Seth Haines wrote: > Greg, > > That makes a bit more sense. When converting a stock setup into a VM > unless you want to manually recreate everything you're going to need to > use VMConverter because the VMWare device drivers/modules are going to > be different than the OS just talking directly to the hardware and not > through the hipervisor. (think initrd.img problems) > > Is this for ESX Infrastructure 3+ by chance? > > The only problem that we've run into using VMWare converter is that it > has to pass through a WINDOWS (blah!) system in order to do its thing. > The converter box basically sucks off the "golden-client" if you will > and dumps it into a waiting VM, resizing the partitions if necessary. > When I tried to take an image of a non-VMWare Linux config, and then PXE > boot it to a VMWare Virtual it blew up so many times that I just gave up > and went with the converter. > > http://www.vmware.com/products/converter/ > > If you have a licensed login for ESX 3+ then you can grab it from your > account login downloads as well. > > If you'd like to keep trying with the partition thing, as my golden was > an older 2.4 kernel baseline so maybe some of the newer 2.6's will adapt > easier, I'd just go into the > /var/lib/systemimager/scripts/$GOLDENIMAGENAME.master and modify the > partition structure manually to make sure it's within the bounds defined > in your Virutal machine. > > Once you do perform a single conversion you can clone the living > daylights out of the virtuals with systemimager. For what ever reason > it's faster to PXE boot a virtual and have it be sucked down from the > imageserver rather than do a direct copy of the VMFS/storage1 sub > directory. The nice thing about using SI to do the cloning rather than > direct copy is that the VM's can reboot and not trample all over each > other IP wise taking down your original if you were to just copy things > around. > > The first one is the most painful and then it's all downhill from > there... > > Thanks, > > Seth > > > > > > > Hi Seth, > > We have sort of a strange configuration here. We are segmented into > different vlans (virtual lans) that have different attributes depending > on their purpose. One is for control systems, another is for > diagnostics etc. The issues I'm having are two fold. The first is an > intermittent problem with boel and dhcp (I'm working with our IT and > Networking groups to resolve this one) and the other is the partitioning > > issue. > Partitioning wise I get through most of it but fail when the end > boundries are set. Basically it says that the area of the disk that is > being partitioned is non-existant beyond whatever VMware allocates > initially. I've tried both dynamically and statically allocating the > diskspace (the .vxhd file size); neither seems to work and both produce > the same errors. I was wondering if choosing a different target OS when > > setting up the VM made any difference or if there was some obscure > settings I need to change to make it more SI friendly. The GoldenClient > > is a "real" machine and has been successfully providing images to other > "real" machines for a few months now. We are trying to make the leap > to VM'ed boxes without spending the time to build a VM specific image > (the GC is fairly complex at this point). > > I appreciate any help or insight you can give me with this! > > Greg > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------- > This SF.net email is sponsored by: Microsoft > Defy all challenges. Microsoft(R) Visual Studio 2008. > http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/vse0120000070mrt/direct/01/ > _______________________________________________ > sisuite-users mailing list > sisuite-users@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/sisuite-users > Seth,
These are going to be run on various types of VMware products on non-homogeneous hosts. Essentially our GC is the template for our operator interface terminals (OPIs). We use EPICS's + MEDM to deliver a HMI to various operators around the lab. A few terminals are shared and some users prefer Macs, some prefer Windows, a few prefer RHEL. We want to have terminals available where anyone could sit down and start a session in their preferred OS for each shift and/or provide "power users" with multiple software development platforms etc. The configuration of each terminal is quite lengthy as we have to conform the DOE standards for Cyber Security and also have our own lab policies, software configurations etc etc. So far, on regular single OS OPIs most users have enjoyed the transition to Linux- no more patch Tuesday resets, very functional multiple desktops, Linux hardly ever crashes etc.. Through scripting I've gotten a lot of the different screen configurations and location specific settings to auto detect and configure - it was pretty easy thanks to the flexibility of SystemImager. I should also mention that we use a wide variety of hardware and SI has been able to install the GC image to all without a hitch (with the exception of a Dell Vostro we were testing). Its just the Virtualized machines that are giving me a problem. As you suggested I'm going to try and make a specialized VM .master script and see where it gets me. I'll also mess around with the script Andrea send the link to. Worst case would be using the converter, but even that isn't terrible compared to the alternative. Thank You, Greg ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Microsoft Defy all challenges. Microsoft(R) Visual Studio 2008. http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/vse0120000070mrt/direct/01/ _______________________________________________ sisuite-users mailing list sisuite-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/sisuite-users
