Bunk3m's picture
Bunk3m - Mon, 2013/05/13 - 20:45

Hi.

I continue to learn the SugarCRM appliance.  I'm a bit confused about a few things.  Wondering if you can answer these.

1) This appliance is Debian Squeeze?

I am curious to confirm because the discussions in the forums are about updating vmware-tools for Ubuntu.  There is also links to vmware-tools ubuntu sources.  I think the appliance is running TK-12 which should be Debian Squeeze.  So ....

2) Is there a how-to somewhere to update vmware-tools for Debian Squeeze [TK-12]?  

I can find info about generic vmware-tools on debian and did follow those.  But it appears that there are some sort of 3rd party vmware tools installed. Those are removed by the vmware-tools install.  Then the update crashes on casper which I thought was something that runs on Ubuntu??? So I'm a bit confused at the moment as to how I should upgrade the tools.

Thanks in advance. 

Forum: 
Support
Tags: 
vmware
vmware-tools
sugarcrm
Jeremy Davis's picture

Jeremy Davis - Tue, 2013/05/14 - 02:01

Hi there,

I have very little experience with VMware, I use PVE (OVZ & KVM) and at times VirtualBox but hopefully can at least head you in the right direction...

1) Yes the v12.x version of TKL appliances are based on Debian Squeeze. Previous versions were based on Ubuntu (v11.x on Lucid, previous versions on Hardy). Unfortunately you are right in that most of the documentation (informal documentation via forums, possibly even the more formal docs under 'help') relate to earlier versions which are likely not relevant to v12.x.

2) Surely there is. But unfortunately I have no idea... AFAIK the VMWare tools that are installed aren't the 'official' ones from VMware. My understanding is that they are open source ones to keep the TKL appliances completely open source - the 'official' ones are proprietry AFAIK.

You may get Casper errors (Casper does come from Ubuntu but it is related to running as a live CD) but in my experience you can ignore them. Although you say it actually crashes on Casper...?! I've never had that experience

Bunk3m's picture

Bunk3m - Tue, 2013/05/14 - 03:35

Thanks JedMeister.

I guess crash is maybe a bit harsh.  It hung after giving a 3 line error message.  I thought perhaps that it had moved on past the errror and was processing something but after an hour I figured it was hung.  Ctrl+c killed the job.  I went back to the snapshot that I made prior to starting the update of new vmware tools.

After spending some time, I figured out that the appliance has open-vm tools:

dpkg -l open-vm*
Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
| Status=Not/Inst/Conf-files/Unpacked/halF-conf/Half-inst/trig-aWait/Trig-pend
|/ Err?=(none)/Reinst-required (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
||/ Name                  Version               Description
+++-=====================-=====================-==========================================================
un  open-vm-modules       <none>                (no description available)
ii  open-vm-modules-2.6.3 1:8.4.2-261024-1+2.6. open-vm modules for Linux (kernel 2.6.32-5-686).
un  open-vm-source        <none>                (no description available)
un  open-vm-toolbox       <none>                (no description available)
ii  open-vm-tools         1:8.4.2-261024-1      tools and components for VMware guest systems (CLI tools)

Unfortunately those are pretty dated.  At the moment open-vm is 9.3.6 with 9.0.0 as stable.  This could be why I have some problems with the appliance as I'm running the lastest vsphere 5.1 and vmx-0.9.  The vmware tools are 9.something.  I believe we should have open-vm-tools 9.0.0 for that kind of vm.

I see that Wheezy has version 8.8 of open-vm tools.

Is there a way to update?  Or would that be stupid?

I downloaded open-vm 9.0.0 stable from sourceforge but have not installed.  I believe this would need to be compiled into the kernel.  That kind of gets into a space that I'm really out of my depth.

As to casper, I see it was discontinued in Debian in 2007.  What purpose would it have in this appliance?  It isn't a live-cd at all.  Would it be safe to remove?

Thanks again.


Jeremy Davis's picture

Jeremy Davis - Tue, 2013/05/14 - 09:58

Although hang is probably the most appropriate term... :)

Semantics aside... Whilst the version installed is a little dated, is there any problem with it? Are they not working as they should (i.e. a bug of some sort?) Or is there some features missing? If you answer no to both of those questions I'd just stop there... Whilst in my free time I tend to be of the opinion that "if it ain't broke you ain't trying hard enough...!" :) But in any production machine that I am working on, I'm definately from the school of thought that "if it ain't broke, it don't need fixing!"

If you wish to proceed then probably the easiest way to go would be to download the Wheezy deb and install it ('dpkg -i <packagename>'). If you have dependancy issues, try fulfilling them from Squeeze repo, or if not possible download the deb from Wheezy. You could add the Wheezy repo and install with apt-get but make sure you only install the vm-tools then disable the Wheezy repo - or pin the vm-tools package and make sure that the standard Squeeze repos have priority. Otherwise you could end up in a huge mess...

Installing from source is perhaps a better (more reliable) way and although it seems daunting TBH it's generally not that bad (unless it doesn't work, in which case then it becomes severely daunting!)

TKL ISOs are Live bootable. AFAIK the intention behind that is so that they can be tested prior to installation. I don't think it would be an issue at all to remove Casper (as AFAIK it is irrelevant once TKL is installed) And it certainly has no relevance at all in a virtual environment (especially if you are using a VM image). But I have never done that so can't 100% vouch for whether or not it will cause any issues. FWIW I have seen the errors plenty, but never actually had any issue with it - I guess there is a slim chance that there was some other issue...?

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