Tech Help Blog » Virtualization

Hyper V Failed to add device ‘Microsoft Synthetic Ethernet Port’

Josh — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 09:36:22 +0000

So just another quick one here, I encountered a server having huge issues modifying and creating VM’s. The issue was exasterbated by the fact the drive holding the VM’s had run out of space and they where all “saved” and offline. In any case after lots of investigating and attempting to fix the VM’s (after freeing space) I still couldn’t create or edit existing VM’s! The message poping up was something like this

The server encountered an error while configuring network on ——– Failed to add device ‘Microsoft Synthetic Ethernet Port’.

So the fix, at least for me, was Antivirus exclusions! The box in this case was running AVG enterprise and by adding an exclusion on the virtual machine directory the problem seen above went away, I have since heard of similar issues with other AV apps and also MS Forefront causing the same issues.

Hope this helps

VMware Console repeating Characters and how to stop it

Josh — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 12:17:58 +0000

I was recently connected to the console of a Linux VM on an ESXi server using vSphere and whenever I would type it would repeat each character a random number of times, needless to say this got quiet anoying. So I did some Googleing! As we all do, and I found this article which was exactly what I needed and figured I’d post up my findings on the same.

Basically in order to make this change you will require access to the .vmx file for the VM in question on the server with either vSphere/telnet/ssh. I actually used ssh to perform the change browsing to the virtual machine and editing the .vmx file that way. However as most people probably don’t have ssh/telnet enabled, view this post by clicking here to learn how to enable it, I will demonstrate this using vSphere and its built in Datastore Browser.

Browse the datastore from vSphere as shown below.
Basically you click on the top level host in the left column, then choose the Configuration tab >> storage in the Hardware menu and right click on the datastore in question and select Browse Datastore.
NOTE: Ensure the VM is Shutdown when changing this file.
Browse to the VM and download the .vmx file
This part is mostly self explanatory, using the datastore browser window that pops up you can browse the file store and find the .vmx file inside your VM’s folder. Then click the small download button and choose an appropriate place for it.
Now lets edit the file with WordPad or similar.
Find a neat place within the file to add the following line.

keyboard.typematicMinDelay = “2000000″

Save the file, ensuring it retains its .vmx extension.

Upload the file using the Datastore Browser.
Overwrite the original file with the changed file and you’re good to go. Start the VM up again and you shouldn’t have the typing issue again!

Typing may be slowed down somewhat and as mentioned in Robert Chases post here you may need to repeat keystrokes within editors like vi when holding a key doesn’t quiet work as normal. But quality is more important that quantity! Leave questions in the comments. Cheers

How to Enable SSH Access to ESXi v4

Josh — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 10:02:31 +0000

Go to the ESXi console and press

ALT+F1
Type:

unsupported
Enter the root password (typing will be blind)
Once logged in type

vi /etc/inetd.conf
Look for the line that starts with #ssh and remove the # so it starts with ssh (press “x” if the cursor is on the character)
Save by typing

:wq!
Restart the ESXi server & test connecting via ssh.

NOTE: You can also enable telnet access by removing the # infront of the telnet line and I haven’t tested this, as I use secure management networks, however if you follow my post “How to Secure SSH on CPanel and restrict to specific hosts” you can probably use the step 2 bit to change the listening port if you really wanted to