Running a PowerCLI Script

I'm a Linux User and fond some interesting scripts for VMWare on the Internet, the problem was I didn't knew how to run them.

Now I finally learned how to run a Power Shell script, so here's how I've done it:

Save the script to a file with a filetype of .ps1

Open the PowerCLI prompt on your PC

Connect to the vCenter with the Connect-VICenter cmdlet

dot-source the .ps1 file. That way the function is know in your PowerCLI session

. ./yourfile.ps1

Call the function implemented by the scipt.

How to reset the root password of VMware ESXi 4.1 and 5.0

You can't recover your old password but by following this steps you can set it to blank and then set a new one.

First you'll need a Linux live CD, any one will do.

After booting to a live session of Linux you must look for a file named state.tgz on your vmware host's hard drive. To do so I used:

parted -l

To list all available partitions and mounted every VFAT partition to look inside, I found it was on /dev/sda5, in your case it might be on a different one, you can mount the partitions with:

mount /dev/sda1 /mnt

(replace sda with your device's name and 1 with your partition numver)

then check inside if the file state.tgz exists:

ls /mnt/

After finding the state.tzg file you must uncompress it using:

cd /tmp
tar xzf /mnt/Hypervisor3/state.tgz

this will get you a local.tgz file witch you have to extract using:

tar xzf local.tgz

now edit the file /tmp/etc/shadow

vi etc/shadow

Inside locate the root account and just remove it's hash (everything between the first and the second colon) and login to the service console as root with no password at all.

Finally re-pack the files and move the modified state.tgz back to the VFAT partition. Probably it is a good idea to make a backup copy of the original state.tgz in case something goes wrong:

mv /mnt/state.tgz /mnt/state.tgz.bak
rm local.tgz
tar czf local.tgz etc
tar czf state.tgz local.tgz
mv state.tgz /mnt/

Reboot back into ESXi and you're done.

Migrate/Convet VMs from Xen to VMWare

To migrate my Windows VMs I just uninstalled the Xen Tools from them and then used the VMWare Converter to migrate them as if they where physical machines.
However the VMWare Converter didn't worked so well with my Linux VMs and the converted VMs wouldn't even boot...

I've tried to export the VMs as OVF apliances from XenCenter but VSphere wasn't able to import them (although it works on the opposite direction)...

So in order to move my Ubuntu VMs from XenServer to VMWare, first I've installed an Ubuntu VM on VMWare with nothing but the base installation to be used as a template, then for each VM on XenSever I cloned this base VMWare VM and synced both using the following procedure:

Logged in as root on the source VM (on XenServer)

Uninstall Xen Tools

aptitude purge xe-guest-utilities

Generate a list of the installed packages

dpkg --get-selections > package_list

Copy the list to the destination VM (on VMWare)

scp package_list root@10.39.10.222:/root/

Install every package from that list on the destination VM

ssh root@10.39.10.222 "cat /root/package_list | sudo dpkg --set-selections && sudo apt-get dselect-upgrade"

Copy the users and groups files to the destination VM first to prevent errors during the sync

scp /etc/passwd* /etc/group* /etc/shadow* root@10.39.10.222:/etc/

Clear the network card name mapping by editing the file:

vi /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules

and removing every network card entry (if any)

Copy everything from the source VM to the destination VM using rsync

rsync -avzlpEXogthe ssh --exclude 'fstab' /opt /var /etc /usr /root /home root@10.39.10.222:/

Reboot the destination VM:

ssh root@10.39.10.222 "reboot"

Stop the source VM:

halt

and thats what worked for me.

Note that this should work to migrate any Ubuntu server from any hypervisor or phisical server to another...

How to reset lost user password on a Linux Machine

First you’ll want to make sure to choose the regular boot kernel that you use (typically just the default one), and then use the “e” key to choose to edit that boot option.

Now just hit the down arrow key over to the “kernel” option, and then use the “e” key to switch to edit mode for the kernel option.

Note: if the grub menu does not show up try hitting the Shift or the Space keys right after the bios screen.

You’ll want to remove the “ro quiet splash” part with the backspace key, and then add this onto the end:

rw init=/bin/bash

Press F10 or ctrl+x to boot with that option.

At this point the system should boot up very quickly to a command prompt.

Now you can use the passwd command to change the password.

passwd username

where username is the username you want to reset.
After changing your password, use the following commands to reboot your system. (The sync command makes sure to write out data to the disk before rebooting)

sync
reboot –f

I found that the –f parameter was necessary to get the reboot command to work for some reason. You could always hardware reset instead, but make sure to use the sync command first.

NOTE for VMWare users:

Probably you wont ever see the boot menu on a VM because it will boot to fast, to work around this you can set up the vm to delay the bios for a few seconds:

bios.bootDelay = "15000"

This causes the bios to delay for 15 seconds so you can press keys, you can set it in the VM .vmx file or using vSphere under the vm settings, on the options tab, boot options.

Then just start the VM and press esc on the grub loading message and follow the steps described above.

Convert VMware to Xen

http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX116603

• Uninstall vmtools
  
  • on linux - vmware-uninstall-tools.pl
  • on windows uninstall from control panel
• Power off
• From VSphere export as OVF
• From XenCenter import OVF