Ubuntu Wiki

UBUNTU as a VMware host

Here are the steps I took to get VMWare Workstation 5.0 running on an Ubuntu 5.10 system on an amd64 based computer.

1. Install the required compiler and kernel headers needed to compile the vmware kernel module.

   sudo apt-get install linux-headers-$(uname -r) build-essential g++-3.4

2. Download VMWare Workstation 5.0 from [http://www.vmware.com/ VMware] and upack.

   tar xzf VMware-workstation-5.0.0-13124.tar.gz

3. Run the VMware install script, but ""DO NOT run vmware-config.pl"" (as offered by the install script).

   ( cd vmware-distrib && sudo ./vmware-install.pl )

   • You should be able to accept the default answers.
   • You want to use the ""vmware-any-any-update"" (below) in place of running ""vmware-config.pl"".

4. Download the current ""vmware-any-any-update"" package from http://ftp.cvut.cz/vmware/ and unpack.

   tar xzf vmware-any-any-update95.tar.gz

5. Run the ""vmware-any-any-update"" script, with the environment variable CC set to the version of gcc used to compile the Linux kernel.

   export CC=/usr/bin/gcc-3.4 
   ( cd vmware-any-any-update95 && sudo ./runme.pl )

With any luck, the modules should be compiled and tested, and vmware should be installed and ready to run at this point:

$ /usr/local/bin/vmware

UBUNTU as a VMware guest

VMware version 5 is reported to work with Ubuntu out-of-the-box. Try using NAT rather than bridging when using VMware 5 with Ubuntu as a guest OS.

VMware Workstation 4, VMware Workstation 4.5, or VMware GSX 3.1 under Ubuntu causes some problems because of Ubuntu's use of udev. Fortunately there is a patch for VMware that solves this and many other problems. Follow the instructions below after you have installed VMware.

1. Open a terminal and change into a temporary directory.

2. Download the patch by running

   wget http://platan.vc.cvut.cz/ftp/pub/vmware/vmware-any-any-update95.tar.gz 

   • (check the directory for new versions if that wget fails).

3. Extract the patch by running

    tar xzvf vmware-any-any-update95.tar.gz 

4. Change into the directory where the patch was extracted.

    cd vmware-any-any-update95 

5. Apply the patch.

    # sudo ./runme.pl 

   After the patch is applied it will prompt to run vmware-config.pl. Choose Yes and accept the defaults.

Installation tips

1. The install script asks for the path of gcc. If it isn't automatically found find the path on your system by running

    which gcc 

   . Set the full path to the binary in the variable CC:

    export CC=/usr/bin/gcc-3.4 

2. When you run vmware-config.pl, if the script can't find your kernel's C headers you must install the appropriate headers package. Do this by running

   sudo apt-get install linux-headers-$(uname -r) 

   You must then point vmware-config.pl to the appropriate directory, such as

    /usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.10-5-686/include 

3. If the VMware Management Interface (MUI) for GSX complains about a lack of libdb.so.3 and instruct you to get compat-db-3.3.<##>-<#>.i386.rpm. You want the ubuntu package libdb2 for this.

Enabling Parallel Port Access

VMware allows direct access to parallel ports, which is handy if you've got a scanner that only has Windows drivers. You may need to make the following minor change to VMware's startup script.

1. Open /etc/iniit.d/vmware in an editor by running

    sudo gedit /etc/init.d/vmware 

2. Find the case statement that looks like this (around line 814)

     # See how we were called.
     case "$1" in
      start) 

3. Add the following text at the end of the case statement

    rmmod lp
    chgrp lpadmin /dev/parport0
    chmod g+rw /dev/parport0