03.21.08
Posted in Linux, SAnToS, Technology at 1:00 pm by Todd
This week I finally got
VMWare Workstation 6 installed on my Gentoo (x86_64) laptop. I need it for several reasons:
- I couldn’t convince my HP laptop to dual-boot with Windows Vista.
- At times I need to test software that is Windows only.
- Some of our software must have the ability to run in Windows; which means I need to have Windows available to test and troubleshoot.
- Recently, I needed the ability to test x86 code and I didn’t want to “muddy the waters” using x86_64 compatibility.
- In the short-term, I would like to start testing software in a clean environment which doesn’t mess up my daily work. What better way than in a VM.
So I purchased VMWare Workstation and followed the Gentoo installation instructions using emerge. I had to modify my package.keywords file since the 6.0 version of vmware-workstation was masked (~amd64). I simply added the following to the /etc/portage/package.keywords file:
app-emulation/vmware-workstation ~amd64
app-emulation/vmware-modules ~amd64
dev-cpp/libsexymm ~amd64
x11-libs/libview ~amd64
Before portage could finish the install, I had to download the tarball from the VMWare site (and put that tarball in /usr/portage/distfiles). I also had to add a USE flag to my /etc/make.conf (accessibility) and re-emerge several packages (emerge -auD --newuse world). Once the installation was complete, I ran through the VMWare configuration script and it was almost ready to roll. The last thing I had to do was start VMWare using the following flag: VMWARE_USE_SHIPPED_GTK=yes (I found that fix mentioned here). When I don’t use that flag I get the following:
tcw@bluecloud ~ $ vmware
/opt/vmware/workstation/lib/bin/vmware: symbol lookup error: /opt/vmware/workstation/lib/lib/libvmwareui.so.0/libvmwareui.so.0: undefined symbol: _ZThn24_N4view10FieldEntry17delete_text_vfuncEii
Now I get to fight Windows XP and Windows Vista to get them installed in their own virtual machine. I will also probably install Ubuntu and possibly a desktop install of OpenBSD (I am an OpenBSD-fan-boy).
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02.13.08
Posted in Customer Service, KSU, Linux, SAnToS, Technology at 3:47 pm by Todd
One of my duties in my current position (Research Associate at
K-State working for the
SAnToS lab) is system administrator. I help to manage laptops, workstations, and servers. The only server I still manage is our project management server that runs
GForge (named
projects.cis.ksu.edu). That server will soon be transitioned over to the responsibility of the
CIS departments
system administrators. Unfortunately, the transition has been a little painful. Let me explain.
Over the last couple of years we have had increasing downtime on the old hardware (a 7 year old dual processor workstation) and old software (the open-source version that we custom patched). Because of this, we wanted to upgrade both the software and the hardware. And with the shortage of man-power in the lab, we decided to share the server with the rest of the department and then transfer responsibility of it to the department as a whole.
We selected some existing hardware that was in our
Beocat cluster, upgraded the amount of storage space, and did a fresh install of Linux. We then purchased a commercial license from the
GForge group for their
GForge AS. We then started the process of upgrading and transitioning. This is when the real pain started.
Some of the pain is self-inflicted. We wrote our own plugin for GForge which modified how the file release system worked. In doing so, we deviated from the standard file locations. This made it a non-trivial upgrade.
Some of the pain was organizational. Because the
CIS system admin staff would be taking over this responsibility, we wanted to let them do the migration. Which meant them learning about it as well as experimenting. Trouble was, they have turn-over (students graduating or leaving for better jobs). So this task fell between the cracks quite often and meant a lot of re-learning by a new person. This made the transition drag on for quite a while.
Some of the pain was caused by the GForge Group. I am sure they try very hard but their customer service leaves a lot to be desired. It almost feels like dealing with Microsoft — our issues are too minor for them to take seriously. So bugs we found were brushed under the rug despite them being true “show-stopper” bugs (we are not going to do the final switch-over until they are fixed).
- The first issue is that mailing list archives that are marked as private are not protected. Meaning that any visitor to the site can see the “private” messages on our lists. Not a good thing.
- The second issue is that some of the data was lost during the transition. Specifically, the document manager in the old version provided a title and description to go along with each document. In the new version, there is no title. And during the transition, the consultant did not migrate the description over so we lost both the title and the description. Not a big deal but it would cause several man-hours of work for us to fix.
- The third issue is that files and releases that are marked as hidden are not actually hidden. We like to (or tend to) keep all of our releases on the server but hide the old ones so that our users (downloaders) are not confused. But when we do this, they are not actually hidden from the user in the new system (they were on the old system). Again, not a big deal but certainly more burden on us to manage our releases.
- The fourth issue is that the mailing list messages in the archives are not attributed to the correct author. This is more of an annoyance than anything else but still an issue that we would like to have fixed.
I suppose this post is part venting (getting this frustration off my chest) and part warning. When dealing with the GForge group, be aware of what you are getting into. It might be best to simply use the open-source version or purchase from a different vendor.
Update (01 July 2008): I just had a very productive phone call with Tim Perdue, the founder/CEO of the GForge Group. He was worried that this post might give people the wrong impression about his company. Because of that, I wanted to set the record straight.
First, I wanted to thank Tim for calling me to chat about this blog post. I was quite surprised since I didn’t think anybody read it. But with the magic of search engines, I suppose things get read at odd times.
Second, I think that the GForge Group has a very good product. GForge AS has a lot of really cool features that I am excited to use (integration with Eclipse, CruiseControl, and an integrated tracker and task manager).
Third, a lot of the issues that I was venting about have nothing to do with the GForge Group or GForge AS. I am guilty of screwing up this process as much as anyone when I implemented the custom download manager. And some of the issues had to do with our internal staff. All that to say there is plenty of issues in this “project” and enough blame to go around.
Last, I want to clarify this statement: “When dealing with the GForge group, be aware of what you are getting into”. I am just saying that any single bug might not be important to them. This is very normal for any small software company so it shouldn’t be taken as a dig on just them. I guess I just expect more out of customer support (which might be my problem and not theirs).
I should also update this post with the status of the migration. It looks like all but one of the issues has been resolved (we still haven’t fixed the document description issue). We are just performing some final testing to make sure there are not any more bugs before we do the final move. We hope that this will happen on Monday (July 7, 2008) (no promises though – unexpected issues always seem to arise).
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10.24.07
Posted in Linux, SAnToS at 8:47 pm by Todd
Sorry, this blog entry was delayed while I tried to get the details cleaned up.
Quick Summary: Gentoo takes a long time to install and get right but it works great!
Gentoo was my last hope for getting Linux installed on my new HP Compaq nc8430. I had tried Ubuntu (and KUbuntu), OpenSUSE, and Fedora. All came up short in some way or another.
For several years I have been using Gentoo Linux on my Dell laptop and have been quite happy with it. But it does take time to get installed and configured. Put another way, if you want to install Gentoo, you better be ready to take time and effort. So I decided to take the time and effort in hopes that it would work.
I decided to dive in so I downloaded the 2007.0 CD and started installing. Everything was smooth until I tried to get all the kernel configurations correct for my hardware (I chose to configure my kernel instead of using genkernel). There was nothing I couldn’t get fixed but I did have to configure, build, and test several times before I got something that worked for my hardware and software. From my experience and knowledge about the community, this is fairly typical.
Some struggles:
- Getting sound to work properly: Not sure what the final solution was (I was not methodical about fixing this) but I got it working properly.
- Getting the ATI drivers to work properly for dual-monitors: This took quite a bit of trial-and-error but finally figured it out. I ended up using the proprietary drivers (boo).
- Getting flash working: It really is a pain that Adobe/Macromedia can’t create a 64bit version of flash that will work with my 64bit version of Firefox. My workaround is to use Opera for all flash related sites. I was also able to get Firefox to use the 32bit Flash plugin by installing and configuring nspluginwrapper.
- Getting the framebuffer support and gensplash working: I still haven’t gotten this despite several attempts. More work is necessary to figure this one out.
- Getting hibernation/sleep working: I started to work on this and had to switch back to real work. At some point I will come back to this.
Some great things I learned:
- 64bit computing is not ready for mainstream. Or put another way, the software is not ready. Even bleeding-edge software from Gentoo is not quite stable in many ways. But my least favorite is that Adobe has not released a 64bit version of Flash.
- NetworkManager works great for dealing with wired and wireless connections. I think everyone should use it for laptops (or other machines that move around).
- Gentoo documentation and forums are some of the best around. I was really disappointed in the OpenSUSE, Fedora, and Ubuntu communities. The just don’t have the level of documentation as Gentoo has (ok, that is just perception not a statement of fact).
After all the hard work I finally have a working 64bit laptop running Gentoo. I still have a few things to work out but it is usable.
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