Expanding Hard Disk size of VMware image using VMware Server V2.0.1 on Windows XP with guest OS RedHat EL 5

So I decided to write this post after I spent some good time trying to expand my virtual image's hard disk (HD) successfully!

I don't guarantee that this is the right or shortest way to do it but at least for me, this is the way it worked out.

1st: Power off your image and make sure you backup your image before trying this out.

2nd: Remove any snapshot of your image. Make sure you have no files in your image directory looking like disk-000001.vmdk because this means you still have a snapshot not removed. If you leave out any snapshot, expanding your hard disk will not work out correctly.

3rd: Make sure you have enough space on your original hard disk according to the size you want to expand your image's hard disk with.

4th: Open a console on windows and browse to your image's directory.

5th: Use the command: vmware-vdiskmanager -x **GB ***.vmdk example: "C:\Program Files\VMware Server\vmware-vdiskmanager" -x 40GB disk.vmdk

6th: When it prints out Grow: 100% done. open your image and create a logical ext3 partition using the extra space you assigned to your image's hard disk by using any tool like Gparted for example.

7th: Open Menu > System > Administration > Logical Volume Management tool in RedHat. Go to Unitialized Entries and choose your new partition and Initialize Entity. Then go to Unallocated Volumes select the one your initialized and Add to existing Volume Group.

8th: Go to Volume Groups and select the one you want to expand then click on Edit Properties and press on Use remaining then finish with OK.

Congrats!! Now you should see that your hard disk is expanded and to make sure you can use the df -h command in a root terminal.

Dawar Benafsak - Ahmed Mekki ft. Donia Ghanem

This is a nice, funny and innovative arabic song!! :)

One of Jon Schmidt's Arrangements

An amazing mixture of music results in a wonderful arrangement! He calls it:

LOVE STORY (Taylor Swift) meets VIVA LA VIDA (Coldplay).

I really recommend you to listen it!

For more info you can check his website or his wikipedia page. Enjoy it! :)

45 km!!

So we finally did it!! We biked about 45 km from the university campus in Vaihingen till Marbach on the Neckar! It was amazing! It's true we are so tired today after this excursion we did yesterday but we really had fun. We stopped in the middle many times; sometimes to eat, others to relax and a time to play Frisbee in a large green area. So if anyone wants to do a biking trip on the Neckar then I would recommend this site about Neckartalradweg or even the book itself. It took about 2 hours and a half biking but in total with all the stops and the way back: 7 hours!! It was really a great Saturday and we hope we do it again!

Amazing Zamfir

As opposed to the belief of some people, Zamfir is not the name of a music instrument but rather the name of a Romanian musician, songwriter and music teacher. He is very famous for his romantic pan flute music that he is even entitled as Gheorghe Zamfir – The “King of the Pan Flute”. If you want to know more maybe you can read his wikipedia page or his biography on his own official website.

Here is a video where he is playing a music that I love:

The Lonely Shepherd.

Enjoy!

Last Sunday's (22.02.2009) Shooting

So as I said in my previous post, my first shooting experience was so great that I decided to continue going every Sunday I can. Last Sunday was the eve of one of my final exams but I still went with some friends. To my surprise, I was worse than in the first time, or at least that's what I felt. Still we had fun and they made us see a guy shooting fire pistol, making that cloud of black powder again! My friends also tried shooting air pistol but I didn't try, I stayed with my air rifle. Anyways I am getting ready now to go so I hope that today I'll perform better than last time...

Beautiful Sunday!!

Yesterday was great!!

I woke up, had breakfast with my friend and then we both left to take the bus till a place where someone was supposed to pick us up. So this someone, which we had never met before, picked us up and drove us till a Shooting Club!! There, he took us for a tour, explaining each part of the club and then head to the 10 meters air rifle competition shooting range. He gave each one of us an air rifle and taught us how to use it. It was the first time for me to ever hold such a weapon! :D He then gave us 500 pellets, some different targets and left us enjoy shooting! Honestly, I thought I would feel bored after like 1 hour of shooting or something.. but the truth is that, it was so amusing that I didn't feel the time! He was always there behind us, giving us advices and some security tips. After a while, he took us to see some fire arms! The guy there showed us how he loads his rifle, with black powder and a bullet and then he even gave us the chance to shoot once! It was amazing! You sit there, holding the rifle, wearing safety glasses and those ear plugs for the sound, you begin to concentrate on the target and then u touch the trigger and boom.. there's black powder all over the air forming a cloud in front of you and you can barely see the target that is 50 meters away! Really feel you are in a movie! :D It was really like a once in a lifetime trial! After this adventure, we came back to our toys, as my friend called them after trying the fire ones, and kept shooting being very excited after trying the fire arms. I shot around 90 pellets in around 2 hours! Below are the targets I used so you can see the improvements during the day. First I began with the easy one which consists of 5 targets together so that wherever you find your air rifle pointing, you can shoot. Then at the end I tried the competition one, which is only one target in the middle! This target's diameter is 45.5 mm, imagine it 10 meters away!! The funny thing is that even as my first time, I still could get some with score 9! After having enjoyed shooting, we went to the so-called "Big Boss" of the shooting club to pay for our day. His reaction was as follow, "Didn't you have a Beautiful Sunday, then no need to pay!". :) Then the trainer's son, which is the one who drove us to the club, drove us back all the way to our dorms! After this really nice time, we are planning to keep regularly going!

Seminar Report and Presentation

So today I had to present my Seminar presentation which consisted of explaining and presenting the report I previously wrote during the semester. The report was a resume of a collection of many papers about Mobile Ad Hoc Networks for Video Multicast. The seminar was titled as Advanced Topics in Distributed Systems: Modern Group Communication Mechanisms, supervised by Dr. Boris Koldehofe, under the Institute of Parallel and Distributed Systems, Universitaet Stuttgart. So this seminar first began by selecting a topic, which in my case was: MANETs: Multicast Routing in Mobile Ad-hoc networks. Then lots of papers had to be read and relevant information had to be written in a 10 page report. Afterwards, a 45 mins presentation had to be presented, explaining to an audience what your topic and report was about, then followed by a 15 mins discussion with questions and answers. It was the first time for me to present such a long presentation.. and it took plenty of time to organize it to fill the time I was given.. but I would like to say that it went good in a certain way!

If we go more into details about the presentation, well, it first began by an introduction about MANETS (Mobile Ad Hoc Networks). The definition of MANETs was given, some applications were stated, along with some problems and constraints. Then the reason why multicast is important in MANETs was said. After this introduction, a section was made about multicast overview. In this overview, the definition, some applications, requirements or constraints and problems about video multicast were stated. Then a comparison about multicast tree and mesh approaches was discussed where their definitions, advantages and disadvantages and an example protocol using each one of them were given. Afterwards, the On-Demand Multicast Routing Protocol (ODMRP) and the Multicast Ad Hoc On-Demand Distance Vector (MAODV) routing protocols were explained in details, giving examples, pros and cons for each one of them. Finally a new routing protocol: Multiple Tree Multicast Ad Hoc On Demand Distance Vector (MT-MAODV) was presented with an example to clarify it and some evaluations.

I think I learned a lot from this seminar and maybe my work can help someone so feel free to check it out! :)

N.B. The presentation was done using MS PowerPoint because some effects were not well displayed using OO Impress, so I would advice to open the ppt file with MS PowerPoint.. Sorry for any inconvenience..

ATDS - Seminar Report

ATDS - Seminar Presentation