Installing Open Virtual Machine Tools is a nice alternative to managing and installing the vmware tools package that comes with Vmware’s hypervisor products.  It allows you to use APT to manage all the dependencies and updates. Module assistant will recompile the kernel modules for you automatically when you update kernels too.

I have verified that this configuration works under ESXi 4.1.0, 260247 and a new Squeeze install. All of the essential functions like being able to see guest OS information on the Vsphere summary page and performing “Shut Down Guest” and “Restart Guest” all work as expected. If your experiences vary, please leave a comment

This should all be performed by the root user (otherwise prepend ‘sudo’ to the commands if you must use sudo).
The first thing you need to do is add the ‘contrib’ archive to your apt sources config:

nano /etc/apt/sources.list

Add the ‘contrib’ to the end of these source lines. I use the debian.uchicago.edu repository, so mine look like this on a new install:

deb http://debian.uchicago.edu/debian/ squeeze main contrib
deb-src http://debian.uchicago.edu/debian/ squeeze main contrib

After you save changes to the file, simply update your package list and perform the install:

apt-get update
apt-get install open-vm-tools open-vm-source

You might see an error that looks like this:

Loading open-vm-tools modules: vmhgfsFATAL: Module vmhgfs not found.
 vmmemctlFATAL: Module vmmemctl not found.
 vmsyncFATAL: Module vmsync not found.

Don’t worry, this is because we have not installed the kernel modules for some of the more advanced VMware functions like the vmhgfs file system, Memory Balloon (vmmemctl) Driver, and vmsync, which helps freeze the VM while taking snapshots.
To install these kernel modules, we’re going to use module-assistant. It will compile the modules for your kernel:

module-assistant auto-install open-vm -i

The ‘-i’ puts module assistant into non-interactive mode. It wont ask you to confirm any additional package installs necesarry to set up the build environment.
If you’re running a server without a Graphical environment, you’re finished. If you want features such as automatically adjusting the VM’s monitor resolution or allowing your mouse to seamlessly move between your host system and the VM, you need to install one more package:

apt-get install open-vm-toolbox

Now you won’t need to use CTRL+ALT to switch back and forth.

I love Brasero. It’s simple, lightweight, and comes with Ubuntu. Recently, when I wanted to back up a disk, ISO was not on the list of formats. As is usual, the issue was a missing package: brasero-cdrkit.

apt-get install brasero-cdrkit

Now, .ISO (ISO9960) will be an available disk format for you under Brasero.

Flexlm license usage can be a hard thing to accurately measure and monitor. Luckily, the output from lmutil can be used to display license usage. First thing to do is locate the lmutil binary and try to get it to run. I use Flexlm for autodesk on Windows and ESRI on linux(centOS).

Windows:
This server seemed to want the license file specified. You may need to launch the lmtools GUI tool and watch the status bar for the path to it. This is what mine looked like:

"c:\program files\autodesk network license manager\lmutil" lmstat -c "c:\program files\autodesk network license manager\license\license.lic" -a

Linux:

/home/esri/arcgis/license10.0/bin/lmutil lmstat -a

That will spit out the current license usage for all your products. To isolate the numbers we want to monitor, we will be piping the output into some other commands like find and cut.
I recommend using the GNU tools for windows http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/. These examples use the built-in ‘find’ utility, and a ‘cut.exe’ tool i found googling around. I had overlooked the gnutools when I first set this up. My mistake can be your gain. With gnutools, it will be easy to isolate the output you want using ‘grep’ and ‘cut’. First, isolate the line you are looking for with grep. You will have to figure out what feature code you want to monitor. mine looks like this:

Windows:

"c:\program files\autodesk network license manager\lmutil" lmstat -c "c:\program files\autodesk network license manager\license\license.lic" -a | find /i "64300acd_f:"

Linux:

/home/esri/arcgis/license10.0/bin/lmutil lmstat -a | grep ARC/INFO

now that you have the right line,  you can trim the extra characters with ‘cut’. It will take some experimentation to get it right.:

Windows:

"c:\program files\autodesk network license manager\lmutil" lmstat -c "c:\program files\autodesk network license manager\license\license.lic" -a | find /i "64300acd_f:" | cut -c 62-64

Linux:

/home/esri/arcgis/license10.0/bin/lmutil lmstat -a | grep ARC/INFO | cut -c 59-61

The output now should be only the number of licenses being used.

To allow zabbix to monitor this value, we need to create a ‘UserParameter’ read up on it here: http://www.zabbix.com/documentation/1.8/manual/config/user_parameters. This is what the parameter looks like on my servers:

Windows:

UserParameter=licenses.autocad.used,"c:\program files\autodesk network license manager\lmutil" lmstat -c "c:\program files\autodesk network license manager\license\license.lic" -a | find /i "64300acd_f:" | cut -c 62-64

Linux:

UserParameter=licenses.arcinfo.used,/home/esri/arcgis/license10.0/bin/lmutil lmstat -a | grep ARC/INFO | cut -c 59-61

Once you have the userparameter created on the license server, restart the agent and add an item in zabbix to begin collecting values.