VMWare Failed to lock the file...

Although I had switched to Virtual Box for a while, I still have no choice but to open up some older VMs in VMWare to migrate or retrieve information from them. One such VM gave a similar error as above and in fact, it is not even a persistence VM. The very thought that I have to rebuild this VM strike horror in my heart, but luckily the good news is that I did not need to do that to resolve this issue.

It turns out that this usually happens after you had not power up the VM for a while and over a few version of VMWare upgrade. Somehow the lock file just get corrupted. Go into your VM Machine's directory and you will see some directories with *lck* and maybe 1 or 2 tiny files inside. Well those are are source of the issues.

Simply delete all those directories with the tiny files with the lck extension or keyword in them. That fixed my problem and the VM is back booting up happily. If you want to be safe, you can always make a copy of the VM or a copy of those directories before you go ahead with the deletion.

It is a simple problem, but VMWare seems to make it into such a big issue that your VM no longer starts. But luckily the fix is just as simple.

Keyboard Problem in Vmware running Ubuntu 10.04 LTS

It seems that the default keyboard was setup wrongly for use in VMware for the Ubuntu 10.04 release. What actually happens is that at the boot up, the keyboard completely did not work. If this is your problem you are at the right post.

Here is the step by step on how to fix it:
1. At the login screen, click on the little man in circle icon below to enable universal access preferences. Check the first option for a virtual keyboard.
2. For some users, there is just a flash and then nothing happens. If this is the case, simply click on the reboot icon at the bottom to reboot.
3. Once the Virtual Keyboard is up, use it to login.
4. Once inside Ubuntu, the keyboard will work. Open a shell and get to /etc/default. Edit this file with whatever you prefer (pico, nano, vi etc)
5. Find the following right at the end:

XKBMODEL="SKIP"
XKBLAYOUT="us"
XKBVARIANT="U.S. English"
XKBOPTIONS=""

This is where the problem lies. You need to edit it to:

XKBMODEL="pc105"
XKBLAYOUT="us"
XKBVARIANT=""
XKBOPTIONS=""

The "pc105" is the most important line. After which, reboot if you feel like it and the keyboard will work.
6. If you hate the Virtual Keyboard, simple disable it at the login screen.

Microsoft XP Mode no longer needs virtualized hardware

For a while, people using the cheaper end quad core Intel Q series processor find themselves unable to install Windows 7's XP Mode due to a hardware requirement for the VT technology.
While VT speeds up the virtualization using hardware, by no means it is impossible to purely run on software especially if you have quad core or more.

Fortunately, Microsoft had finally realized this and had enabled the option to run XP Mode WITHOUT the VT Technology. This is shown in the 3rd button when you attempt to download Microsoft Virtual PC via:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtual-pc/download.aspx

This is indeed a great news to many including myself who has more than a few Intel Q8200 around.

Fedora 11 on Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 SP1

Again, its time to boot up Fedora 11 on the classic MS VPC...
If you remember, it totally crashed in Fedora 10 without some tweaking, and yes, as expected, it did so again in F11...

So, before we even talk about the installation, you will need to ensure you select the basic video option, then press [tab] and append "vga=0x32D noreplace-paravirt" to the back and press [enter]. This will allow you to boot up all the way into the installer.

Next, it will complain about disk is not initialize. Well, its because you had not formatted your HDD. thats perfectly normal. Just let Fedora do it.

For me, I needed the common applications and some development, so I selected both the "Office productivity" and " Software development" option during the installation.

Will update this, waiting for it to complete now...

Grub Option for Ubuntu 9.04 on Virtual PC 2007 SP1

I seems to see some people run into issues after a reboot with Ubuntu 9.04 on the MS Virtual PC 2007 SP1. I did not have this issue and Ubuntu boots fine. However, maybe its some setting in GRUB that is preventing a proper boot up... Anyway here is my configuration for menu.lst:


title Ubuntu 9.04, kernel 2.6.28-11-generic
uuid a6c101f9-5125-4826-8a28-266a9398162b
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.28-11-generic root=UUID=a6c101f9-5125-4826-8a28-266a9398162b ro quiet splash
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.28-11-generic
quiet

title Ubuntu 9.04, kernel 2.6.28-11-generic (recovery mode)
uuid a6c101f9-5125-4826-8a28-266a9398162b
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.28-11-generic root=UUID=a6c101f9-5125-4826-8a28-266a9398162b ro single
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.28-11-generic

title Ubuntu 9.04, memtest86+
uuid a6c101f9-5125-4826-8a28-266a9398162b
kernel /boot/memtest86+.bin
quiet

Oh, and lastly, do remember to eject your CD / DVD before rebooting, otherwise you will keep going back to the installation screen!

Installing Ubuntu 9.04 on Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 SP1

The default installation hangs somewhere. This is similar to Fedora Core 10 that I describe before. The solution is somehow similar.

Boot Ubuntu 9.04 up. On the first screen, choose [English].
Then press [F4] and select [Safe Graphics].
Then press [F6], but do not select any option. Instead press [Escape] and it will allow you to change the command line. Remove the option "quiet splash --" and replace it with "vga=791 noreplace-paravirt" instead.
Press [Enter] to start the installation.

I will expect more issue with the grub menu and other options later on, but my VM is still installing as I type here, so I won't know at this point of time. I will update again on a later post if there is any other issues.

Update: Yes, as pointed out by a commenter below, it is also possible to access command line by pressing [Esc]. However, you had better somehow remember the whole command, because it is not echoed onto the screen.

Update: Also note that during the bootup, it will take a while at the message that said squashfs.... Do not panic. That is normal.

Update: Near the end of the installation, at about 97%, there is a long wait to remove software packages. This is normal.