Mgateway's EWD Virtual appliance : mumps

There may be some potential solutions worth exploring in the following
document:

http://www.vmware.com/community/thre...46572&tstart=0

Regards

Rob


On Tue, 09 Jan 2007 17:31:14 +0000, Rob Tweed <rtweed@mgateway.com>
wrote:

>Apologies for being noticeable in my absence in this thread until now
>- I've been away from my office since New Year and didn't have access
>to this newsgroup.
>
>Although I've personally been able to get the EWD Virtual Appliance
>running on all the PCs I've been able to get my hands on (running both
>Windows and Lnux), it appears that there are certain PC networking
>configurations that cause the EWD Virtual Appliance VM to not manage
>to allocate its own IP address. Without an IP address, there's not a
>lot the Virtual Appliance can then do for you!
>
>Fixing the networking issues can require one or other (or maybe both)
>of two different techniques.
>
>1) Some problems can be fixed by modifying the Ubuntu Linux interfaces
>file - so that Linux is properly configuring itself against your PC's
>networking set-up. You certainly need to do this if, for example, you
>don't have DHCP available on your network, or you require a fixed IP
>address for the VM.
>
>2) Some problems probably involve reconfiguring the VMWare VM
>environment. I'm something of a novice in this area and can only
>suggest people explore what's possible within the VMWare Player and
>Server.
>
>I know that problems can occur if you have multiple NICs in the PC -
>the VM may need to be properly told which is the one it should use to
>allocate its IP address. If it points itself to the wrong one, then
>it won't work. I'm sure there are other problematic scenarios too.
>
>Either way, if you can feed back problems and subsequent resolutions
>for them to me, I can make sure that the documentation for the Virtual
>Appliance is enhanced to cover such troubleshooting issues.
>
>Once the VM manages to get an IP address for itself, you'll then find
>that everything else should "just work" thereafter
>
>Rob Tweed
>M/Gateway Developments Ltd
>
>
>
>
>On Fri, 05 Jan 2007 15:28:53 GMT, "Mike Minor"
><mminorhsd@earthlink.net> wrote:
>
>>Hello all...
>>
>>I was wondering if anyone else has been playing around with Rob Tweeds new
>>EWD Vitrual appliance. I downloaded it and installed it and VMWare player
>>yesterday. Other than some problems loading VMWare player, it was not too
>>traumatic of an exercise.
>>
>>I thought it would be interesting to see if anyone plans on releasing any
>>applications using this new suite of tools.
>>
>>to Rob..... WAY TO GO GUY!
>
>---
>Rob Tweed
>M/Gateway Developments Ltd
>
>The Pursuit of Productivity : http://www.mgateway.com

---
Rob Tweed
M/Gateway Developments Ltd

The Pursuit of Productivity : http://www.mgateway.com

I reviewed the article that Rob mentioned. One thing that I picked up on was
the mention of VPN adapters. I have several VPN adapters loaded on the same
box that I am trying to run the VMWare and WED Virtual Appliance. I suspect
that this may have semothing to do with my problem. I am going to see if I
have a machine in the closet or warehouse that does not have any vpn
adapters installed. If I do, then I will try loading it again.

I hope that this is not the problem, as it seems to make developing any
applications using the vmware and ewd a shot in the dark kind of thing.
Especially if you don't know for certain that you will be able to load it
and run it on an end user's system....

As I will be out all of next week, it will probably be late this month
before I can get back to this. I will report back once I have new
information.

--
Thank you,

Mike MInor
Z-Code Systems, Inc,
mminor@zcodesystems.com

Phone: 407-656-4990
Fax: 407-656-5785
"Rob Tweed" <rtweed@mgateway.com> wrote in message
news:j7l7q2l3idik34rflodiv7mmcoe7rtposo@4ax.com...
> There may be some potential solutions worth exploring in the following
> document:
>
> http://www.vmware.com/community/thre...46572&tstart=0
>
> Regards
>
> Rob
>
>
> On Tue, 09 Jan 2007 17:31:14 +0000, Rob Tweed <rtweed@mgateway.com>
> wrote:
>
>>Apologies for being noticeable in my absence in this thread until now
>>- I've been away from my office since New Year and didn't have access
>>to this newsgroup.
>>
>>Although I've personally been able to get the EWD Virtual Appliance
>>running on all the PCs I've been able to get my hands on (running both
>>Windows and Lnux), it appears that there are certain PC networking
>>configurations that cause the EWD Virtual Appliance VM to not manage
>>to allocate its own IP address. Without an IP address, there's not a
>>lot the Virtual Appliance can then do for you!
>>
>>Fixing the networking issues can require one or other (or maybe both)
>>of two different techniques.
>>
>>1) Some problems can be fixed by modifying the Ubuntu Linux interfaces
>>file - so that Linux is properly configuring itself against your PC's
>>networking set-up. You certainly need to do this if, for example, you
>>don't have DHCP available on your network, or you require a fixed IP
>>address for the VM.
>>
>>2) Some problems probably involve reconfiguring the VMWare VM
>>environment. I'm something of a novice in this area and can only
>>suggest people explore what's possible within the VMWare Player and
>>Server.
>>
>>I know that problems can occur if you have multiple NICs in the PC -
>>the VM may need to be properly told which is the one it should use to
>>allocate its IP address. If it points itself to the wrong one, then
>>it won't work. I'm sure there are other problematic scenarios too.
>>
>>Either way, if you can feed back problems and subsequent resolutions
>>for them to me, I can make sure that the documentation for the Virtual
>>Appliance is enhanced to cover such troubleshooting issues.
>>
>>Once the VM manages to get an IP address for itself, you'll then find
>>that everything else should "just work" thereafter
>>
>>Rob Tweed
>>M/Gateway Developments Ltd
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>On Fri, 05 Jan 2007 15:28:53 GMT, "Mike Minor"
>><mminorhsd@earthlink.net> wrote:
>>
>>>Hello all...
>>>
>>>I was wondering if anyone else has been playing around with Rob Tweeds
>>>new
>>>EWD Vitrual appliance. I downloaded it and installed it and VMWare player
>>>yesterday. Other than some problems loading VMWare player, it was not too
>>>traumatic of an exercise.
>>>
>>>I thought it would be interesting to see if anyone plans on releasing any
>>>applications using this new suite of tools.
>>>
>>>to Rob..... WAY TO GO GUY!
>>
>>---
>>Rob Tweed
>>M/Gateway Developments Ltd
>>
>>The Pursuit of Productivity : http://www.mgateway.com
>
> ---
> Rob Tweed
> M/Gateway Developments Ltd
>
> The Pursuit of Productivity : http://www.mgateway.com

Mike Minor wrote:
>
> I have no other virtual appliances that I know of and therefore can't
> determine if they work or not.
>
You can download a number of different appliances from here
http://www.vmware.com/vmtn/appliances/

> I have tried running the EWD virtual appliance as it was right out of the
> box, and running it with the recommended changes to the interface file.
> Neither works. I am not a linux expert by any means and have no idea how to
> check the privileges for users....
>
I think I might have been leading you down a blind alley with this one.
All the permissions are already set as part of the appliance.

As one final thing to check (clutching at straws here) can you post the
log files after failure, for both the service integrator (in
/usr/mgwsi/bin) and GT.M (not sure which directory, it depends on
environment variables)?

> I'm glad it works for you.....I would really like to explore the
> possibilities of using this product, but if installation is such a pain, I
> don't know if it is worth the effort.
>
I agree. The whole point of virtual appliances is to take this kind of
pain away, and if you read the predictions document that Rob wrote
recently, you can see that this is his goal. I think, on the whole,
that Rob has done a good job with it. Perhaps a later release will run
"out of the box" on more machines.

Regards,

Ant

>
>One thing I noticed was an error message that flew by. It said something
>like insufficient privileges, or insufficient security level when trying to
>start MGWMSI, or MGWMS ( some mumps program ) which I think is Rob's
>webserver routine....
>
Provided the VM properly allocates itself an IP address, then rest
assured that the MGWSI gateway will work just fine.

The warning message you see is actually from the Delegate SSL proxy
starting up and it can be safely ignored. Once again, provided the VM
gets an IP address, then you'll find that Delegate handles SSL traffic
OK and allows GT.M to act as an HTTPS client (eg to send XML over
HTTPS or capture and process web pages from sites that use SSL-based
URLs).

So the key thing to focus on is getting the networking issues
addressed and to get the VM to acquire that IP address.

Unfortunately, without having a machine here that exhibits the
problem(s), it's very difficult for me to come up with a solution (the
converse being that I've spent a lot of time and energy researching
and eliminating the problems I originally experienced, so you'll never
see them when you fire up the VM!).

If anyone finds and resolves any networking issues, then let me know
and I'll ensure the fix is incorporated in either the VM or the
documentation. As Ant has said, the whole idea of VMs is to avoid
these kind of issues in the first place, and if I can eliminate the IP
address issue, we'll have a very powerful solution "out of the box"
that allows you to be up and running without any other hassle.

So any help from folks out there will be greatly appreciated and will
be extremely helpful to everyone who wants to try out and use the
Virtual Appliance.


---
Rob Tweed
M/Gateway Developments Ltd

The Pursuit of Productivity : http://www.mgateway.com

>I agree. The whole point of virtual appliances is to take this kind of
>pain away, and if you read the predictions document that Rob wrote
>recently, you can see that this is his goal. I think, on the whole,
>that Rob has done a good job with it. Perhaps a later release will run
>"out of the box" on more machines.

Quite right - a Virtual Appliance should run "out of the box" and this
is my goal....but the more help I can get, the sooner we'll achieve
that goal.

I'd go further and suggest that this is a goal that the MUMPS
community should embrace across the board. Although I've packaged up
the EWD Virtual Appliance as a means of showcasing our products and
allowing their use without the hassle and struggle of reading and
following installation manuals (and then trying to figure out what to
do when the inevitable happens and you miss out or mess up a vital
step), it also provides an "out of the box" MUMPS environment which
can be used for anything else you want to use MUMPS for. As such it's
a very quick and painlesss way to get a fully working GT.M system up
and running, and in a way that you can proliferate amongst your
machines and in a way you can simply back up (a VM typically consists
of just a handful of files that you can zip up, copy, archive or
whatever). If you use the Virtual Appliance for this purpose and
never actually use our products, I won't be particularly bothered!


I'd actually like to see one of two things happen:

- third party enhancements around the core Virtual Appliance that
we've created; or

- other pre-built MUMPS VMs that package up and showcase other
MUMPS-based solutions.

I'm more than happy to bundle more utilities, tools and even
applications into future versions of our VM - the one proviso is that
they must be able to be distributed for free and without restriction.

Either way, the VM/ Virtual Appliance is a great way of packaging up
MUMPs in a way that users out there don't even need to be aware that
it's there, but once they do (or if they do), they can begin to
explore it and understand its power and potential. The initial
(usually negative) experience of getting to grips with MUMPS normally
involves learning about it, installing it, configuring it and
generally figuring it out. There are many opportunities to lose an
initially interested person along this route, and once lost they'll
never bother again. Packaging MUMPS (of whatever flavour) as a
pre-built VM is a great opportunity for avoiding all that negative and
time-consuming initial experience and allowing a newbie to start
using it straight away - they can be sure it's properly installed and
configured and all properly set up and tuned correctly. The same
goes for applications (such as our own) - by building a Virtual
Appliance around them, you have something that people can pretty
quickly and with very little hassle have up and running so they can
experience your application. You and they can be safe in the
knowledge that what they're running is properly set up, so a lot of
those irritating support calls can be eliminated straight away: a
benefit for both the user and vendor alike.

So I'd strongly encourage anyone in the MUMPS community who is either
keen to see more widespread uptake of MUMPS outside the existing user
base, or keen to get their applications or utilities evaluated or used
by people who wouldn't otherwise consider a MUMPS solution, to look at
the many opportunities afforded by Virtual Machines and Virtual
Appliances. I really believe they're a great way to get MUMPS out
there in a way that's never before been possible.

If you have any cool utilities or anything else that you'd be
interested in me bundling into our Virtual Appliance, then please get
in touch!

For anyone who wants to check out our Virtual Appliance, you'll see
the announcement on the home page of our web site (www.mgateway.com).
Click on the panel and follow the download link.


---
Rob Tweed
M/Gateway Developments Ltd

The Pursuit of Productivity : http://www.mgateway.com

Ant....I hate to sound completely stupid, but I have tried to ftp the log
files from within the linux environment to the ip address of the server (
windows IP address ), but I get an error connecting....how else can I get
these files out of linux so I can post them?

Thank you,

Mike Minor

"Ant" <anthony@pob.org.uk> wrote in message
news:1168390412.983085.216080@i39g2000hsf.googlegroups.com...
>
> Mike Minor wrote:
>>
>> I have no other virtual appliances that I know of and therefore can't
>> determine if they work or not.
>>
> You can download a number of different appliances from here
> http://www.vmware.com/vmtn/appliances/
>
>> I have tried running the EWD virtual appliance as it was right out of the
>> box, and running it with the recommended changes to the interface file.
>> Neither works. I am not a linux expert by any means and have no idea how
>> to
>> check the privileges for users....
>>
> I think I might have been leading you down a blind alley with this one.
> All the permissions are already set as part of the appliance.
>
> As one final thing to check (clutching at straws here) can you post the
> log files after failure, for both the service integrator (in
> /usr/mgwsi/bin) and GT.M (not sure which directory, it depends on
> environment variables)?
>
>> I'm glad it works for you.....I would really like to explore the
>> possibilities of using this product, but if installation is such a pain,
>> I
>> don't know if it is worth the effort.
>>
> I agree. The whole point of virtual appliances is to take this kind of
> pain away, and if you read the predictions document that Rob wrote
> recently, you can see that this is his goal. I think, on the whole,
> that Rob has done a good job with it. Perhaps a later release will run
> "out of the box" on more machines.
>
> Regards,
>
> Ant
>

Mike Minor wrote:
> Ant....I hate to sound completely stupid, but I have tried to ftp the log
> files from within the linux environment to the ip address of the server (
> windows IP address ), but I get an error connecting....how else can I get
> these files out of linux so I can post them?
>
A good question considering you have network bridge problems.
It sounds old-tech, but a DOS formatted floppy might be the best option
here.

I tried using a USB pen drive as a test, but it managed to crash the VM
Player.
Interestingly, once I rebooted the appliance, I got the same message as
you about not being able to access the mumps.dat database. I couldn't
even run GT.M from the command line and none of the utilities (such as
DSE) would run either. In the end I had to start again with a fresh
copy of the appliance

If you manage to solve the network bridging problem with VMWare Player,
it might be a good idea to start with a fresh appliance too.

Regards,

Ant

Ant wrote:
> I tried using a USB pen drive as a test, but it managed to
> crash the VM Player. Interestingly, once I rebooted the
> appliance, I got the same message as you about not being able
> to access the mumps.dat database. I couldn't even run GT.M
> from the command line and none of the utilities (such as
> DSE) would run either. In the end I had to start again with a
> fresh copy of the appliance

A message referring to %GTM-E-REQRUNDOWN occurs when you restart after a
VM crash. It indicates that the GT.M database needs to be cleaned up. To
do this, log in as root, then:

mupip rundown -file /usr/local/gtm/extc/mumps.dat

(the filename was in the %GTM-E-REQRUNDOWN message).

The response should be:

%GTM-I-MUFILRNDWNSUC, File /usr/local/gtm/extc/mumps.dat successfully
rundown

Now reboot your VM by typing:

reboot

When it restarts things should be back to normal.

John Murray
George James Software

John....thanks for the rundown instructions. That at least hs gotten rid of
the errors. The Virtual appliance appears to eb starting up properly, but I
still can't get the network bridged within VM Player....and thus the virtual
appliance.


Thank you,

Mike MInor
Z-Code Systems, Inc,
mminor@zcodesystems.com

Phone: 407-656-4990
Fax: 407-656-5785
"John Murray" <johnm@georgejames.com> wrote in message
news:4A1233377E85D3118218005004822EC058FA94@YAK...
> Ant wrote:
>> I tried using a USB pen drive as a test, but it managed to
>> crash the VM Player. Interestingly, once I rebooted the
>> appliance, I got the same message as you about not being able
>> to access the mumps.dat database. I couldn't even run GT.M
>> from the command line and none of the utilities (such as
>> DSE) would run either. In the end I had to start again with a
>> fresh copy of the appliance
>
> A message referring to %GTM-E-REQRUNDOWN occurs when you restart after a
> VM crash. It indicates that the GT.M database needs to be cleaned up. To
> do this, log in as root, then:
>
> mupip rundown -file /usr/local/gtm/extc/mumps.dat
>
> (the filename was in the %GTM-E-REQRUNDOWN message).
>
> The response should be:
>
> %GTM-I-MUFILRNDWNSUC, File /usr/local/gtm/extc/mumps.dat successfully
> rundown
>
> Now reboot your VM by typing:
>
> reboot
>
> When it restarts things should be back to normal.
>
> John Murray
> George James Software
>

By the way, the next build of the VM will automatically do a GT.M
run-down when it boots up, avoiding this problem - something Bhaskar
had advised me to do

Regards

Rob

On Thu, 11 Jan 2007 20:28:14 GMT, "Mike Minor"
<mminorhsd@earthlink.net> wrote:

>John....thanks for the rundown instructions. That at least hs gotten rid of
>the errors. The Virtual appliance appears to eb starting up properly, but I
>still can't get the network bridged within VM Player....and thus the virtual
>appliance.
>
>
>Thank you,
>
>Mike MInor
>Z-Code Systems, Inc,
>mminor@zcodesystems.com
>
>Phone: 407-656-4990
> Fax: 407-656-5785
>"John Murray" <johnm@georgejames.com> wrote in message
>news:4A1233377E85D3118218005004822EC058FA94@YAK...
>> Ant wrote:
>>> I tried using a USB pen drive as a test, but it managed to
>>> crash the VM Player. Interestingly, once I rebooted the
>>> appliance, I got the same message as you about not being able
>>> to access the mumps.dat database. I couldn't even run GT.M
>>> from the command line and none of the utilities (such as
>>> DSE) would run either. In the end I had to start again with a
>>> fresh copy of the appliance
>>
>> A message referring to %GTM-E-REQRUNDOWN occurs when you restart after a
>> VM crash. It indicates that the GT.M database needs to be cleaned up. To
>> do this, log in as root, then:
>>
>> mupip rundown -file /usr/local/gtm/extc/mumps.dat
>>
>> (the filename was in the %GTM-E-REQRUNDOWN message).
>>
>> The response should be:
>>
>> %GTM-I-MUFILRNDWNSUC, File /usr/local/gtm/extc/mumps.dat successfully
>> rundown
>>
>> Now reboot your VM by typing:
>>
>> reboot
>>
>> When it restarts things should be back to normal.
>>
>> John Murray
>> George James Software
>>
>

---
Rob Tweed
M/Gateway Developments Ltd

The Pursuit of Productivity : http://www.mgateway.com