I don’t dabble in Linux very much but had an issue with an account on a CentOS server and I’d forgotten how to reset a password
You need to be logged in as superuser i.e. root so that you are then able to change the password for any account.
The command is passwd:
passwd joebloggs
You should then be prompted to enter a new password and asked to confirm
I initially used the VMware guide http://www.vmware.com/support/ws5/doc/ws_newguest_tools_linux.html
From installing a few times on a variety of Linux flavours this is my interpretation.
In the Virtual Infrastructure right click on the Virtual Machine and select Guest and Install/Upgrade VMware Tools
Click OK on the warning message
The VMware tools are loaded as a CD/DVD drive in the guest Linux virtual machine. Ensure that you are logged in with root privileges, right click on the tar file and select Extract to
Select an extraction location from the Extract in folder field. In this case I have chosen /tmp
Once extraction is complete open a Terminal window and type cd /tmp
The vmware-tools-distrib directory should exist inside the /tmp directory. Type
cd vmware-tools-distrib
Next type
./vmware-install.pl
Answer the various configuration questions pressing Enter if you are happy to accept the default values
Also take care choosing display resolution as certain applications require a minimum for installation
In this case I chose 1024 x 768
Once completed you will need to restart X session to pick up the resolution
A quick and easy way to restart is to use Ctrl-Alt and Backspace which will log you out of your desktop session
To increase a virtual machines system disk running a Linux OS is a two step process.
Firstly we need to expand the disk and then we need to increase the partition size inside the host.
Expand the disk
Turn off the virtual machine that you wish to administer.
Open a command prompt and change directory to C:’Program Files’VMWare’VMWare Server or C:’Program Files’VMware’VMware Workstation depending upon what product you are running.
Run this command to expand the virtual disk: vmware-vdiskmanager -x 20GB "My harddisk.vmdk"
In my case I would like to increase the disk to 20GB so substitute your value. Include the full file location for the vmdk file and use quotes if there are spaces in the folder and/or filename
The disk expansion should complete successfully
Increase the partition size
Download the GParted Live LiveCD available here http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php
Gnome Partition Editor is a small bootable livecd that we can use to boot your VMware virtual machine so that we can adjust the partition size using the Gparted utility
In VMware server, edit your machine settings and configure the CD-ROM to use the Gparted .iso file and ensure that it is also ‘connected at power on’
Power your virtual machine on. You may find that you also need to enter the virtual machines BIOS settings to change the boot order so that the CD-ROM drive is first on the list. To do this press F2 when you power on the virtual machine and select the ‘Boot’ option. – and + will change the items boot order sequence
The iso image should now boot and the Gnome Partition Editor menu screen appears. Select the Gparted Live (Default settings) option
When the ‘Package configuration’ screen appears select the ‘Don’t touch keymap’ option
Select your language from the list when prompted
Select the mode. Default is 0 ‘Continue to start X to use Gparted automatically’
Once it completes the boot process the livecd GUI is loaded
Select your partition and click on the resize/move button. As you can see the partition I want to resize is LVM2 and not supported by Gparted!
I have had a number of virtual linux machines that have run out of disk space and have found it difficult in the past to find one solution to increasing the virtual disk and expanding free space into a logical volume.
The most recent example was when I needed to extend from 8GB to 20GB and using the Gnome Partition Editor, Gparted, would not work as it doesn’t currently have LVM support.
There are some linux commands that get around this problem so first I extended the VMware virtual disk.
Expand the disk
Turn off the virtual machine that you wish to administer.
Open a command prompt and change directory to C:’Program Files’VMWare’VMWare Server or C:’Program Files’VMware’VMware Workstation depending upon what product you are running.
Run this command to expand the virtual disk: vmware-vdiskmanager -x 20GB "My harddisk.vmdk"
In my case I would like to increase the disk to 20GB so substitute your value. Include the full file location for the vmdk file and use quotes if there are spaces in the folder and/or filename
The disk expansion should complete successfully
Restart the VMware virtual machine and open a terminal session
Issue the df -k command which here shows us that the logical volume is at 100% usage
We need to create a partition on /dev/sda
Type ls -al /dev/sda* which lists the existing partitions
Our new partition will be /dev/sda3
Type fdisk /dev/sda then type’n’ for new partition
Enter ‘p’ and 3 for the partition number (in this instance..obviously enter the partition number that matches your environment)
Also accept the default First and Last cylinders
Finally type ‘w’ to write table to disk and exit
If prompted to reboot then do so to ensure that the new partition table is written.
After a restart, type ls -al /dev/sda* to verify whether the new partition was created
Now that the partition has been created we need to create a physical volume and add it to the volume group
Type pvcreate /dev/sda3
Type vgextend VolGroup00 /dev/sda3
We need to extend the logical volume
Type vgdisplay
Which shows that there is 11.97GB free that we can add to the volume group
To extend the volume type lvextend -L+11.97G /dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00
I then had an error message that stated that there was ‘Insufficient free space: 384 extents needed but only 383 available’
After a quick search:
http://www.centos.org/docs/5/html/Cluster_Logical_Volume_Manager/nofreeext.html
It seems that I needed to select a slightly smaller size. I selected 11GB rather than 11.97GB which solved this problem.
Finally we need to resize the file system by typing resize2fs /dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00
Type df -k to see if the new space is available to the logical volume
The logical volume has now been resized and now has used space of just 35%!
MartCJ 