Personal website of Dave Hope » VMWare

Turn an old Google Appliance into an ESX server

Dave — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 17:27:03 +0000

So, you’ve got an old Google Appliance kicking around? Maybe from an expired Google Enterprise Partner Program (GEP) agreement? Why not turn it into an ESX server.

Once your license has expired, you’ll want to do is check with Google and make sure they don’t want the hardware back (they never do, but best to check). It’s safe to say that doing this is going to void your warranty.

The first thing you’re going to need to do is reset he password on the BIOS so that you can change the boot order. The easiest way to do this is to open the chassis and remove the jumper labeled PWRD_EN. The jumper is located just behind the memory towards the rear of the server. The next time you boot you can hit F2 to get into the BIOS.

With the BIOS now open, set the option to boot form the front USB ports. You’re going to want to flash the BIOS with a newer, non-branded one. A Google appliance is just a Dell PowerEdge 2950 with a yellow coat of paint and a snazzy front bezel. Head over to the Dell site and download the latest BIOS (I used 2.6.1). Once downloaded, run the utility to create a BIOS update floppy disk.

With the floppy disk in hand, connect an external USB floppy drive to one of the front USB ports and boot from your BIOS update disk. The update will give you an error message saying that a Dell PowerEdge 2950 BIOS cannot be applied to a Google Enterprise Search Appliance. Fear not, when the update exits it’ll leave you at a DOS prompt. Run the following command:

020601 /forcetype

It should complete successfully and reboot. Remove the floppy drive, enable visualization support in the BIOS and then install ESX. If you don’t have a USB CD drive handy, check out my guide on installing ESX from a USB Key.

Install ESX from a USB drive

Dave — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 11:41:28 +0000

Last week I was trying to repurpose an old Google Appliance for a development ESX server. Since the Google appliance was essentially a Dell PowerEdge 2950 it had dual 2.33 GHz Xeons, 16Gb memory and six 250Gb drives.

Unfortunately the system didn’t come with a CD drive so the next easiest installation was going to be from a USB thumb drive.

If you’re keen to install ESX from a USB thumb drive, you’ll need:

A USB thumb drive, I used a 1Gb Lexar
An ESX iso, I used VMware-VMvisor-Installer-4.0.0-164009.x86_64.iso
The latest version of syslinux (I used 3.82)

With those bits in hand, do the following.

Format the USB drive with a FAT32 filesystem
Use something like 7-Zip to extract the ISO to your USB thumb drive
Download the latest syslinux ZIP file and extract it somewhere
From the “syslinux\win” directory run
syslinux.exe -s -m -f -a h: Where h: is the letter your USB thumb drive is assigned
Rename the hidden file isolinux.cfg on your USB thumb drive to syslinux.cfg
Safely Remove your USB thumb drive and install ESX

VMware Announces First Open Source Virtual Desktop Client

Dave — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 12:15:07 +0000

According to Yahoo Finance, VMWare are releasing an open source client named “VMware View Open Client”.

VMware’s vClient Initiative is to deliver universal clients, desktops that follow users whilst providing a rich personalized experience that is secure, cost-effective and easy for IT to manage.

VMware View Open Client is licensed under the LGPL v 2.1 and can be downloaded from http://code.google.com/p/vmware-view-open-client/. The current release (2.1.1) has been tested with SUSE Linux Enterprise Thin Client (SLETC) and Debian 4.0r3. Lets hope there’s a Mac client just round the corner too!

Detecting VMWare

Dave — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 18:03:35 +0000

Interested in how to detect the presence of VMware / VirtualServer I came across this bit of code to detect whether an application is being run in virtual environment.
int swallow_redpill (){ unsigned char m[2+4], rpill[] = "\x0f\x01\x0d\x00\x00\x00\x00\xc3"; *((unsigned*)&rpill[3]) = (unsigned)m; ((void(*)())&rpill)(); return (m[5]>0xd0) ? 1 : 0; }
This works by abusing the SIDT instruction which stores the contents of the Interrupt Descriptor Table Register (IDTR) . It can be executed in ring3 revealing a sensitive register used by the OS. Because there can only be one IDTR the VM software needs to relocate the guest VM IDTR to a new point, which is software predictable.

Kudos to Invisible Things for an interesting read. There are some expansions on this code over at TrapKit for anyone who’s interested.