Ubuntu Tutorials

I’ve found more and more people are switching to Virtualbox these days and I keep running into the same question.  ”How can I convert my VMware images to Virtualbox images?”  Well, breath easy because it is possible and not very difficult!

There are two methods that I am aware of that will allow you to use your VMware images on Virtualbox.  The first method I’ll outline uses the graphical Virtualbox interface and the second uses the command line. Each method should be equally as stable, it simple depends on your preference.

Method 1

Start Virtualbox
Inside the Virtualbox Menu click: File > Virtual Media Manager
Click on the “Add” button.
Locate and select the VMware .vmdk file you’d like to convert.
Click Open.
Verify your disk image has been added to the list of images and that the virtual and actual sizes appear accurate.
Click OK
Create a new virtual machine profile, selecting your imported image for the storage.
Boot your new virtual machine.

Method 2
To use the second method we’ll need an addition command-line tool called qemu.

sudo aptitude install qemu

You’ll new be able to convert a .vmdk (VMware image) to a .bin format, which can then be converted to a Virtualbox native .vdi format.

qemu-img convert /path/to/original.vmdk converted.bin

You’ll then need to use the VBoxManage utility that comes with Virtualbox to convert the .bin to a native .vdi format:

VBoxManage convertdd converted.bin converted.vdi

You can now create your new Virtualbox machine profile, using this new .vdi file as your disk image.

Two methods for converting VMware images to Virtualbox images.  Are there any other methods that you can suggest, or have you had better experience with one or the other?  Let us know!

I’m running a slave DNS server on the machine that runs this website.  It is one of three DNS servers (one master, two slaves) that I have running for my multiple domains.  I recently noticed from my Logwatch output that it was having issues with IPv6 lookups and these were causing timeouts and putting extra notices in my log files.  I decided the best route would be to just turn off IPv6 in BIND altogether.

Configuring named

The named man page (man named) lists two options for supporting IPv4 or IPv6.  Each of these commands are mutually exclusive, meaning using one of the options will not allow you to use the other.  Either IPv4 or iPv6, not both.  Now the default is to use both, so if you want to continue supporting lookups on IPv4 and IPv6 there is nothing more you need to do.  If you want to *only* use one or the other you can use the -4 or -6 options in the configuration.

IPv4 only (/etc/default/bind9):

# run resolvconf?
RESOLVCONF=yes
# startup options for the server
OPTIONS="-4 -u bind"

IPv6 only (/etc/default/bind9):

# run resolvconf?
RESOLVCONF=yes
# startup options for the server
OPTIONS="-6 -u bind"

Once you have updated this file and defined the option you want, you’ll simply need to restart the BIND service and it’ll start listening on or or the other but, again, not both.

sudo /etc/init.d/bind9 restart

My BIND installation is now listening on only IPv4 and I have yet to see the same slowdown or amount of log output that I used to.  I guess, when we start using IPv6 one of these days I’ll need to change it, but I don’t have a lot of faith in that happening anytime soon.

I only have just a minute for this post, but I’ve been thinking for the past few weeks that I’d really like a project to contribute to.  After putting some thought into it I realized I liked the idea of contributing to something upstream, vs to a distribution specifically.  I also really enjoy GNOME and think it could be something I’d like to work on.  If anyone can drop me a line and help plug me into the right area I’d really appreciate it.  Its always a little intimidating to show up to a new project and say “give me something to do”.  I’m sure you all (GNOME people) know where the needs are better than I do and hopefully one (or many!) of you can introduce me to the right people and give me some things to get started with.

I’m open for just about anything, although I’m not much of a programmer (outside of bash & perl)

I setup the new office printer here on my laptop this morning and I had all kinds of trouble getting it to work with the system-config-printer graphical utility that I usually love so much.  As part of my troubleshooting I thought I’d try the web interface, which worked great!  That gave me the idea of sharing how to configure your printers over the default-installed, yet often unused, web interface.

CUPS, the Common Unix Printing System, comes with a web interface by default that many people don’t know about.  If you’d like to take a quick peek at it go ahead and open a new tab and visit http://localhost:631.  Did you know you can configure everything via the web interface that you might normally configure via the graphical interface?  Everything from creating and deleting printers, to printing test pages and assigning the default printer for the machine.

Now, for those of you that are suddenly worried about a service running on your machine that you were unaware of, CUPS only allows connections on the localhost interface by default.  In other words, if you tried accessing it over your public IP it would deny you access.  This means it would also deny access to anyone else trying to get in and manipulate your printers.

It is possible to make this interface open to more than just your localhost connection, just be sure you’re aware of the security implications first.  Anyone with access to that web management tool may be able to view, customize and possibly even delete your configured printers.

To allow access to the printer web interface simply edit the /etc/cups/cupsd.conf file and update the line reading:

Listen localhost:631


To:

Listen 0.0.0.0:631

You can, of course, replace 0.0.0.0 with a more specific IP address. Using 0.0.0.0 will listen on all available addresses the machine has.

In conclusion, configuring your printers is not limited to the graphical interface. CUPS has provided a web interface for some time now and its nearly as simple to use. The next time you have issues configuring or managing your printers, give the web interface a try!

WIN goes to nixternal for pointing out a fix regarding the VirtualBox guest additions installation on Ubuntu 9.04.  Just the other day I installed the latest Ubuntu 9.04 “Jaunty” alpha 6 release and then installed guest additions on the virtual machine.  At that point things went downhill.  I was no longer able to get a graphical session other than “Safe Mode” which, as we all know, isn’t the best.  I had not had time to figure out how to work around it–I honestly tossed it up to a bug in an alpha release–but then nixternal pointed out the fix on his blog.  Again, thanks.

The Workaround

If you’ve attemted to install VirtualBox guest additions within your Ubuntu 9.04 installation and had issues, this workaround should hopefully solve your problems.

1. Mount the VirtualBox Guest Additions CD.  This is done by clicking “Devices > Install Guest Additions”
2. Open a terminal (Applications > Accessories > Terminal) and navigate your way to /media/cdrom/
3. Extract the architecture-specific file using the command: sudo ./VBoxLinuxAdditions-XXX.run --target /tmp
4. Edit the install.sh file, which should now be sitting in your /tmp directory.
5. Line 415 (in vim type :415 to jump directly), needs to be changed to: 1.5.99.* | 1.6.0 )
6. Run: sudo ./install.sh
7. Reboot

It appears that an upstream patch would be *very* simple, so hopefully this gets fixed before it bites too many people.  In the meantime, I hope this helps anyone that got stuck like I did.

I just wanted to add my two-cents regarding the new GNOME release, 2.26.  I have been a GNOME fan for nearly as long as I can remember and I’m really happy to see another solid and on-time release.  Remember, you can look forward to all the new GNOME features in the upcoming Ubuntu release, due out this next month!

Thanks to some quick feedback and troubleshooting from the OpenID WP plugin developer I’ve got things functioning again.  It seems we turned up a few issues that will still need addressing (primarily regarding my use of Lighttpd vs the more standard Apache), but we have things functional again.

Big thanks to Will for his help.  If you’re not using OpenID on your WP blog, check out the plugin.

Also, of course, if you continue to run into any issues with OpenID here please let me know.

Hopping on the current meme bandwagon here is a list of the things my daughter loves to do:

• Read Books (Curious George, ftw!)
• Climb the Stairs
• Tickling
• Tinkerbell
• Watching everything outside (birds, cars, dogs, people, etc)
• Bathtime

For those that have been long time readers, you might remember the announcement a year ago of her joining us.  Here is a recent picture, at her one year birthday party, for an update.

If you’ve ever played with Virtualization products you’ve very likely tried out VMware Server.  With its good support of hardware and software platforms, plus the fact that it is a free download from the VMware website, it is a very commonly used application.  What if you’ve decided to move on to other Virtualization products, such as VirtualBox or KVM?  How do you go about uninstalling VMware Server from your machine?

Uninstall VMware Server

Assuming you’ve followed the tutorials here for installing and configuring VMware Server on Ubuntu your installation is not managed by a debian package.  This means you’re not able to simply use the package management system to remove the installed files and folders.  Luckily, VMware distributed an uninstall utility for completely removing your VMware installation.  To remove VMware Server from your machine simply run:

sudo vmware-uninstall.pl

This should completely remove any installed files, folders or modules installed by the VMware installation scripts. I have found this to work on any Linux distribution I’ve tried so far.

If you’ve tried VMware and you’re ready to try something new, I very much suggest checking out VirtualBox.

I’ve been having issues with the OpenID plugin for WordPress, as many of you have noticed and commented. Until I’m able to come up with a solution I’m simply going to disable the plugin.

If anyone has any tips or solutions on getting it to work reliably on WordPress please let me know.