• Booted new Dell Optiplex 760 with a Ubuntu 9.10 64-bit install CD in the drive
  • Installed Ubuntu, replacing all contents of the disk (Windows Vista)
  • Installed apt-file
    • sudo apt-get install apt-file
  • Installed patch
    • sudo apt-get install patch
  • Installed VMWare Server 2.02 following these instructions
  • Installed sysv-rc-conf
    • sudo apt-get install sysv-rc-conf
  • Installed synergy
    • sudo apt-get install synergy
    • Configured synergy to act as client and connect to server
  • Changed default Terminal window size
    • sudo nano /usr/share/applications/gnome-terminal.desktop
    • Can also be done by right clicking Applications… Edit Menu
  • Changed sudoers to not require password
    • sudo visudo
  • Installed Flash plugin
  • Installed xinetd
  • Installed samba
  • Downloaded and installed google chrome
  • Downloaded and installed nautilus-dropbox
    • sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list
    • sudo gpg --keyserver pgp.mit.edu --recv-keys 3565780E
    • Installed proprietary dropbox
      • dropbox start -i
  • Installed java plugin for firefox
  • Enabled proprietary ATI drivers
  • Enabled Visual Effects
  • Installed CCSM
  • Created Windows XP VMWare Guest
  • Installed VMWare Tools on the Windows guest
  • Worked around bug in gtk by following these instructions :
  • Worked around some problem with vmware thinking it’s not configured after following part of these intstructions
    • sudo rm /etc/vmware/not_configured
  • Worked around vmware name mismatch
    • sudo ln -s /usr/lib/vmware/config /usr/lib/vmware/settings
  • Worked around mis mapped keys in vmware guest 
    sudo echo 'xkeymap.nokeycodeMap = "TRUE"' | sudo tee -a /etc/vmware/config
  • If you’re looking for help on patching VMWare 2.0.2 to work under Ubuntu 10.04 with kernel 2.6.32-22-generic check out this excellent summary : http://nerdbynature.de/s9y/?180
  • Enabled the MediUbuntu repository
  • Installed Hamachi 0.9.9.9
    • Method 1 : http://www.supware.net/HamachiUbuntuHowto/ 
        123  wget "http://files.hamachi.cc/linux/hamachi-0.9.9.9-20-lnx.tar.gz"
  125  tar -vzxf hamachi-0.9.9.9-20-lnx.tar.gz
  126  cd hamachi-0.9.9.9-20-lnx
  127  make install
  128  tuncfg
  129  groupadd hamachi
  130  gpasswd -a woode hamachi
  131  gpasswd -a root hamachi
  132  chmod 760 /var/run/tuncfg.sock
  133  chgrp hamachi /var/run/tuncfg.sock
  134  apt-get install upx-ucl
  135  cd /usr/bin
  136  ./upx -d hamachi
  138  hamachi-init -c /etc/hamachi
  139  hamachi -c /etc/hamachi start
  140  hamachi -c /etc/hamachi set-nick "mynick"
  141  hamachi -c /etc/hamachi login
  142  hamachi -c /etc/hamachi join "mynet"
  148  hamachi -c /etc/hamachi go-online "mynet"
  149  nano /etc/init.d/hamachi
  150  chmod +x /etc/init.d/hamachi
  151  update-rc.d hamachi defaults
    • Method 2
  • Uninstalled Hamachi 0.9.9.9 in order to upgrade to Hamachi 2
    • Method 1 
      sudo rm /usr/sbin/tuncfg
sudo rm /usr/bin/hamachi
sudo rm /usr/bin/hamachi-init
sudo rm ~/.hamachi
sudo rm -rf /etc/hamachi
sudo rm /var/run/tuncfg.sock
sudo rm /var/run/tuncfg.lock
sudo update-rc.d hamachi remove
sudo groupdel hamach
  • Install LogMeIn Hamachi 2 
    # https://secure.logmein.com/labs/
# Confirm LSB 3.0 or higher is installed
dpkg --status lsb
sudo apt-get install lsb
sudo dpkg -i logmein-hamachi_2.0.0.12-1_amd64.deb
# Where "jdoe" is your username
sudo bash -c "echo \"Ipc.User            jdoe\">> /var/lib/logmein-hamachi/h2-engine-override.cfg"
sudo /etc/init.d/logmein-hamachi restart
hamachi login
hamachi set-nick `hostname`
hamachi do-join "My Network Name"
# If you require manual approval for joining a network, go approve the request from another system
hamachi list
  • Uninstalled Hamachi 2 in favor of NeoRouter 
    sudo apt-get purge logmein-hamachi
sudo rm -rf /var/lib/logmein-hamachi/
sudo rm /etc/init.d/logmein-hamachi
  • Installed NeoRouter
  • Uninstlled NeoRouter (not very good)
  • Tried to fix the Avahi .local domain problem http://avahi.org/wiki/AvahiAndUnicastDotLocal
    • /etc/nsswitch.conf 
      #hosts:          files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns mdns4
hosts:          files dns mdns4
    • Problem recurs after reboot. Will have to look into this further.
    • I’m just going to have my network administrators who control the DNS servers that DHCP delivers to my client, remove the SOA record for “.local” from the DNS server to avoid this conflict

Migrating from VMWare to KVM

After wrestling with keeping VMWare working each time i upgraded my linux kernel (required patching and re-running vmware-config.pl each time) I gave up and tried to move to Qemu (using KVM).

First I uninstalled VMWare : https://help.ubuntu.com/community/VMware/Server#Uninstalling%20Source%20Installs

sudo apt-get install virt-manager qemu-kvm
  • logout and back in so that my user is in the “libvirt” group

Why is my Qemu VM guest slow and using 100% CPU?

I found that my Winows XP Guest under Qemu was using 100% of the CPU I’d assigned to it and running dirt slow. I looked at the process that was running “ps auxf” and found that the command had a “-no-kvm” parameter. This indicated it was not taking advantage of the hardware virtualization KVM module.

/usr/bin/qemu-system-x86_64 -S -M pc-0.12 -no-kvm ......

First I think I needed to add my user to the “kvm” user group so I did a :

gpasswd -a <Your_Login_Name> kvm

as described here : http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Kvm#Setup_kernel_modules

The -no-kvm was being passed on the command line because my libvirt qemu configuration file had designated my Windows XP Guest “domain” as “qemu” instead of “kvm” which I determined from this page that correlates command line switches to configuration XML entried http://wiki.libvirt.org/page/QEMUSwitchToLibvirt. I edited my /etc/libvirt/qemu/Windows-XP.xml configuration file by following this method https://help.ubuntu.com/community/KVM/Managing#Editing%20the%20attributes%20of%20a%20Virtual%20Machine and changed :

<domain type='qemu'>

to

<domain type='kvm'>

After stopping and starting the VM guest up again it now ran with the “-enable-kvm” switch which I wanted. I connected to my VM and it’s running at a good speed and the CPU utilization on the host is no longer 100%

Why doesn’t my keyboard work through VNC on my Qemu VM guest?

Haven’t figured this one out yet. Worked around it by using terminal services to my Windows XP guest (bypassing VNC entirely). Here’s what I’ve looked at so far :

Notes