If you have installed the VirtualBox guest-additions then you can use the SharedFolders functionality as well. This might be a usefull differentiating feature over VMware Server. VMware Workstation has this feature as well, but it will cost you about 190 dollar.

Shared Folders are folders on your host OS that you denoted to the virtualization product (VirtualBox or VMware Workstation) as being available to the guest OS. This handy because you then do not have to setup Windows or Samba shares on your host to connect to from your guest. Also it prevents you from having to setup particular network settings for it.

An alternative to shared folders, besides Windows or Samba shares is to (S)Ftp the particular files to your guest. If it is about installation files (for example the Oracle 11gR2 database) then you need to have space available in the guest-virtual disks. The virtual disks will grow accordingly. If you go for that approach then it is wise to add a temporary virtual disk to hold the installations. Afterwards you can remove the disk without the need to defrag and shrink the remaining disks.

To use the shared folders in VirtualBox you need to define a folder to share in the SharedFolders screen. This is available through the Devices main menu option:



In a Windows guest you might find the shared folders in the Windows Explorer under the network places.
In Linux guest you need to mount the share explicitly.
You first need to make a directory under the /mnt folder :

[root@oel5soa11g mnt]# mkdir Zarchief
[root@oel5soa11g mnt]# chmod a+w Zarchief/
[root@oel5soa11g mnt]# chmod a+x Zarchief/
[root@oel5soa11g mnt]# ls -l
total 8
drwxrwxrwx 2 root root 4096 Apr 21 14:11 Zarchief

Then you can mount the shared folder with the following command:

# mount -t vboxsf [SharedFolderName] /mnt/[FolderName]

For example:

[root@oel5soa11g mnt]# mount -t vboxsf Zarchief /mnt/Zarchief

Today I wanted to work with a VMware image to play around with weblogic/soasuite 11g etc. But I ran into the nasty FireFox 3.6 conflict with the VMware Console. Since FireFox 3.6.x the console won't start, because of some time-out error. The solution would be to downgrade to FireFox 3.5. But since I have a repository installed version, I found a downgrade too tedious. Too bad that the console plugin won't install in Google Chrome. I tried Mozilla Seamonkey, but that wouldn't do the trick also.

So I desided to get VirtualBox from the stable again. I neatly installed it using the VirtualBox repository for my OpenSUSE (see the bottom of the page here).

I created a VirtualBox VM based on the VMware files of the VM I wanted to start. See this earlier blogpost for a how-to.

Naively I removed the IDE-controller. But it turns out to be needed to be able to mount the Guest-Additions-ISO file. So don't remove that.

Now I hope that there is blessing on this traject, since I have put in too much time in it already, in my opinion.

To debug a bash script and to know what the environment is where a script is behaving it is convenient to log. This is what I added to my e-mail prosessing script yesterday. It is simple and of course every one else could think of it. Probably it is invented hundreds of times. Here's my solution.

#!/bin/bash
###################################################################################################
# Log
# Script to demonstrate logging
#
# author: Martien van den Akker
# (C) march 2010
# Darwin-IT Professionals
###################################################################################################
#Declarations
TRUE=1
FALSE=0
#Logging variables
LOG_ENABLED=$TRUE
#LOG_ENABLED=$FALSE
LOG_DIR=/tmp/log
LOG_FILENAME=$LOG_DIR/routemq.log


#Check log dir and create it if it does not exist.
check_logdir(){
if [ "$LOG_ENABLED" -eq $TRUE ]; then
if [ -d $LOG_DIR ]; then
#log a seperation line
log
else
mkdir $LOG_DIR
fi
fi
}

#Log
log(){
if [ "$LOG_ENABLED" -eq $TRUE ]; then
TEXT="$1 ""$2"
echo $TEXT >>$LOG_FILENAME;
fi
}
# First check logdir
check_logdir
# Log Arguments

log "Number of arguments: " $#
log "First argument: " $1
log "Second argument: " $1
log "End of script"

The script starts with a call to check_logdir(). This function checks if the LOG_DIR exists. If it exists it adds a seperation line. This is because the if has to have a command in the then section. But it is also convenient because you have a seperation line between script calls.
Then there is the log function. The log function accepts two parameters. One is the prompt, the other is a string to be concatenated to the prompt. Handy for listing parameter-values.
But you could also do a logging of only one line. For example the last line.

The logging can be enabled or disabled by commenting/uncommenting the proper line of:

LOG_ENABLED=$TRUE
#LOG_ENABLED=$FALSE

It's like in the old Cobol days. When you were working at the Automation department of the Dutch Tax office (I got this from past co-workers that were some older than I), you worked in Apeldoorn in the east of the country, but the datacenter was in The Hague in the west. A distance of about 300 km.

You coded your Cobol on punch cards. And if you were smart then you indexed your lines. You had to do a visual code check. The punch cards were put in a box and sent by courier to the datacenter in The Hague. There the cards were 'loaded' to the mainframe and if you did your visual code checking well it compiled and executed. And then you got your output back by courier.
If the box fell of the cart, you were happy you indexed your code lines. Because then the cards could be fed to a punch-card-sorter.

That's about how I feel right now. I created a script and developed a postfix configuration. But it has to be put on the Linux development machine by a system manager. Although it's a development-server there are some good reasons to not give me root-priviliges to the development server.
And since postfix runs as root, you have to be root to change the config-files. But because I do not even have a normal user-account I cannot read the logs. The script is put in a non-root-non-postfix-useraccount. But I can't update the script myself.

So, I have to do a change and now we wait until the feedback. This already goes on for days, a few weeks/months if I include the requests for accounts and initial server setup. And that for something that could be solved in a few hours (if I exclude the requests for accounts and initial server setup), if I could get my own fingers at the keys.

But so be it. The server management here is not really 'outsourced', but it is at another geographical location. In another city. And done by other people that are also busy with other tasks. They're helpful. They really are. But the overall duration is the price the organization, the customer is paying for these policies.