The Tech Journal

Repurpose your old Netbook or Laptop in to the perfect VMware Horizon View VDI Client

Fedora, Linux, Omnissa Horizon, VMware No Responses »

Aug 262018

One of the coolest things I love about running VMware Horizon View and VDI is that you can repurpose old computers, laptops, or even netbooks in to perfect VDI clients running Linux! This is extremely easy to do and gives life to old hardware you may have lying around (and we all know there’s nothing wrong with that).

I generally use Fedora and the VMware Horizon View Linux client to accomplish this. See below to see how I do it!

Quick Guide

Download the Fedora Workstation install or netboot ISO from here.
Burn it to a DVD/CD if you have DVD/CD drive, or you can write it to a USB stick using this method here.
Install Fedora on to your laptop/notebook/netbook using the workstation install.
Update your Fedora Linux install using the following command
```
dnf -y upgrade
```

Install the prerequisites for the VMware Horizon View Linux client using these commands

dnf -y install https://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm https://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm
dnf -y install gstreamer-plugins-ugly gstreamer-plugins-bad gstreamer-ffmpeg xine-lib-extras-freeworld xine-lib-extras-freeworld libssl* libcrypto* openssl-devel libpng12 systemd-devel libffi-devel

To fix an issue with package versions and dependancies, run the following commands

ln -s /usr/lib64/libudev.so.1 /usr/lib64/libudev.so.0
ln -s /usr/lib64/libffi.so.6 /usr/lib64/libffi.so.5

Download the VMware Horizon View Linux client from here
Make the VMware bundle executable and then run the installer using these commands (your file name may be different depending on build version number)
```
chmod 777 VMware-Horizon-Client-4.8.0-8518891.x64.bundle
sudo ./VMware-Horizon-Client-4.8.0-8518891.x64.bundle
```
Complete the installation wizard
You’re done!

To run the client, you can find it in the GUI applications list as “VMware Horizon Client”, or you can launch it by running “vmware-view”.

VMware Horizon View on Linux in action

Here is a VMware Horizon View Linux client running on HP Mini 220 Netbook

Additional Notes:

-If you’re comfortable, instead of the workstation install, you can install the Fedora LXQt Desktop spin, which is a lightweight desktop environment perfect for low performance hardware or netbooks. More information and the download link for Fedora LXQt Desktop Spin can be found here: https://spins.fedoraproject.org/en/lxqt/

-If you installed Fedora Workstation and would like to install the LXQt window manager afterwards, you can do so by running the following command (after installing, at login prompt, click on the gear to change window managers):

dnf install @lxqt-desktop-environment

-Some of the prerequisites above in the guide may not be required, however I have installed them anyways for compatibility.

Fedora Core – Black screen with cursor after install or upgrade

Fedora 26 Responses »

Aug 252018

After doing a fresh install or upgrade of Fedora Core Linux (FC28 in my case, but this applies to any version), you may notice that when the system boots it gets stuck on a black screen with a white cursor. The cursor will not move and there will be no drive activity.

This issue occurs with GNOME on my old HP Mini 210 Netbook every time I do a fresh install of Fedora on it (or upgrade it).

Follow the process below to temporarily boot and then permanently fix it.

Temporary fix

To get the system to boot:

Power on the computer, and carefully wait for the GRUB bootloader to appear (the boot selection screen).
When the GRUB bootloader appears, press the “e” key to edit the highlighted (default) boot entry.
Scroll down until you get to the line starting with “linux16”, then use your right arrow key and scroll right until you get to the end of the kernel options (while scrolling right, you may scroll multiple lines down which is fine and expected). The line should finally end with “rhgb” and “quiet”.
Remove “rhgb” and “quiet”, and then add “nomodeset=0”
Press “CTRL+x” to boot the system.
The system should now boot.

FYI: “rhgb” is the kernel switch/option for redhat graphical boot, and “quiet” makes the system messages more quiet (who would have guessed).

Permanent Fix

To permanently resolve the issue:

Once the system has booted, log in.
Open a terminal window (Applications -> Terminal, or press the “Start” button and type terminal).
Use your favorite text editor and edit the file “/etc/default/grub” (I use nano which can be install by running “dnf install nano”):
```
nano /etc/default/grub
```
Locate the line with the variable “GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX”, and add “nomodeset=0” to the variables. Feel free to remove “rhgb” and “quiet” if you’d like text boot. Here’s an example of my line after editing (yours will look different):
```
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="resume=/dev/mapper/fedora_da--netbook01-swap rd.lvm.lv=fedora_da-netbook01/root rd.lvm.lv=fedora_da-netbook01/swap nomodeset=0"
```
Save the file and exit the text editor (CTRL+x to quit, the press “y” and enter to save)
At the bash prompt, execute the following command to regenerate the grub.conf file on the /boot partition from your new default file:
```
grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg
```
Restart your system, it should now boot!

Please Note: Always make sure you have a full system backup before modifying any system files!

Create Fedora or CentOS USB boot media with an ISO image file and dd on Linux

CentOS, Fedora, Linux 2 Responses »

Aug 252018

A fun fact that a lot of users still aren’t aware of, is that you can create Fedora and CentOS bootable media (a bootable USB stick) using the DVD/CD ISO image, and using the linux dd command.

So if you have an existing and running Linux install, you can use this method to quickly write an ISO file to a USB stick!

Here’s How!

Get your USB stick handy, make sure it’s big enough to store the ISO file you want to download.
Download your preferred ISO DVD or CD Image for Installation from CentOS or Fedora.
Connect your USB stick, open a terminal session and run the following command to identify the device name of the USB stick (mine was sdb for /dev/sdb):
```
[root@StephenW-X1 ~]# dmesg | grep removable
[  171.890670] sd 1:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI removable disk
```

Issue the following command to write the ISO image to the USB stick. Change the input filename, and output device name to reflect your own.

[root@StephenW-X1 Downloads]# dd if=Fedora-Workstation-netinst-x86_64-28-1.1.iso of=/dev/sdb
1193984+0 records in
1193984+0 records out
611319808 bytes (611 MB, 583 MiB) copied, 13.6777 s, 44.7 MB/s

Your done!

Please Note:

Choosing the wrong /dev/sd[x] device can case you to write the ISO file to your hard drive, or another hard drive in your system. Make sure you select the right device name. If you’re unsure, don’t run the command.
You can also use the “Fedora Media Writer for Windows” available here: https://getfedora.org/fmw/FedoraMediaWriter-win32-4.1.1.exe to write an ISO image to USB if you’re running Windows.

HPE Moonshot – The absolute definition of high-density, software defined infrastructure

Compute, HPE, Moonshot 1 Response »

Aug 222018

HPE Moonshot

I had the pleasure of playing with a fully loaded HPE Moonshot 1500 Chassis, and an HPe Edgeline EL4000 Converged Edge System last month during my visit to HPe Headquarters in Toronto, Ontario. I like to think of this thing as the answer for high-density anything and everything!

HPE Moonshot 1500 Chassis

I’ve known about the HPE Moonshot portfolio for some time, however I didn’t understand how mammoth one of these chassis’ are until I saw it performing in real life.

HPE Moonshot 1500 Chassis with 45 Cartridges

The HPE Moonshot 1500 Chassis supports up to 45 cartridges, and up to 4 SoC (System on Chip) OS instances per cartridge for a total of 180 OS instances in a 4.3U (5U for 1 x 1500 Chassis or 13U for 3 x 1500 Chassis) sized footprint. The chassis also supports up to 2 switches and 2 uplink modules in addition to the 45 cartridges.

Prime uses for HPE Moonshot 1500 (remember, high-density everything):

VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure via VMware or Microsoft)
HDI (Hosted Desktop Infrastructure via Citrix Provisioning Server)
Server consolidation and Virtualization
SDDC (Software Defined Data Center)
HPC (High Performance Computing, both Virtualized and Non-Virtualized workloads)
Energy Efficient Compute
EUC (End User Computing – Software defined end user desktops without virtualization)
Video Transcoding
Analytics and Interpritation
IoT and AI
Custom workloads

As you can see, you can virtually load up whatever you’d like on it that requires a CPU (HPE Moonshot can run both x86 and ARM architectures depending on which cartridges are utilized).

The chassis is monitored and managed via the HPE Moonshot 1500 Chassis Management module and the HPE Moonshot Provisioning Manager.

HPE Edgeline EL4000 Converged Edge System

The HPE Edgeline EL4000 was designed (you probably guessed it) for the edge. Whether it be the enterprise edge, media edge, or IoT edge, the EL4000 is a perfect fit.

HPE Edgeline EL4000 Converged Edge System

This bad boy supports up to 4 HPE Proliant Server Cartridge (m510 or m710x) compute nodes in a 1U package. It also supports up to 4 PCIe cards, or 4 PXIe modules assignable to any of the compute modules.

Prime uses for the HPE Edgeline EL4000:

Edge Computing (AI, IoT EDGE)
ROBO (Remote Office Branch Office)
Server Consolidation and Virtualization (ROBO)
VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure)
HDI (Hosted Desktop Infrastructure)
Video Transcoding
Industrial applications (Machine monitoring, Condition Monitoring)
Edgeline data analytics
Industrial/Manufacturing Quality Control and Quality Assurance (Video Analytics and Interpretation)
SMB Applications

The El4000 has iLo (Integrated Lights Out) built in, and provides management and monitoring. This unit also supports GPU accelerator/compute cards such as the Nvidia P4 Graphics Accelerator (specifically an Nvidia Tesla P4 8GB Computational PCIe card).

HPE Moonshot Cartridges

With the flexibility of different cartridges, along with Moonshot being software defined, you can highly customize whatever workload you may be running.

HPE Proliant m800 Moonshot Cartridge Front View

HPE Proliant m800 Moonshot Cartridge Side View

The following cartridges are currently available for the HPE Moonshot platform:

HPE Proliant m710p – Server or Desktop Virtualization, includes Intel Iris Pro P6300 graphics for VDI deployments (supported by VMware vSphere for vDGA passthrough and vSGA) or video transcoding.
HPE Proliant m710x – Server or Desktop Virtualization, includes Intel Iris Pro P580 graphics for VDI deployments (supported by VMware vSphere for vDGA passthrough and vSGA) or video transcoding.
HPE Proliant m700p – Designed for high-performance Citrix Mobile Workspaces (high-density EUC) for 4 desktops per cartridge with AMD Radeon HD 8000 graphics.
HPE Proliant m510 – Features the Xeon D processor targeting high performance, AI, analytics, machine learning, and IoT workloads.

As you can see there is quite some flexibility as far as the cartridges you can roll out. I get really excited when I think of VDI with Moonshot just because of the fact that the Intel Iris Pro P580, and P6300 are fully supported on VMware’s HCL for vDGA and vSGA graphics for vSphere 6.5 and 6.7.

There are also retired/discontinued cartridges (such as the HPE Proliant m800) which are beyond the scope of this blog post.

HPE Moonshot Networking

On the HPe Moonshot 1500 Chassis, networking is handled inside of the chassis via 1 or 2 network switch modules and uplink modules. You’ll then connect the uplinks from the uplink modules to your real physical network. You can connect to your network via QSFP+ or SFP+ connections using DAC (direct attached cables) or fiber cables with transceivers at speeds of 40Gb or 10Gb.

The Moonshot 1500 chassis supports the following switch modules:

Moonshot-45Gc Switch – 1Gb Switch connectivity for m510, m510-16c, m710x cartridges and works with the Moonshot 6 x SFP+ Uplink Module
Moonshot-45XGc Switch – 1Gb or 10Gb Switch connectivity for m510, m510-16c, m710x cartridges and works with the Moonshot 16 x SFP+ Uplink Module or the 4 QSFP+ Uplink Module
Moonshot-180XGc Switch – 1Gb or 10Gb Switch connectivity for m510, m510-16c, m710x cartridges, and 1Gb Switch connectivity for m700p and works with the Moonshot 16 x SFP+ Uplink Module or the 4 QSFP+ Uplink Module

On the HPE Edgeline EL4000, networking is handled via 2 x 10Gb SFP+ switched version, or a 8 x 10Gb QSFP+ pass-thru version. The unit also has a dedicated 1Gb RJ45 port for HPE iLo connectivity.

HPE Moonshot Storage

Each cartridge can contain it’s own dedicated storage up to 2TB. This is perfect for a HPE StoreVirtual VSA deployment or even basic direct attached storage. You can also connect HPE Moonshot to an HPE 3PAR SAN or an HPE Apollo 4500 storage system via the 10Gb network Fabric.

There’s a few options as to how you can plan your storage deployment with Moonshot:

DAS – Direct Attached Storage (in cartridge)
HPE 3PAR SAN or HPE Apollo 4500 Storage System
iSCSI/NFS (May or may not be supported depending on your workload)
VMware vSAN (May or may not be supported/certified)

As you can see, there’s quite a few options and possibilities as far as your storage deployment goes.

HPE Moonshot Pictures

Here’s some additional photos of the unit.

HPe Moonshot at HPe Center of Excellence

HPE Moonshot 1500 Chassis opened and running

HPE Moonshot 1500 Chassis with Cartridges

And remember, if you’re interested in the HPE Moonshot product or any other products or solutions in HPE’s portfolio, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me or my company (Digitally Accurate Inc.) for more information as we are an HPE partner and design/configure/sell HPE solutions!

Windows Server 2012 R2 .NET Windows Updates fail with error 0x80092004

Microsoft, Windows Server 191 Responses »

Aug 212018

You may notice on Windows Server 2012 R2, when applying Windows Updates that one or more .NET updates may fail with error code 0x80092004. This issue may affect all, or only some of your Windows Server 2012 R2 servers.

When troubleshooting this, you may notice numerous specific errors such as “Couldn’t find the hash of component: NetFx4-PenIMC”, or errors with a CAB file. These errors will probably come from update KB4054566 and KB4340558.

The Fix

To resolve this, we are going to download the updates MSU files from the Microsoft Update Catalog, and fully uninstall, then re-install the problematic updates.

Please Note: Always make sure you have a full backup before making modifications to your servers.

Please follow the instructions below:

Create a folder called “updatefix” on the root of your C drive on the server
Navigate to the Windows Update catalog at: https://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com/
Search for KB4054566 and download the file for “Windows Server 2012 R2”, save it to the folder you created above called “updatefix” on the root of your C Drive. There should be one file in the download.
Search for KB4340558 and download the files for “Windows Server 2012 R2”, save it to the folder you created above called “updatefix” on the root of your C Drive. There should be a total of 3 files in this download.
Create a folder in the “updatefix” folder called “expanded”.

Open an elevated command prompt, and run the following commands to extract the updates CAB files:

expand -f:* "C:\updatefix\windows8.1-kb4338415-x64_cc34d1c48e0cc2a92f3c340ad9a0c927eb3ec2d1.msu" C:\updatefix\expanded\
expand -f:* "C:\updatefix\windows8.1-kb4338419-x64_4d257a38e38b6b8e3d9e4763dba2ae7506b2754d.msu" C:\updatefix\expanded\
expand -f:* "C:\updatefix\windows8.1-kb4338424-x64_e3d28f90c6b9dd7e80217b6fb0869e7b6dfe6738.msu" C:\updatefix\expanded\
expand -f:* "C:\updatefix\windows8.1-kb4054566-x64_e780e6efac612bd0fcaf9cccfe15d6d05c9cc419.msu" C:\updatefix\expanded\

Now let’s uninstall the problematic updates. Some of these commands may fail depending on which updates you have successfully installed. Run the following commands individually to remove the updates:

dism /online /remove-package /packagepath:C:\updatefix\expanded\Windows8.1-KB4338424-x64.cab
dism /online /remove-package /packagepath:C:\updatefix\expanded\Windows8.1-KB4338419-x64.cab
dism /online /remove-package /packagepath:C:\updatefix\expanded\Windows8.1-KB4338415-x64.cab
dism /online /remove-package /packagepath:C:\updatefix\expanded\Windows8.1-KB4054566-x64.cab

Reboot your server.

Now let’s cleanly install the updates. All of these commands should be successful when running. Run the following commands individually to install the updates:

dism /online /add-package /packagepath:C:\updatefix\expanded\Windows8.1-KB4054566-x64.cab
dism /online /add-package /packagepath:C:\updatefix\expanded\Windows8.1-KB4338415-x64.cab
dism /online /add-package /packagepath:C:\updatefix\expanded\Windows8.1-KB4338419-x64.cab
dism /online /add-package /packagepath:C:\updatefix\expanded\Windows8.1-KB4338424-x64.cab

Reboot your server.
You have now fixed the issue and all updates should now be cleanly installing via Windows Updates!

Leave a comment and let me know if this worked for you!

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