Thursday, October 30, 2008

WebTest Groovy example thows NoSuchMethodError

I've been working on a project to do functional testing on a web application using WebTest. I've coded up some prototypes using the standard XML/Ant format/language/DSL, but I wanted to try doing it in Groovy, since I'm not a big fan of XML. I copied the sample application from the manual, but when I ran it I was getting and exception:

Caught: : java.lang.NoSuchMethodError: org.apache.xpath.compiler.FunctionTable.installFunction(Ljava/lang/String;Ljava/lang/Class;)I
at test.run(test.groovy:33)
at test.main(test.groovy)

(If you're following along at home, you'll note that that line number is too large for the example - I've already hacked some stuff into it.)

I couldn't find any examples online of people having exactly the same problem, but I'd seen other errors blaming an old version of xalan.jar for this problem, especially under Mac OS 10.5 - my platform. (BTW, this happened under both Java5 and Java6.) Although I didn't have CLASSPATH set to anything, I figured I'd try setting it to have the version of xalan.jar that ships with WebTest, and it worked. So, my complete invocation line is:

groovy -cp /usr/local/java/webtest_1720/lib/xalan-2.7.0.jar -Dwebtest.home=/usr/local/java/webtest_1720 test.groovy

enjoy,
Charles.

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

VMware ESXi default resource pool name

I've been playing around with ESXi trying to figure out how to use their Remote Command Line Interface (RCLI) to import and run a VM. This has been a major PITA, which I suppose I could have been documenting as I go but I didn't. (Full disclosure - I'm doing this without any formal training, without their snazzy Virtual Infrastructure tools, or anything else.)

According to VMware's RCLI Installation and Reference Guide, the data center and resource pool parameters to vmware-cmd -s register are optional, but nonetheless, it kept telling me "Must specify resource pool".

Eventually, I found a forum thread that contained the answer: Resources. (Kinda like "plastics" only different.) I don't have a data center set up, but I found that using almost any word for the data center name seemed to work.

So, in the end, this is what worked for me (your milage may vary):
vmware-cmd  [conn options] -s register '[datastore-name] vm-dir/conf.vmx' root Resources

enjoy,
Charles.