Things were much better until it came time to install the VMware Tools and nothing happened. Things weren’t exactly snappy and without the tools installed, they weren’t going to get any better. It was time to make the upgrade from VMware 1.06 to 2.0 and as it turns out, is much easier than previous VMware installs.

Overall I followed the instructions from the LinuxGazette website and things worked flawlessly, but there were a couple of extras due to the upgrade.

Firstly (and fairly obviously), make sure you stop your current VMware daemon/service before starting the install. The VMware installer is pretty good, but I’m sure that your virtual machines would appreciate being offline before things get messed up.

sudo /etc/init.d/vmware stop

If you’re upgrading from VMware Server 1.06 the installer will also complain about the vmnet and vmmon modules being left from a previous version. So we need to get rid of those – using the correct kernel version. You can get that with “uname -r”.

sudo rm /lib/modules/2.6.24-22-server/misc/vmnet.o
sudo rm /lib/modules/2.6.24-22-server/misc/vmnet.ko
sudo rm /lib/modules/2.6.24-22-server/misc/vmmon.o
sudo rm /lib/modules/2.6.24-22-server/misc/vmmon.ko

After that it’s plain sailing. Just follow the instructions to untar your VMware download and run the installer. Assuming you used the default locations in the previous install, your virtual machines will be untouched and start happily under VMware Server 2.0

One of the final things to note in the install is that the new client interface is all browser based. To log into your VMware server requires a password and the Ubuntu root user does not have one by default. So on your server be sure to run,

sudo passwd root

and set a nice secure password for when you head to http://servername:8222. Firefox users will need to give the site security certificate the OK and all browsers will need to install the plugin to use the console to view your machines.

Hooray – Windows 7 now installs the VMware Tools properly and runs pretty well. At the moment I have no sound and the limited graphics under VMware don’t allow Aero fanciness, but I can now test and develop in the Windows world while meeting all license requirements. The Windows 7 RC license is valid until June 2010 although don’t wait that long as it’ll start making life hard for you in March 2010. That’s almost a year of free OS from Microsoft!

For the others in the audience that are installing on Ubuntu 8.04 or another Linux system that doesn’t have packages, you should have a working VMware Server install with web interface and a client console by the bottom of the page.

Downloads

There are a few things you will need from VMware’s site before we kick off. Download these to your server machine.

VMware Server 1.06 is the latest version of the free product, released in late May 2008.

The web based Management User Interface (MUI) onto your VMware Server install. The files for VMware Server 1.06 are available here.

System Extras

Your Linux (in this case Ubuntu 8.04) system will require some extra libraries and bits if you haven’t already done so. Run the following on both the server and the client (if you’re installing the VMware console too).

sudo apt-get install build-essential linux-headers-`uname -r` xinetd

As you progress through the install you may find that your system has extra requirements. It all depends on the setup and libraries already installed on each machine. So you have the option of installing these ones on your server now or just keep going and come back if needed.

sudo apt-get install libx11-6 libx11-dev libxtst6 libICE6 libxt6 libxrender1 libxi6 xfsprogs

Install

Extract both the tarballs you’ve download,

tar -xvzf VMware-server-1.0.6-*.tar.gz
tar -xvzf VMware-mui-1.0.6-*.tar.gz

switch to the Server install folder,

cd vmware-server-distrib

and run the installation script as root,

sudo ./vmware-install.pl

You may see errors during the install. If so, run these two commands to cover for a couple of missing libraries for cairo and gcc (tip courtesy of Ubuntu Tutorials)

sudo ln -sf /usr/lib/gcc/i486-linux-gnu/4.2.3/libgcc_s.so /usr/lib/vmware/lib/libgcc_s.so.1/libgcc_s.so.1

sudo ln -sf /usr/lib/libpng12.so.0 /usr/lib/vmware/lib/libpng12.so.0/libpng12.so.0

At the end of the install you’ll be asked for the registration key that you can get from the VMware website. I usually request 10 and copy and paste them to a safe place. Be aware that the Linux and Windows keys are different and can’t be interchanged.

When the key has been accepted the install tidies up and you should see the VMware Server starting and giving the OK message. To double check, just restart it again with,

sudo /etc/init.d/vmware restart

You now have a working VMware Server but no easy way to control it. So we need the MUI and the Console.

Switch folder back to the MUI source folder that you extracted earlier and run the install script,

sudo ./vmware-install.pl

Once that’s completed, you should be able to connect from your client system’s web browser to https://<server>:8333 as long as you haven’t changed the port.

Again, depending on the state of your system, you may need to run the following if you have connection problems. I’ve found this fixes the SSL generation error (“starting httpd.vmware:-ne failed“) you may have at the end of the MUI install.

sudo ln -s -f /bin/bash /bin/sh

sudo vmware-config-mui.pl

Log on to https://<server>:8333 as your server user and you’ll see you can’t do too much. No options to create new VMs or change too many options. You need to install the VMWare console on your client machine.

Client Console Install

Installing the client console software is pretty easy. If you’re on a Windows machine just grab the client ZIP file from VMware, extract, double-click and you’re done.

For the Linux (specifically Ubuntu 8.04) world, use the links on those VMware MUI pages to download the console tarball and extract to a folder on your client machine. Remember that the rest of these instructions should be run on your Linux client and not your server.

cd vmware-server-console-distrib

sudo ./vmware-install.pl

Just follow the instructions through and accept the defaults. Look out for any ominous error messages, but you shouldn’t see any.

Test things out by starting the console with,

/usr/bin/vmware-server-console

and log on as your server username and password. You can now create a VMware guest and start it up – as long as you’ve used a registration key. If you receive errors when starting your guest system via the console, make sure you’ve installed the libraries noted in the System Extras section. If you still have problems, run the following on the server to see if you have anything specific missing,

ldd /usr/lib/vmware/bin/vmware-vmx

Hopefully by now you’ve got a smile on your face and if not, keep plugging away and feel free to ask any questions in the comments.