I use vmware a lot for development and networking experimentation’s. My system is getting very slow when 4 instances of vmware are trying to access (destroy?) the hard drive. Recently one of my coworker told me that was possible to speed up vmware by 40%. A very interesting tuning , it avoided me to buy a new computer
The principle of this tuning is to use the RAM as the temporary directory.




Step 1: Edit VM config file

The file is usually located at /etc/vmware/config
Edit the file and make sure you have this line in it

tmpDirectory = "/dev/shm"

Step 2: Mounting /dev/shm

Edit /etc/fstab and add the following line.

tmpfs                   /dev/shm                tmpfs   defaults,size=1G,noatime        0 0

I’m getting really good results by setting the size of the partition as the same size of the ram I have.

Step 3: Mount and Run

Now mount the partition and give it shot.
You will see a huge difference.

You may have some other tricks to make it smoking faster, please share it in the comment section!

I will show you how to install the bt voyager drivers using NDISWRAPPER:

Step 1 - Dowloaded and installed latest Bt voyager drivers from BT’s website on my windows box. Once installed I went into program files/BT VOYAGER/ folder and copied all over to my ubuntu box.

Step 2 - Make sure your Voyager 1055 device is connected to your ubuntu box. Installed latest ndiswrapper-1.9 from hardy’s repos.

Step -3 - In terminal – type following once you are in folder where you copied the BT voyager files to.
Code:

sudo ndiswrapper -i bcmrndis.inf

don’t worry if you get invalid error. just carry on!

Step -4 - Run
Code:

ndiswrapper -l

, it is ‘ell’ not one

Step -5 - copy files over
Code:

sudo cp -v  usb8023.sys RNDISMP.sys /etc/ndiswrapper/bcmrndis/

Step -6 - Run again
Code:

ndiswrapper -l

and then
Code:

sudo modprobe ndiswrapper

Step -7 - create new file -
Code:

sudo gedit /etc/udev/rules.d/99-custom.rules

Step -8 - copy paste the following:
#START**
BUS==”usb”,
SYSFS{idProduct}==”0715″,
SYSFS{idVendor}==”1690″,
RUN+=”/bin/sh -c ‘echo 1 > /sys/$devpath/device/bConfigurationValue’”
#END**

then save and exit

Unplug your adapter and plug it back. Everything works hopefully for you as well.

configure your wireless using network manager and then off you go.

If you want you can make ndiswrapper load on startup with:

$ sudo ndiswrapper -m

X11 forwarding is an amazing option. You can run pretty much any application remotely. To do that it’s very simple. You only need to connect with the switch -X.

fouad@kungfu:~$ ssh -X user@remote_ip
[fouad@monk ~]$ gedit

One thing you want to verify is to assure that X11 Forwarding is enabled on the other hand.

Magic! Magic!

Running a remote command

Let say you want to run a certain command and you also need to pipe it to local command, ssh gives you a way to accomplish it.

fouad@kungfu:~$ ssh fouad@monk ‘df -h’ | grep /boot
/dev/sda1              99M   46M   49M  49% /boot
fouad@kungfu:~$

Connecting password less

This is a secure way to login to a remote machine without getting asked for a password.

Step 1: Generating a key

fouad@kungfu:~$ ssh-keygen -t dsa -f .ssh/id_dsa

You will be asked to provide a a pass phrase.
You can leave it blank if you want to.

Step 2: Setup the remote server
Many ways can be used to transfer the file, I personally prefer doing this
by scp.

fouad@kungfu:~$ scp .ssh/id_dsa.pub username@remote_ip:~/.ssh/id_dsa.pub

Once the transfer completed , logon to your remote server and follow this steps.

fouad@monk: cd .ssh
fouad@monk: cat id_dsa.pub >> authorized_keys
fouad@monk: chmod 640 authorized_keys

We don’t need the id_dsa.pub anymore , you can remove it.
Now you can disconnect and reconnect without having to put your password.
This can save you alot of time if you have to frequently reconnect to a server or to many servers.

fouad@kungfu:~$ ssh remote_ip
Last login: Tue Jul  1 06:15:54 2008 from 192.168.1.106
[fouad@monk ~]$ uname -a
Linux monk 2.6.18-92.1.6.el5 #1 SMP Wed Jun 25 13:49:24 EDT 2008 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux
[fouad@monk ~]$