Category: General IT Info

“Undefined Monitor” X Windows Error After Installing VMWare Tools

After installing VMWare tools you may get the error

Undefined Monitor "vmware"

when trying to start X Windows. To fix this error do the following:

1. Open up the X Windows configuration file in a text editor such as vi. The X Windows configuration file is named xorg.conf and is normally located in the directory /etc/X11/.

vi /etc/X11/xorg.conf

2. Add the following lines to the bottom of the xorg.conf file:

Section "Monitor"
   Identifier "vmware"
EndSection

3. Save the configuration file and then try to start X Windows again. It should now start without any errors.

VMWare Infrastructure

Free Computer Programming Training From Google Code University

Google Code University offers free training for computer programming. The training consists of a website which contains training materials such as slide shows, videos, and problem solving sets. Here is an excerpt from the Google training website which describes the training offered:

This website provides tutorials and sample course content so CS students and educators can learn more about current computing technologies and paradigms. In particular, this content is Creative Commons licensed which makes it easy for CS educators to use in their own classes.

The Courses section contains tutorials, lecture slides, and problem sets for a variety of topic areas:

  • AJAX Programming
  • Distributed Systems
  • Web Security
  • Languages

In the Tools 101 section, you will find a set of introductions to some common tools used in Computer Science such as version control systems and databases.

The CS Curriculum Search will help you find teaching materials that have been published to the web by faculty from CS departments around the world. You can refine your search to display just lectures, assignments or reference materials for a set of courses.

Here is a link to the Google Code University website: Link

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Error When Compiling PHP in CentOS 64 Bit

Library files in CentOS 64 bit are stored in the directory /usr/lib64. But in normal 32 bit CentOS, library files are stored in /usr/lib so this causes a problem when trying to compile source code that looks for library files in /usr/lib. When using the default configure options for compiling PHP, the directory /usr/lib is searched for library files so if you have any 64 bit applications installed, their associated library files will not be found. For example, trying to compile PHP with the configure option:

--with-mysql=/usr

will result in the error:

/usr/bin/ld: cannot find -lmysqlclient

You can fix this MySQL error and other configure errors relating to library files not being found by adding the following option to the configure line:

--with-libdir=lib64

Code

How to Install VMWare Tools in CentOS 5

Install software needed by VMware Tools

1. Install packages to build the kernel modules

yum install gcc kernel-devel

2. Check the running kernel matches the kernel headers

uname -r             # running kernel
rpm -q kernel-devel  # installed kernel headers

3. If the two versions do not match, run

yum -y upgrade kernel kernel-devel
reboot

4. Find out where the kernel headers are (you may need this later)

ls -d /usr/src/kernels/$(uname -r)*/include

Prepare and install VMware Tools

1. From VMware Workstation: go to VM> Install VMware Tools

2. From the VM: mount the virtual cd drive

mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/

3. Extract VMware Tools to /tmp/

tar -C /tmp -zxvf /mnt/VMwareTools-5.5.3-34685.tar.gz

4. Unmount the virtual cd drive

umount /mnt

5. Now run the installer

cd /tmp/vmware-tools-distrib
./vmware-install.pl

6. When asked Do you want to run vmware-config-tools.pl?, answer “Yes”.

VMWare Infrastructure