I love VMware! There is almost nothing cooler than using vmotion to migrate a guest OS to another host, with zero downtime.

I am in the process of upgrading all of my ESX hosts to 3.5 update 1, and I wanted to post some of my notes to remind me (and help others) with some of the bumps I had along the way.

Updating Virtual Center

• After upgrading Virtual Center to 2.5, 3/4 of hosts received the the following error while attempting to connected them to Virtual Center. “Failed to install the VirtualCenter agent service”
  • This would typically happen after the process was around 80% complete
  • To resolve this issue I used the following steps (Thanks to VMwarewolf for the insight)
    1. Login to ESX Server via ssh client as root user
    2. cd /tmp
    3. mkdir vmware-root
    4. Try re-connecting the host to Virtual Center
• One of my hosts had the following error. “Unable to access the specified host, it either does not exist, the server is not responding or there is a network problem”
  • This was resolved by starting the “mgmt-vmware” process, using the following steps
    1. Login to ESX server via ssh client as root user
    2. service mgmt-vmware start

References

VMwarewolf

For those of you running older versions of MS Office and need to open the newer format:
Click Here

Thanks Jeff for the update ;)

If you live in Florida, you can see for yourself….

http://ww2.doh.state.fl.us/irm00profiling/SEARCHFORM.ASP

I recently needed a quick way to populate an existing excel template with data I retrieved from my database. Apache POI to the rescue!! Apache POI is a Java API to Access Microsoft Format Files.
References
http://poi.apache.org/
API Docs

start “screen”

create new window “ctrl-a c”

switch to next window “ctrl-a n”

switch to previous window “ctrl-a p”

switch to list of windows “ctrl-a “”

switch to a particular window “ctrl-a <number>”

detach sreen “ctrl-a d”

reattach sreen “screen -r”

kill a window “ctrl-a k”

rename a window “ctrl-a A”

Move between split sections of the screen “ctrl-a <TAB>”

Split the current window in two “ctrl-a S”

Kill all regions but the current one “ctrl-a Q”

remove active window from split screen “ctrl-a X”

C-a S (split) command, you can adjust the size with C-a :resize n (n is the number of lines, also +n and -n to add or remove lines).
references

http://linuxgazette.net/147/appaiah.html

http://www.debian-administration.org/articles/34

http://www.neophob.com/serendipity/index.php?/archives/112-GNU-Screen-cheat-sheet.html

fdupes is a program for identifying/deleting duplicate files residing within specified directories.

How I typically use it to find duplicate files
fdupes -r -n -1 -S /path/of/directory/to/search/for/dups

How I typically use it to delete duplicate files. It will prompt you for which file to delete. You can preserve multiple files by using a comma separated list of values. See documentation for caveats.
fdupes -r -n -1 -S -d /path/of/directory/to/search/for/dups

Reference
http://linux.die.net/man/1/fdupes
http://netdial.caribe.net/~adrian2/fdupes.html

type “uname -r” into a terminal window

While listening to John McCain’s speech to CPAC, I couldn’t help but notice how many times he used the word “intend”. The word “intend”, seems very soft, and leads me to believe that he chose this word as a potential way out of keeping his promises and obligations to our country.

• I intended no personal insult to any of you
• I am not in the habit of making promises to my country that I do not intend to keep
• Then vote for or against me based on that record, my qualifications for the office, and the direction where I plainly state I intend to lead our country
• I intend to fight as hard as I can to ensure that our principles prevail over theirs
• Senator Clinton and Senator Obama want to increase the size of the federal government. I intend to reduce it
• I will not permit any expansion whatsoever of the entitlement programs that are bankrupting us. On the contrary, I intend to reform those programs so that government is no longer in that habit of making promises to Americans it does not have the means to keep.
• Senator Clinton and Senator Obama will raise your taxes. I intend to cut them.
• They will offer a big government solution to health care insurance coverage. I intend to address the problem with free market solutions and with respect for the freedom of individuals to make important choices for themselves.
• I intend to nominate judges who have proven themselves worthy of our trust that they take as their sole responsibility the enforcement of laws made by the people’s elected representatives
• I intend to win the war
• I intend to make unmistakably clear to Iran we will not permit a government that espouses the destruction of the State of Israel as its fondest wish and pledges undying enmity to the United States to possess the weapons to advance their malevolent ambitions.
• Senator Clinton and Senator Obama will concede to our critics that our own actions to defend against its threats are responsible for fomenting the terrible evil of radical Islamic extremism, and their resolve to combat it will be as flawed as their judgment. I intend to defeat that threat by staying on offense and by marshaling every relevant agency of our government, and our allies, in the urgent necessity of defending the values, virtues and security of free people against those who despise all that is good about us.
• I intend to contest these issues on conservative grounds and fight as hard as I can to defend the principles and positions we share, and to keep this country safe, proud, prosperous and free.

References
http://www.politicswest.com/2008_election/19362/transcript_john_mccains_cpac_speech

Type “clear”

References
http://linux.die.net/man/1/clear

grep -lir “some text” *

-l switch outputs only the names of files in which the text occurs (instead of each line containing the text)
-i switch ignores the case
-r descends into subdirectories

References
http://www.itexpert.cz/linux-find-files-text/