Solaris 10 and VMWare vmxnet ethernet driver

The problem that I had been experiencing was that I was unable to install the VMWare vxmnet ethernet driver onto a Solaris 10 x86 server running on a VMWare vSphere 4.0 server.

The solution to getting the vmxnet interface to work is as follows:

1) install stock e1000 ethernet interface on a Solaris VM
2) install the VMWare 4.0 tools on a Solaris VM
3) halt and power off VM
4) install a second ethernet interface onto a Solaris VM, using the vmxnet3 driver
5) ifconfig vmxnet3s0 plumb
6) ifconfig e1000g0 unplumb
7) mv /etc/hostname.e1000g0 /etc/hostname.vmxnet3s0
8) reboot

The trick is to have two ethernet interfaces (e1000 and vmxnet3) and just unplumb from Solaris the e1000 interface. Don't remove the e1000 interface from the VMWare host configuration.

Solaris syslog-ng error

If you get an error like:

# svcs syslog-ng
STATE STIME FMRI
maintenance 8:50:44 svc:/system/syslog-ng:default

# svcs -xv syslog-ng
svc:/system/syslog-ng:default (syslog-ng)
State: maintenance since Mon Dec 14 08:50:44 2009
Reason: Start method failed repeatedly, last exited with status 1.
See: http://sun.com/msg/SMF-8000-KS
See: man -M /usr/share/man -s 1M syslog-ng
See: /var/svc/log/system-syslog-ng:default.log
Impact: This service is not running.

# cat /var/svc/log/system-syslog-ng:default.log
[ Dec 14 08:50:42 Disabled. ]
[ Dec 14 08:50:42 Rereading configuration. ]
[ Dec 14 08:50:43 Enabled. ]
[ Dec 14 08:50:43 Executing start method ("/lib/svc/method/svc-syslog-ng") ]
Error parsing command line arguments: Conversion from character set '646' to 'UTF-8' is not supported[ Dec 14 08:50:44 Method "start" exited with status 1 ]
[ Dec 14 08:50:44 Executing start method ("/lib/svc/method/svc-syslog-ng") ]
Error parsing command line arguments: Conversion from character set '646' to 'UTF-8' is not supported[ Dec 14 08:50:44 Method "start" exited with status 1 ]
[ Dec 14 08:50:44 Executing start method ("/lib/svc/method/svc-syslog-ng") ]
Error parsing command line arguments: Conversion from character set '646' to 'UTF-8' is not supported[ Dec 14 08:50:44 Method "start" exited with status 1 ]
[ Dec 14 08:52:06 Rereading configuration. ]

This has nothing to do with the configuration, merely a missing charset.alias file.

To correct:

# ln -s /usr/lib/charset.alias /usr/local/lib/charset.alias

# svcadm clear syslog-ng

# svcs syslog-ng
STATE STIME FMRI
online 8:59:38 svc:/system/syslog-ng:default

Change WMware vSphere IP Address

To change the IP Address of a vSphere 4.0 server:

1) check the service console:

# esxcfg-vswif -l

[will return the current IP information and the name of the Service Console, in most cases: vswif0]


2) run the esxcfg-vswif command with the new information

# esxcfg-vswif -i newipaddress -n newsubnetmask vswif0

3) check the following files:

# cat /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-vswif0

make sure the new information is in the file.

# cat /etc/sysconfig/network

4) restart the network -- this will disconnect you unless you are on a console:

# service network restart

You should be done at this point.