.5.so reversion – RHEL 5.4 & CentOS 5.4)

Download and copy libc-2.5.so into place:

Edit /usr/sbin/vmware-hostd adding the following export command just before the last line in the script as follows:

SOLUTION #2 (Circumventing vmware-hostd library wrapping script – RHEL 5.4, CentOS 5.4 & Ubuntu 9.10 )

Here is another method not requiring reverting to an older version of libc-2.5.so. The downside in this solution is it circumvents the dynamic library path building of the /usr/sbin/vmware-hostd script and executes the /usr/lib/vmware/bin/vmware-hostd binary directly. I do not know if this will present problems in the future or not.

Below is the snippet from the modified /etc/init.d/vmware. You can see I added a LD_LIBRARY_PATH statement, commented out the old exec call and added a new one.

Restart VMware Server 2

If you don’t have critical guest OS’s running you can stop the guests via the VMware Server 2 Web Access GUI and restart VMware:

As more information on this issue becomes available this post will be updated. Please post your findings too.

This information was generated by my experimentation and the helpful posts of the VMware Community, reference: http://communities.vmware.com/thread/229957?tstart=0

Append these directives to you .bash_profile in your user directory:

HISTSIZE=10000
HISTFILESIZE=”
HISTCONTROL=ignoreboth
HISTTIMEFORMAT=’%a, %d %b %Y %l:%M:%S%p %z ‘

In this case a very large history will be kept, 10,000 commands to be exact. The output from a history command will look like this:

84 Fri, 13 Nov 2009 9:50:10AM -0500 history
85 Fri, 13 Nov 2009 9:57:16AM -0500 locate .bash_profile
86 Fri, 13 Nov 2009 9:57:38AM -0500 cat .bash_profile
87 Fri, 13 Nov 2009 9:58:50AM -0500 history

To have the changes to your .bash_profile take effect do one of the following:

• # . .bash_profile
• # source .bash_profile
• or thirdly log out and back in

This is part 1 in a proof of concept serious involving the creation of a RAID 1 iSCSI Target using OpenFiler 2.13 and Vmware Server 2.  We will purposely fail one of the virtual disks in the array rebuild the array and verify the data.  In part one of the series we will create the Raid 1 array.  In subsequent parts we will create an ISCSI Target, connect Windows Vista using iSCSI Initiator and simulate RAID 1 drive failure and recovery.  The OpenFiler vmware appliance is free to download and use.  The installation of both Vmware Server 2 and OpenFiler 2.13 vmware appliance will not be covered here.

Create VMware virtual disks

From the VMware Server 2 web administration create two 50 MB disks for the OpenFiler VMware guest accepting the VMware defaults.

Create Raid Partitions

As seen in Figure 1, navigate to openfiler > Volumes > Block Devices and select the first of our newly created disks /dev/sdb.

FIGURE 1: opefiler > Volumes > Block Devices

Create a RAID array partition by selecting Partition Type: “RAID array member” for the entire cylinder range (default) and clicking “Create”.  See Figure 2.  The resulting RAID partition should like as seen in Figure 3.  Repeat the previous steps to create a RAID partition for /dev/sdc

FIGURE 2: opefiler > Volumes > Block Devices > /dev/sdb

FIGURE 3: openfiler > Volumes > Block Devices > /dev/sdb

Create New Raid 1 Array

Once the two raid devices have been created navigate to openfiler > Volumes > Software Raid as seen in Figure 4 below. Select RAID-1 from the drop down menu, leave the chunk size at default, select the two raid devices as seen in Figure 4 and click “Add array”.  The resulting raid array information will be displayed as seen in Figure 5.

Figure 4: openfiler > Volumes > Software Raid

Figure 5: openfiler > Volumes > Software Raid

Create New Volume Group

Navigate to openfiler > Volumes > Volume Groups and create the new volume group “volgroupraid001”.  If this is not your preferred volume group naming convention, change it to your liking.  After entering your “Volume group name”, select our newly created Raid 1 volume /dev/md0 and click “Add volume group” as seen in Figure 6.  The resulting Volume Group is displayed as seen in Figure 7.

Figure 6: openfile > Volumes > Volume Groups

Figure 7: openfiler > Volumes > Volume Groups

Create New Volume

Navigate to openfiler > Volume>Add Volume select our “volgroupraid001” volume group, enter the name our new volume “volraid001”, fill in a description, enter the Required Space” (32MB) and be sure to select the proper “Filesystem Type” of iSCSI.  Click “Create” when ready.  See Figure 8 below.  The resulting Volume Group will be as seen in Figure 9.

Figure 8: openfiler > Volume > Add Volume

Figure 9: openfiler > Volumes > Manager Volumes

In our next section we will create the OpenFiler iSCSI Target using our newly created RAID 1 volume.

1. Install Emacs.
2. Go to http://php-mode.sourceforge.net/ and download and extract the latest php-mode.el in the .emacs.d directory of your home directory or in a directory of your choosing.
3. Create or append the following in you ~/.emacs file being sure to give the proper location of you php-mode.el file.

   (setq inhibit-splash-screen t)
   (add-to-list ‘load-path “~/.emacs.d”)
   (require ‘php-mode)
   (add-to-list ‘auto-mode-alist ‘(“\\.ctp$” . php-mode))

4. Save your .emacs file and test emacs on a php file.  You should get all the nice color coding and other niceties.  Incidentally, omit the first line about splash screen if you enjoy seeing it every time you start emacs.

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