Laptop VM configuration

Two laptops have been purchased through the UHL for use on home visits for GRAPHIC2. Their service tags are 4MMVLX1 and JLMVLX1.

Configuration: VMWare Player installed by UHL IM&T. Ubuntu 120.10 LTS. ProFTPd (which needs openbsd-inetd installing first). WinSCP and PuTTY installed onto the Windows OS to connect to VM for file installations, etc. Use PuTTY to create a key pair for SSH connection. After that, WinSCP can connect using SFTP instead of FTP. Install ntp and set /etc/ntp.conf to point to the UK pool, because system time will get out of sync while the server is turned off. If this set-up doesn't do the trick we might need additional cron jobs. But ntp should sort it.

For REDCap, install php-pear, php5-curl, phpmyadmin. Laptops must have open-vm-tools installed in order to be able to do a 'soft' suspend.

Put the 'Virtual Machines' directory into "C:\Users\Public" and then create a shortcut to start VMWare Player and launch the relevant VM. If that shortcut were in the 'All Users' startup directory it would start automatically. But putting shortcuts in the 'All Users' directory requires admin permission.

The server needs suspending before the laptop is shutdown. This is accomplished with a small batch file that calls vmrun.exe to suspend the server, but it must be run as a local admin. So the laptops have additional admin users for Nick, Sue, Jay and Sue C. Laptops must be shut down using the script not the

For more information on the multi-machine setup of REDCap (asyncronous data collection) see REDCap Multi-server set up.

4MMVLX1 is done, at least to this point, with the shortcut in my personal 'startup' directory. A support call has been logged asking for local admin rights.

JLMVLX1 has had the VM image copied to it.

On the Windows host machine, the 'all users' start menu has a shortcut to REDCap, and the 'default applications' item is removed. A batch file 'startup.bat' in the all users' startup applications folder triggers the starting of the VM.

The batch file to close the VM only works for me, not for Sue. Is this a firewall issue? I've set the network (using the Local Security Policy) to be private, and that didn't help. Andy Carruthers suggests setting other users to 'power user' status (or failing that, 'local administrator' status) and seeing if that gives them enough rights to shutdown the VMs. If it does, that is an acceptable solution, given that it's only a couple of users and a couple of laptops. On testing power user is not sufficient, but local admin is. Caroline Hughes is processing applications for local admin status.