http://united-geeks.org/blog - GNU/Linux

Booting the 'opsi Server VMWare Appliance' on a VirtualBox Host

nospam@example.com (n00dl3s) — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 17:05:53 +0100

Short abstract:
This post has a double purpose:
1. YES, you can use the opsi VMWare Appliance in VirtualBox (a 10min google search did not yield one hit of somebody who did this before, so: eat this google!)
2. It won't boot without modification, the very easy solution is below

Long version:
Wanted to check out opsi without installing it. So i downloaded the VMWare image that is also provided. However, i got rid of VMWare about a year ago in favour of VirtualBox (there were plenty of reasons for that...). The good thing about VirtualBox is also that it allows to use VMWare's vmdk files as virtual harddisks, so i thought it should be easy to check it out. After setting up the new machine in VirtualBox with the downloaded opsiserver.vmdk I booted for the first time and was greeted by:

Waiting for root file system ...

The fix is really easy though, once you understand what the problem is: the underlying system of the appliance is a Debian GNU/Linux with Grub as boot loader. The problem is that the original VMWare installation used virtual SCSI or SATA devices, so the line in /boot/grub/menu.lst contains /dev/sda2. On VirtualBox (at least with the default config) the system uses virtual IDE disks, so you need to simply change /dev/sda2 to /dev/hda2. To do this on every reboot you can use the built-in editor of grub (press "e") and change the device. Once you booted successfully, you can change it permanently by editing /boot/grub/menu.lst.

Now comes the fun part: learning how to use opsi to save me time. But as far as I know / read about it, it's just what I am looking for. I guess it even makes sense in a small environment like ours here (6 Windows clients but loads of common software that needs to be installed on all our machines...). Maybe I will blog about it again after I got to know it better.

Ah, versions used:
VirtualBox 3.0.8 r53138 (equals app-emulation/virtualbox-bin-3.0.8 in Gentoo)
opsi3.4-servervm (2009-09-16)

NetMos PCI 9835 Multi-I/O Controller (2x serial, NO parallel port)

nospam@example.com (n00dl3s) — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 12:21:37 +0100

Since i have moved to India, getting a UPS for my work station was a must - with between 1 and 10 power-cuts a day, working without power backup is simply not possible.

However, having a UPS alone might not be enough, because in case the power is off for more than just a few minutes while your are not there, the battery will run empty and the computer will of course power off without doing a clean shutdown. So, nothing gained...

However, most UPS have either a serial or USB port, so that you can monitor its state and run scripts depending on certain conditions, such as the remaining capacity.

So, to make a long story short, i had to buy a serial-port expansion card for my machine, since the mainboard did not have a serial port bulilt-in. I went to the local computer wallah and bought a PCI card with 2 serial ports on it.

The card is identified by lspci as:

Communication controller: NetMos Technology PCI 9835 Multi-I/O Controller (rev 01)

Googling for it gave me the impression, that the in-kernel serial driver should do the trick. In dmesg i found:

[ 0.636515] serial8250: ttyS0 at I/O 0x3f8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A
[ 0.637319] 00:07: ttyS0 at I/O 0x3f8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A

Unfortunately, trying to hook up the UPS two one of the ports, ttyS0 remained dead.

After googling for quite some time, i discovered, that apparently the chip on the card not only provides two serial ports, but also a parallel port. However, since the chip is o cheap, many manufacturers use these chips also for serial-port only cards.

Now, the interesting part is, although the kernel finds some serial port (as dmesg shows), the kernel serial driver does not handle it. Instead, you need to build "parport_serial" either into the kernel or as a module. After I modprobe it, dmesg shows this:

47102.184128] parport_serial 0000:05:01.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 19 (level, low) -> IRQ 19
[47102.184149] parport1: PC-style at 0xd200 [PCSPP(,...)]
[47102.184313] 0000:05:01.0: ttyS1 at I/O 0xd000 (irq = 19) is a 16550A
[47102.184434] 0000:05:01.0: ttyS2 at I/O 0xd100 (irq = 19) is a 16550A

And now i have two working serial ports on ttyS1 and ttyS2.

Just for completeness: Netmos sometimes sells this chip labeled as "NetMost 222N-2" and sometimes as "NetMos 9835". To all my knowledge, it is the same product...

Cyrus without unix-accounts?

nospam@example.com (n00dl3s) — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 03:53:09 +0200

[UPDATE: clarification because of unclear language...]
Is this a bug or a feature?
Postfix cannot deliver mails to cyrus-mailboxes if a user has a cyrus-mailbox but no corresponding unix-account?

I could not find anything in the documentation that says so, but it just doesn't work without...

That really sucks IMHO!

Please leave a comment if you can prove me wrong

Bluediving v0.9 auf Gentoo kompilieren

nospam@example.com (n00dl3s) — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 15:15:43 +0100

Bluediving beschwert sich (nach der händischen Installation aller dependencies) über fehlende libxml Header-Dateien die er zum übersetzen von btftp braucht.

Lösung:

ln -s /usr/include/libxml2/libxml/ /usr/include/libxml

Danach sollte es gehen.

Viel Spaß am Gerät!

PS: Abgesehen davon ist Bluediving leider ziemlich buggy und crashed mir gelegentlich, aber is ja auch erst v0.9