I’m taking the RedHat RHA030 and 130 right now at ECU. The really cool thing about the class is that it’s all online. We use VMware Workstation 6 and connect to the classroom servers through a VPN connection. The biggest drawback to the class is that it’s all online. Weird how that works.

Any-who, one of our labs has us using mount and umount (did I mention that RHA030 is a basic GNU/Linux skills class with a RedHat flavor?) with a floppy drive. There are a couple of problems with this, however. One, there’s no virtual floppy disk on the virtual machine that’s been configured for class. Two, VMware Workstation 6 has this weird quirk (at least the version we have) that won’t allow you to create floppy images in the img format. It adds flp to the end of whatever you put want to name your file, and then gives this error that the file already exists, which doesn’t make a lot of sense since the Workstation just created the file and should know that.

So, here’s a (mostly) graphical tutorial that allows you to create your own floppy image and use it with VMware Workstation 6.

Step 1. Open VMware Workstation and select the virtual machine you want to add a virtual floppy drive to.

Step 2. Select “Edit Virtual Machine Settings” from that virtual machine’s “Commands” menu.

Step 3. From the “Virtual Machine Settings” dialog’s “Hardware” tab, click the “Add…” button

Step 4. On the “Hardware Wizard” dialog, select the “Floppy Drive” hardware type and then click the “Next” button.

Step 5. On the “Hardware Wizard” dialog, choose the “Create a blank floppy image” radio button and then click the “Next” button.

Step 6. On the “Hardware Wizard” dialog, click the “Bowse” button to choose a location for your floppy image.

Step 7. Type in the name of the image file you want to create. Notice I tried to input an “.img” extension which is one of the types listed in the file type select box. Don’t bother trying that because Workstation will automatically tack on a “.flp” extension regardless of what you input.

Step 8. Check your file’s path and then click “Finish”. What’s supposed to happen is, Workstation creates an image file with the name in the text box.

Step 9. What happens is Workstation adds the “.flp” extension, creates the image file, then gives you this Alert box stating: “Unable to create floppy image. File exists.” Idiotic really. Just click the “OK” button and proceed as follows.

Step 10. You’ll now see that your file name has been appended with the “.flp” extension and that and further “Finish” clicking will merely give you to opportunity to view the Alert box again. But don’t worry, because even though you’re getting error a strange and magical thing has happened. Click “Cancel” to proceed to the next step.

Step 11. Click “OK” on the “Virtual Machine Settings” dialog.

Step 12. Ok, this is less of a step than just a view of the results. Remember that “strange and magical” thing I mentioned? Well, as it turns out Workstation has added the floppy drive to your virtual hardware and created and added the floppy image to your floppy drive just fine even with those errors. Weird, weird, weird, but I’m not really complaining, now I can do my lab!

Hope this helps anyone still having problems with this.

This is just a quick howto on making your own WebRunner/Prism webapp file. This is a very simple process and shouldn’t take more than a few minutes of your time. There are a couple of tools you need however, to get started.

• a file archiver - my favorite is 7-zip, but you can just as easily use any archiving program that is compatible with zip files
• a text plain text editor

For more advanced webapps, a more advanced context highlighting text editor can be helpful for coding custom style sheets or adding javascript customizations. And don’t forget icons! I use a combination of Paint.Net and @icon sushi (which covers everything but MacOS, which is because I can’t seem to find software for Linux or Windows to accommodate icons for it - recommendations anyone?).

The No “.webapp” WebApp

There are several ways to open webpages with Prism or WebRunner. The first and easiest is to install Prism, then create a link to it on your desktop. Then change that link adding the option “-uri” and the url of the page you want to open. Here are two examples:

Windows:
c:\your\path\to_prism\prism.exe -uri http://web_url_of_site c:\your\path\to_prism\prism.exe -uri c:\location\of\local_file

GNU/Linux:
/your/path/to_prism/prism -uri http://web_url_of_site /your/path/to_prism/prism -uri /location/of/local_file

This method does not require a webapp file, it just launches the website or file you specify. This means, no icons are required, but you also don’t get to add any custom themes or js files. This would be a really good method to use with applications like Wiki on a Stick (woas).

WebApp Bundles

The second method is also pretty straight forward (until you make it complex by adding more functionality). For the most basic webApp bundle you only need to create one file; the webapp.ini. Here’s the content from the example webapp.ini on the Prism wiki:

[Parameters] id=unique-app-id@unique-author-id.whatever uri=http://[the-url-what-you-want-to-connect-to]/ status=yes location=no sidebar=no navigation=no

The “id” parameter is required to be unique. I’ve been using my website’s url (as most others have done as well) preceded by the name of the site, but any unique identifier will work. The “uri” parameter is required and will accept both url of the target website as well as local file paths. Everything after that appears to be optional and the values show are the defaults. These remaining parameters are options to tell Prism whether or not to show certain GUI elements (”status” = status bar;”location” = address bar;”sidebar” = sidebar;”navigation” = well, quite frankly, I have no idea - maybe navigation buttons that haven’t been implemented yet?).

The next step after saving your changes to this document, is to use your archiving program to zip up this file creating, as an example, “your_webapp.zip”. Replace the “zip” extension with “webapp” and you’re ready to roll! Now either double click the webapp file or you can launch the webapp from the command line thusly:

Windows:
c:\your\path\to_prism\prism.exe -webapp your_webapp_bundle

GNU/Linux:
/your/path/to_prism/prism -webapp your_webapp_bundle

For more advanced webapps you can add icons, scripting and style sheet support (see the Prism page for more details).

Happy coding!

Prism
Prism/WebApp Bundle
Prism/Scripting
Prism/Styling
7-Zip
Paint.Net
@icon sushi
Wiki on a Stick