VMware published new versions of some of their products:

• VMware Workstation 6.5
• VMware Server 2.0
• VMware Player 2.5

If you didn't follow VMworld 2008 and want to get some info from the event, try this list of links.

With VMware ESX 3.0 it is possible to hot add a new virtual disk to a running guest. I want to show what to do to use it with a linux guest without a reboot:

1. add a new disk to the running guest via VI-Client
2. scan for new hard disk in the guest
   
   

   echo "- - -" > /sys/class/scsi_host/host0/scan
   

   for reference the output of
   
   

   cat /proc/scsi/scsi
   

   before
   
   

   Attached devices:
   Host: scsi0 Channel: 00 Id: 00 Lun: 00
     Vendor: VMware   Model: Virtual disk     Rev: 1.0
     Type:   Direct-Access                    ANSI SCSI revision: 02
   

   and after the scan
   
   

   Attached devices:
   Host: scsi0 Channel: 00 Id: 00 Lun: 00
     Vendor: VMware   Model: Virtual disk     Rev: 1.0
     Type:   Direct-Access                    ANSI SCSI revision: 02
   Attached devices:
   Host: scsi0 Channel: 00 Id: 01 Lun: 00
     Vendor: VMware   Model: Virtual disk     Rev: 1.0
     Type:   Direct-Access                    ANSI SCSI revision: 02
   

3. find out the device of the new hard disk (/dev/sdb in the example above)
4. check if there is really no partition on the device
   
   

   fdisk -l /dev/sdb
   
   Disk /dev/sdb: 1073 MB, 1073741824 bytes
   255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 130 cylinders
   Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
   
   Disk /dev/sdb doesn't contain a valid partition table
   

5. create new partition on the device (with fdisk)
6. create new filesystem on the partition created above
   
   

   mkfs.ext3 /dev/sdb1
   

7. add line to /etc/fstab to automount partition after next reboot
   
   

   /dev/sdb1       /mountpoint       ext3    defaults        0       2
   

For reference my source for scanning for new devices.

You might not notice it at first sight, but the layout of this website has slightly changed. The width is now dependent on the size of your web browser. So the space available should be used more effective. To prevent the site of being too wide (at least for modern web browsers) a maximum of 1100 pixels is defined.

[more]

Today Google announced their own internet browser, Chrome. In the meanwhile you can download a first beta. At the moment there is only a version available for Windows, but in the furture also versions for Linux an Mac should be released. At the moment I think plugins are missing for example to not show advertisment. Lets see how Chrome develops in comaprison to Firefox, Internet Explorer and Opera. At first glance Chrome seems to be rather fast. But (till now) the rich text editor of TYPO3 doesn't work too.

UPDATE: Another browser hacks are needed for. On this page the text is not shown right beside the image. Instead it is shown below the image.

After the installation of VMware tools in a linux guest the accelerated module vmxnet should be used instead of the standard module pcnet32. Most linux distributions do this out of the box after a reboot. But Debian 4.0 Etch loads both modules

hostname:~# lsmod | grep pcnet
pcnet32                30692  0
mii                     5344  1 pcnet32
hostname:~# lsmod | grep vmxnet
vmxnet                 11776  0

where pcnet32 is actually used (output of dmesg):

pcnet32: PCnet/PCI II 79C970A at 0x1400, 00 50 56 96 67 a9 assigned IRQ 11.
eth0: registered as PCnet/PCI II 79C970A
pcnet32: 1 cards_found.

You can manuallay load the module vmxnet:

hostname:~# rmmod pcnet32
hostname:~# rmmod vmxnet
hostname:~# modprobe vmxnet

But after a reboot pcnet32 is used as before. So how to switch to vmxnet permanently? One possibility is to add a line to the configuration file (.vmx) of the virtual machine:

ethernet0.virtualDev = "vmxnet"

But changing the configuration files can be a lot of work. Another possibility is described in the VMware forums. You have to add a line to /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist

blacklist pcnet32

and generate a new initrd:

hostname:~# update-initramfs -u

After a reboot the correct module should be used.