OVD Demo Virtual Appliance

In short...

• VirtuaBox, Vmware (4+), Xencenter: use the .OVA appliance
• KVM: use the .tar.gz dedicated appliance
• Networking: reconfigure to "bridge" if you are running into troubles, and read the documention below
• Other issues: read the doc below, use the OVD conversion tools

Report your experience to: report-ovd-bugs at ulteo dot com - thx!

Virtual Appliances - Download URLs

Choose your download from the following files:

• KVM image: Ulteo-ovd-3.0.3-demo-appliance.tar.bz2
  [MD5 sum: 428f7ce6c1421d9eec8292d9eeabd62b ]
• OVF/OVA (VirtuaBOX, Vmware, Xencenter): Ulteo-ovd-3.0.3-demo-appliance.ova
  [MD5 sum: 6ca29c7934b38ab8d888075d26c6b445 ]

How to import the OVA file to your hypervisor?

The followding Hypervisor are supported:

• VirtualBOX
• VMWARE
• XenServer (!? testing is required)
• KVM, standalone or using Virt-manager.

Using VirtualBOX

1. Go to File → Import Appliance ...
2. It's not recommeded to modify the VM properties during the execution of the Wizard, there is a bug in VirtualBOX that causes the import to fail. You can change the properties after the import.

Using VMWARE Player/Workstation

1. Go to File → Open a Virtual Machine

Using KVM

KVM doesn't have full support of OVF/OVA yet. A specific image, compatible with KVM, is provided.

To run the virtual appliance from the command line with KVM, either run our special kvm script (included in the archive):

# tar xfvj Ulteo-ovd-3.0.3-demo-appliance.tar.bz
# Ulteo-ovd-3.0.3-demo-appliance.run

Or, if you are a KVM wizard, use your own settings:

# tar xfjj ulteo-vappliace-3.0.tar.bz2
# kvm -hda ulteo-vappliance-3.0-disk1.qcow2 -net nic,model=e1000 -net tap

Note: these command lines require root privileges. Also, check that kvm is installed and enabled on your system!

End User Documentation, Network, Keyboard layouts

This is a ready to run Virtual Appliance. Only network configuration if required if you don't have a DHCP server in the network where you connect the VM.

When login the virtual appliance you will notice that you are prompted to set your keymap (default: QWERTY/us)

Some keyboard layouts: fr, de, es, it, nl, ... (more information by running "man loadkeys")
More complex keyboard configuration can be achieved by running: sudo apt-get reconfigure console-setup

Useful Accounts

OVD Administrator account on Session Manager:

• user: admin
• password: admin

Shell account on the Virtual Appliance:

• user: ulteo
• password: ulteo

Post installation configuration

Post-installation doesn't require configuration if you have a DHCP server available to the virtual appliance. The IP address of the VM is printed in the console, before login.

If you don't have a DHCP server, run (as ulteo):

sudo net-config.sh

To configure the basic network parameters. Reboot after configuration.

Custom configuration

If you want to start to do custom configuration, I recommend to comment the following line in /etc/rc.local:

/usr/local/bin/update-redirection.php

That line updates the redirection name of the OVD pointing to the current IP of the virtual machine.

And you should disable the inmutable attribute on /etc/udev/rules/70-persistent-net.rules too:

chattr -i /etc/udev/rules/70-persistent-net.rules

This was configured to avoid interface renaming if you move the Virtual Appliance between hypervisors.

Troubleshooting

Import from VMWARE ovftool

If your VMWARE version doesn't support to open OVF directly, use ovftool to conver it to VMX format.

# ovftool Ulteo-ovd-3.0.0-demo-appliance.ova Ulteo-ovd-3.0.0-demo-appliance.vmx

(replace the filenames with newer versions if any)

Then add the VMX to your VM inventory.

virt-image error: ValueError: Virtual network 'default' has not been started

Try:

# sudo virsh net-start default

Virt-manager: VM doesn't boot

In Debian Squeeze and may be in other distributions, the virt-image command ignores the format of the disk file and sets it to “raw” instead of “qcow2”.

To fix this problem, run:

sudo virsh edit ulteo-vappliance-3.0

and look for the following line:

      <driver name='qemu' type='raw'/>

Replace raw with qcow2.

Implementation notes

OVF/OVA creation tests:

• VMWARE WKS 8.0, VM exported to OVA.
  • VBOX imports OVA ok.
  • KVM, doesn't recognize the VMDK format (stream optimized).
• VMWARE WKS 8.0 → OVF modifying the VMDK format to sparse which works with KVM.
  • VMWARE WKS imports with a warning, but the appliance works.
  • VBOX: Doesn't work, fails when it tries to convert the VMDK disks.
  • KVM: OVA imported with virt-image works.
• VBOX export to OVF.
  • VMWARE imports with a warning, but the appliance works.
  • KVM doesn't recognize the VMDK format.