Wednesday, November 4, 2009

VirtualBox on Mac and OEL/RHEL 5.3 VMs

I recently had reason to run an Oracle Enterprise Linux (which is built on Red Hat Enterprise Linux) 5.3 virtual machine on my MacBook Pro. I was at a training class that required use of the VM, and my Mac has quite a bit more RAM than my work laptop, so it seemed like a good idea. Just one catch - the VM was created with VMWare, and I don't own VMWare Fusion (the Mac host software). I could (and did, for the first day) use a trial version of VMWare Fusion, but for a longer term solution I wanted something else.

Enter VirtualBox. It's free for use on the Mac and it seemed pretty straightforward to make use of VMWare-generated virtual machines. VirtualBox is happy to use VMDK hard drive images, so there's no conversion needed. I've described some of the specific settings I used in my case here, but the general principles should apply to any VMWare image running on VirtualBox.

I installed VirtualBox 3.0.10 on the Mac (I'm running Snow Leopard, FYI) and grabbed the VM image. VMWare VM images have a VMX file that describe many of the settings, including the amount of RAM, which hard drive image files are mounted on which controllers, the type of hard drive controllers, etc. It's very helpful to open the VMX up in a text editor and use it as a reference when configuring the VirtualBox machine.

In VirtualBox, you use the Virtual Media Manager to set up your disk images. I had two disk images (OEL5U3_11gSOA.vmdk and OEL5U3_11gSOA_2.vmdk in my particular example), so I set each one up by simply clicking Add in the VMM and choosing the VMDK file from the VM image.

Then I created a new virtual machine in VirtualBox. I used the VMX file as a reference to configure:
  • RAM: 2 GB
  • SCSI controller: LsiLogic (Very important to pick the right one! I initially had a different type, and none of my disk volumes were readable.)
  • SCSI drive 0: OEL5U3_11gSOA.vmdk
  • SCSI drive 1: OEL5U3_11gSOA_2.vmdk
  • Network: PCNet Fast III adapter
  • Network Adapter 1. Create a host-only adapter (for communication with host OS).
  • Network Adapter 2. Create a NAT adapter (if you want the guest to be able to access Internet).
  • Defaults for everything else.
Normally you'd use a bridge network adapter instead of creating two different adapters, but I couldn't get the bridge to work with the Mac's AirPort wireless interface. When you run /sbin/ifconfig in the guest OS, the eth0 address is the one you want to use in the host to connect to the guest. The eth1 address is the outside world IP.

At this point you can run the machine. The first time you do, you'll get an error about the X configuration being invalid. Just follow the prompts to reconfigure and you'll get an 800x600 display - not ideal but enough to log in. I was mostly interested in using the VM as a server, with the development tools on the host OS, so poor X config wasn't a big deal for me.

I also uninstalled the VMWare extensions that were already in the machine, since they interfered with various functions (like mounting a CDROM). You'll need to use rpm to remove whatever version of the wmware-tools package is installed, and then restart the guest OS.

There are also VirtualBox extensions that can be installed, to allow better X support and other features such as shared folders. I didn't really need this myself, but I followed this handy guide to install it anyway. The yum repository wasn't set up to allow installation of the kernel-devel requirement to do the install, but I downloaded and installed kernel-devel-2.6.18-128.el5.i686.rpm manually, which worked fine. Then it was easy enough to install the VirtualBox extensions. That got me to 1024x768 resolution in X, and made the mouse pointer integration function better.

The only issue I've run into so far is that I occasionally get CPU spikes where VirtualBox starts eating up 80%+ of the CPU, even though the guest OS is idling. This usually doesn't last long and I can continue working pretty much as normal, but if it gets to a be a real pain, restarting the guest OS usually makes it go away. All in all, I'm pretty happy with the ability to use VirtualBox to run VMWare images on a short-term basis, although I probably wouldn't recommend it for daily long-term use - you're better off rebuilding the VM in VirtualBox from the start to avoid any hidden incompatibility issues.

Sunday, August 16, 2009

GenCon 2009

Another year, another great GenCon gaming convention! If I haven't completely lost count, this was my 11th GenCon - first time was in 1998 and I've only missed one since. Though the representation from my usual gaming group was a bit light this year, we still had a great time, and even managed to break in a few new folks.

The weekend started off on a bit of a low note - I woke up Thursday morning with a bad sore throat, stuffy head, and a headache - sure signs of a summer cold. But GenCon waits for no man, so I broke out the DayQuil, sucked it up, and piled in the car to pick up my buddy Mike in Lansing. Five hours of road time passed quickly enough with Fear Factory blaring and plenty of gaming discussion. We checked into the hotel and headed right on into the convention center.

The registration line was long, but we'd both pre-registered so we got to skip all that and go straight to the Will-Call line. Having obtained badges, we headed right for the dealer hall. If it's got anything to do with gaming (even if you have to stretch the definition a little), it can be found here. Card games, board games, RPGs, miniatures, LARP - everything is represented. There are always a "few" dice, of course, and some twists on old favorites. PC and console games have a solid presence too - with plenty of advertising to enjoy. The biggest names in the industry are always present, though some aren't as big as they used to be. There's a ton of gamers walking around, and fortunately they don't all stink. Plenty of interesting sights, too. Might even see a hero or villain around, and you can always pick up something to defend yourself if you feel the need.

While in the hall we met up with big Demetrius and a couple of GenCon-first-timers from up in Owosso, David and Al - we'd all be sharing the hotel room, for what little sleeping happens at GenCon. We got lucky this year, though - Mike had another hotel room already booked for Thursday and Friday nights so everyone got their own bed until Saturday night.

Thursday evening was the City of Heroes meet and greet, kindly organized by Ms Mind on the official forums. We had a good turnout of heroes (and villains) for dinner and some good conversation. Nice to meet some other fans of the game! I was the only one there that played on my primary server, Victory, but many of the other folks knew one another and played together. A good time was had by all, and there was even some swag handed out - bumper stickers, HeroClix minis, comics (some signed), and a few of the concept art books. It was great to meet everyone, and special thanks to those that organized and brought the free stuff!

I called it an early night Thursday, in the interest of fighting the cold, but I did get in a little playtesting with Mike on a new game he's working on. Woke up feeling much better on Friday, though still heavily on the cold medication.

Friday morning I did a little sightseeing, walking around the con. One of the most impressive sights this year was the Serra Angel statue, which was prominently placed right near the D&D room just upstairs from the main registration area. I stopped by Cardhalla as it was being built, peeked in on the board gaming, and saw a pirate battle in the hallway.

Then it was time for my first official event - a beginner Cthulutech RPG game. It was run by Bob the game master for a bunch of us that had never played before in a tiny little RPG room in one of the nearby hotels. It's an interesting setting - the world is being destroyed from within by demons (of course - that "Cthulu" in the name is a bit of a give-away), but there's a twist in that some of that demonic energy is being used to power science-fiction-style mecha. The game mechanics seem to work very well and it's not horribly complex - although of course we were playing a simplified version given that everyone was a newbie. Bob did a great job. He came prepared with some nice game props, and rolled with the punches as we added three more people than the event's technical maximum, asked many stupid questions, and made plenty of silly mistakes. The four hours allotted flew by, and I'm convinced we could have happily spent another hour or two had people not needed to head out to other events.

It was only early Friday afternoon when we finished that event, but I was in dire need of some rest so I headed back to the hotel and took a nap. Darn cold - normally I get by with about 4 hours of sleep a night at GenCon, but that wasn't happening this year. I did wake up in time to wander the dealer room a bit more before it closed, and then hooked up with the gang for dinner followed by a little relaxing back at the hotel.

Friday night turned out to be Middle Earth:Quest night. Mike picked up a copy of the game that he'll be using to demo at Evolution Games, and we broke it out for a test run. The hotel was short on gaming space but we improvised, setting up the board on their billiards table. We needed most of the table's space, because this game is not small. It took us the better part of an hour to get it all set up and figure out what we were doing in the first couple of turns, but then the pace picked up a bit. I played Sauron, and Mike and D were Free People's heroes. The game was a lot of fun once we got used to the mechanics, especially the battling mechanic which allowed for a decent amount of strategy (and involves no dice). In the end, the Free Peoples were victorious, thanks in large part to D's daring foray into Barad-Dûr where he defeated the Black Riders. They did come back and smite him down, but by then the damage was done and Sauron's plans were ruined. All in all a very fun game - my only real complaint is that a maximum of four players (Sauron plus 3 Free People) is a bit limiting for a game of this size, but I suspect there may be expansions on the way that will solve that.

After the game we headed to bed. It was a rough night for me, had a hard time sleeping with the cold, and I didn't get to sleep until after 3 AM. So I ended up staying in bed until nearly noon on Saturday, recovering my strength a bit. I needed it, because it turned out to be a busy day. A little after noon I made a quick stop by the dealer room, and happened to run into Matthias, an old friend from the heyday of our Middle Earth CCG days. It was great to catch up a bit with him - you run into all sorts of folks at these cons that you never see otherwise.

Next up was a True Dungeon Mini-Quest event. True Dungeon is an incredibly popular series of events where the entire Marriott hotel ballroom is converted to a life-sized D&D dungeon. It's darn near impossible to get tickets to the main events, even though they're fairly expensive. I tried this year when pre-registration opened but was never able to get through. I did manage to snag a Mini-Quest ticket, though, which is a shorter one-hour introductory adventure. The other five folks in my group showed up together, and since two of them had done the event once before (and because we're foolhardy) we decided to do the Nightmare version - which basically means the DMs are allowed to actively try to kill your characters. I was a little concerned when we failed to solve the very first trap and everyone took a bunch of damage, but despite that failure we managed to complete the rest of the dungeon without losing even one of our party. The whole event was a blast, both because the people in my party were a lot of fun, and because the setup is very well done. I'll definitely do more True Dungeon events if I can.

There's people in costumes everywhere at GenCon (and some just accessorizing), but Saturday afternoon is especially interesting because of the costume contest. You have to wait in line for hours to get into the actual costume contest presentation, but before they all go up on stage the contestants walk through the convention center in a parade. It's quite a sight. I'm sure there will be many people with better camera equipment and skills posting much better photos in the near future.

Once the costume contest people had disappeared, I headed to the card gaming hall for my yearly Middle Earth:CCG event. The game's been out of print for years, but some folks still have the product and there's a fairly active community that plays mostly online. GenCon is one of the few times that people can physically get together to play, so we try to make the most of it. Six of us showed up to play a little Fallen-Wizard limited, not a format really meant to be played with the White Hand set, but we had fun with it. A good time was had by all right up until the end of the third and last round...

...at which point the fire alarm went off in the convention center. They build their alarms loud in Indianapolis, I can vouch for that. At the time, we got no explanation, just announcements and convention center people telling us to pick up our stuff and head outside. I was fairly impressed that everyone moved pretty quickly and without much disorder to head outside. Since I'd just finished my game anyway, I just left and headed over to dinner with the guys. Later I heard that turning a few thousand gamers out into the street has its consequences - traffic was stopped on one of the streets out in front of the center when a giant Red Rover game was spontaneously organized while the fire department checked out the building. Fortunately there was nothing serious wrong - the rumor mill said it was a kitchen fire in one of the food areas - and within the hour everyone was back inside and the convention was back underway. I'm pretty glad this happened later at night when the dealer hall was closed, though - trying to evacuate that would have been a whole additional level of complexity.

After dinner, Demetrius, Brice, Al and I headed back to the con. First we stopped off at Cardhalla since it was time for the destruction, which is always fun to watch. Then Demetrius and his boy Brice got up close and personal with the holy warrior. Finally we wandered over to the card gaming area and got into a Magic booster draft. I believe that's the longest I've ever gone at GenCon without playing any Magic - I hadn't even thrown down in a pickup game until this. Didn't miss it at all, with so much else going on. Maybe not playing the first 3/4 of the con was a good move, since I got a pretty decent draft and took 2nd out of 8. I figured that was good enough, might as well quit while I was ahead, so once the other guys finished we headed back to the hotel. Well, some of us did - Al met up with David and then camped out by the Serra Angel so they could get From the Vault: Exiled cards cheap in the morning. My days of pulling stunts like that are over, but I can respect the young ones that are still crazy enough to pull it off - more power to 'em.

Sunday morning was another day to sleep in, still fighting off the cold. Everyone got up and cleaned out the room in time to check out, then headed back to the dealer hall for one last swing through. I picked up a bunch of little gifts for people that I'd spotted earlier at various times, plus a couple things of my own - including the "be Human" soundtrack from Ghost in the Shell:SAC for $15, a better deal than I'd expected. After a couple hours of that, I'd spent all the money I cared to, and Mike and I packed up the car and headed home.

GenCon is always a blast. We missed some of the old guard this time out - the Rice brothers, Mike J and Tim from Owosso, Greg - but the new fellas acquitted themselves well and we all had a great time. Already looking forward to 2010!

Saturday, July 25, 2009

Anime Review: Starship Operators

I'm a big fan of military science fiction, from the humorous to the epic. When a military sci-fi series pops up on my Netflix suggestions, I jump at it. Starship Operators was the latest to hit my mailbox.

The story gets moving pretty much right away, with a group of cadets ending up in charge of their own battleship by the end of the first episode. This is a good thing, since there's only 13 episodes. With such a short series there's not room for a lot of plot twists, but there are a few that work nicely.

The characters aren't particularly well defined, primarily because there are so many of them to cover in such a short time. I got a pretty good feel for Sinon and the rest of the bridge crew, though. The strengths and weaknesses of each one came through clearly. I was impressed by the way the story worked not only with the character's strengths, but the weaknesses as well.

The animation was very well done. The space battles were impressive and the characters distinctive. Ignore the silly short-skirt-long-boots part of the female uniforms (not that I ignored it :P), and most of the animation even seemed fairly realistic as well. I particularly liked how most of the battleship designs were focused more on space combat functionality rather than aerodynamic lines - exactly how deep-space combat vessels should be depicted.

There were numerous small things that required some higher-than-average suspension of disbelief in the series. The "revolver" cannon, for instance, that actually looked like a giant-scale sixgun. Or the way that none of the crew ever needed to exercise, despite spending a large portion of their time in zero-gee, yet had no issues with planetary gravity. I didn't mind this since the primary focus was on the battle tactics and politics, and none of this little stuff had any major impact on those.

I enjoyed Starship Operators primarily for the space battles and the political maneuvering behind the storyline. It would have been nice to expand the series a bit to focus more on the character development aspect, but all in all, a series worth watching for anyone that likes space-war type military sci-fi.

Monday, June 15, 2009

Strange But Really "DEEP" Thoughts!

Forwarded to me from a random friend. I laughed a bit, so I thought I'd share.


ON DEEP THOUGHTS
A day without sunshine is like night.

ON HIGHER EDUCATION
College is a fountain of knowledge...and the students are there to drink.

ON MATHEMATICAL TRANSFORMS
A polar bear is a rectangular bear after a coordinate transform.

ON YOUTH
"Some people say that I must be a horrible person, but that's not true. I have the heart of a young boy -- in a jar on my desk."
-- Steven King, 3/8/90

ON PROBLEM SOLVING
When the only tool you own is a hammer, every problem begins to resemble a nail.
-- Abraham Maslow

ON MATERIALISM
He who dies with the most toys, is, nonetheless, still dead.

ON ECONOMICS
The cost of living hasn't affected its popularity.

ON PUBLISHING OR PERISHING
I am returning this otherwise good typing paper to you because someone has printed gibberish all over it and put your name at the top.
-- English Professor, Ohio University

ON REVISIONIST HISTORY
What was sliced bread the greatest thing since?

ON DATING
When aiming for the common denominator, be prepared for the occasional division by zero.

ON LAMENTATION
Of all the things I've lost, I miss my mind the most.

ON POETIC LOVE
When you're swimmin' in the creek
And an eel bites your cheek
That's a Moray!
-- Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers

ON MODERNISM
Q: How many surrealists does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: Two. One to hold the giraffe and the other to fill the bathtub with brightly colored machine tools.

ON MATERIAL SCIENCE
Character density: The number of very weird people in the office.

ON EXTINCTION
Save the whales. Collect the whole set.

ON HUMILITY
To err is human, to moo bovine.

ON EXPLANATION OF THE END
"... one of the main causes of the fall of the Roman Empire was that, lacking zero, they had no way to indicate successful termination of their C programs."
-- Robert Firth

ON PROPHECY
The meek shall inherit the earth---they are too weak to refuse.

ON NUMBERS
Grabel's Law: 2 is not equal to 3---not even for very large values of 2.

ON WORLD POLITICS
Diplomacy is the art of saying "nice doggy" until you can find a rock.

AND FINALLY, ON DRUGS AND DEVELOPMENT
There are two major products to come out of Berkeley: LSD and UNIX. We don't believe this to be a coincidence.

Saturday, May 23, 2009

To the MagiNet hotel Internet help desk people...

...I'm sorry I snapped at you today. I am the worst customer of Internet connection help desks. I know too much about this stuff, and so my patience quickly goes to zero when we're obviously barking up the wrong tree.

Background: I had trouble with the 'net connection in the Courtyard Parramatta hotel today. Worked fine yesterday, no luck today. Tried all the usual reboot, reseat cables, etc. with no luck, so I was forced to call the support line. (Yeah, I said cables - no wireless except in the lobby.)

First up was a guy who ran me through the support script. Is the computer on? Is your network cable plugged in? Are you using DHCP? Blah, blah, blah. I darn near told him that my cupholder was broken, just to see what his reaction would be, but I resisted since I really wanted this to be over with as soon as possible.

Finally he got around to asking me to reboot the modem in the room, which I hadn't thought of myself. I'm spoiled by wireless these days, forgot about the hardware that goes along with the cords. Bingo, the data light is blinking instead of steady green. Ah, I've seen this before - means the modem's not getting a data signal. Someone probably kicked the cord in the switch room. Problem found, right?

Uh, no. Apparently they don't teach first-level support about the modem lights. Despite my explanations, he drops off the phone to call the manager at the hotel. (Actually he may very well have done that just to get away from my explanations, since obviously he had no clue what I was talking about. ) The manager comes up to my room with a new modem. Fail. The manager calls back...and of course we get someone completely different since the first guy never told us who he was.

Now we're talking to a nice lady with an Indian accent (as best I could tell - I'm no expert). She starts talking to the manager, obviously walking through the support script again, while he tried to use my laptop to go through it. He's completely lost, not able to find anything she's telling him to do, while all the time the real problem is sitting under the desk happily blinking its little green failure light. I finally lost patience and took the phone over, determining that the lady on the phone was reading a Vista support script while my laptop has XP, so of course the manager wasn't seeing the stuff she was asking for. I again explain about the modem lights, and again there's no recognition on the other end. "The lights are on, it must be working!" Bah.

At this point I've realized we're going to get nowhere, so I ask the manager if any other rooms have working Internet. Apparently yes, if you go down to the 5th floor (I was on the 6th). One room switch later, everything's working fine. I don't envy the next person who tries to use the Internet connection in room 622, though.

So to the unknown guy and nice Indian lady who attempted to help today, I'm sorry about being short with you on the phone. And to whoever wrote the MagiNet support scripts...dig a little deeper into what the modem lights mean, it'll save us all some frustration.

Saturday, March 28, 2009

Rose-Hulman CSSE Board of Advisors - March 2009

Since 2000, I've been part of the Rose-Hulman Computer Science and Software Engineering Department's board of advisors. It's not a demanding position, usually consisting of one meeting a year in Terre Haute and the occasional email conversation. I enjoy the opportunity to keep up with the happenings at my alma mater and provide some feedback to them about what's going on in the world of industry.

This year I drove down to Terre Haute on Thursday. Other than my BlackBerry Storm completely running out of power, it was an uneventful trip. Several of the board members and faculty did a short panel discussion with some students, and then had a fine dinner at Magdy's, a place I recommend if anyone happens to visit Terre Haute and is looking for a mid-to-up-scale dining experience. Thursday evening was spent in the Hampton Inn, so chosen since I could use Hilton points to avoid paying actual money.

Friday was filled with meetings for the board, including with CSSE faculty, RHIT Faculty Dean Art Western, and a student class. The Institute seems to be doing well despite the poor economy, although they have had to make cutbacks. The nearly $40k per year price tag doesn't seem to be deterring too many students, and somewhere between 450-500 freshman are expected in the fall. I was glad to hear that despite the belt-tightening, no faculty or staff have been laid off, and the department has the resources they need. That hasn't always been the case in past years, so it's good to see the level of excellence being maintained now. There are also plans to offer a Masters in Software Engineering in the Indianapolis area, which I see as a great growth opportunity for the department and Rose as a whole.

There are always some interesting side conversations at these things. The one that stuck in my mind this time was a discussion on how fundamental architecture changes are affecting how we develop software. Multi-core processors, virtualization, cloud computing - these sorts of architectures provide very different capabilities from the primarily monolithic architectures where most of the current software development patterns and toolsets were developed. It will be very interesting to see what develops in the next few years to take advantage of the new capabilities.

After the meetings, I drove back to Michigan. Some annoying road construction on I-65 added about an hour to the trip, but it was otherwise uneventful. I did see a fairly extensive wind farm along US-41 on the way, which was nice to see - green energy on the hoof, as it were. Another decade and that may become the norm rather than the exception.

I also made extensive use of the eReader on my Storm during the trip. Other than the aforementioned battery issues, it worked quite well. I'm thinking that I'll stick with the eReader over buying a Kindle for now. I can't justify spending an extra $350+ on something when the only real benefit seems to be battery life. There's ways to get around the BlackBerry's battery issues (car charger, using my laptop to recharge it, etc), and the Storm is a whole lot more convenient since I'm always carrying it around anyway.

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Blackberry Storm

About 4 months ago, I got a Blackberry Storm through work. My old Pearl was dying - the scroll wheel wasn't working too well - and when I asked about fixing it, I was told that with our warranty service it was easier to just get a new one.

The Storm looks cool. It's obviously meant to compete with the iPhone in terms of user experience. Nice big icons, touch scrolling, and so on. But as is so often the case with Apple imitators, it just doesn't measure up.

The biggest issue I have with the Storm is speed. The response time is very slow at times - not always, but often enough that I notice it. It's especially bad when trying to type on the on-screen keyboard. I often have to slow down to avoid missing letters or accidentally deleting something.

The touch screen is a bit strange in that you have to press the screen down to make a selection - kind of like clicking the mouse. Doing this is not very precise, which is fine for selecting big icons but makes it very difficult to edit text. Since there's no other navigation option, I sometimes find myself sending out emails with known errors because it's too hard to correct them without rewriting the whole thing.

Battery usage is pretty bad. Unless you turn off the wireless connection (which kind of defeats the purpose of having a phone), you're good for about one full day before your battery runs dry. This is fine if you remember to plug it in every night, but forget once and you're stuck. On the bright side, it does charge fine with a USB cord plugged into your computer, so charging at work isn't a big deal.

Overall, I wouldn't recommend a Storm right now. The next version could be much better with a few improvements, most notably fixing the occasional slowdowns. If you're considering one, I'd wait for version 2.