VMware Server

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This is a guide to installing VMware Server 2.

This is by no means designed to be an extensive HowTo, it's just the steps I had to take on a new Gentoo box to get Vmware-Server 2 running.

The VMware Site has tar files on there site, I could copy this tar file to my local dists files, but as there's an ebuild in portage, I'm going to use that.

~ # eix vmware-server
  * app-emulation/vmware-server
      Available versions:  1.0.8.126538!s ~1.0.9.156507!s (~)2.0.1.156745!s (~)2.0.1.156745-r1!s
      Homepage:            http://www.vmware.com/
      Description:         VMware Server for Linux

But this shows that version 2 is masked, so I've updated /etc/portage/packages.keywords.

~ # vim /etc/portage/package.keywords 

Added the line :

~app-emulation/vmware-server-2.0.1.156745

You could use :

~ # echo "~app-emulation/vmware-server-2.0.1.156745" >> /etc/portage/package.keywords

I then tried to emerge vmware-server, it failed, I needed to include CONFIG_UNUSED_SYMBOLS In the kernel.

Re-Running emerge showed that I had the vmware-modules was masked by ~amd64 so I ran

~ # echo "app-emulation/vmware-modules ~amd64" >> /etc/portage/package.keywords  

Again re-Running emerge and I needed to include FUSE in the kernel so I've set CONFIG_FUSE_FS using vim to edit the .config file and then rebuilt the kernel as normal.

Once the kernel is updated with the above items and the keywords are set run :

~ # emerge -v vmware-server

The ebuild has to fetch a large file so the speed of this depends on your internet connection, but once the files are retrivied it's a quick emerge.

Use emerge to run the vmware-config.pl script.

~ # emerge vmware-server --config

What you select in this config script will be down to your system, for me the defaults work fine. You can always edit the setting afterwards.

• IIRC, you'll have to do this if you update your kernel.

You'll need to get a serial number from the VMWare Site

http://www.vmware.com/download/server/

You might need to start the server

~ # /etc/init.d/vmware start

You will need update rc too

~ # rc-update add vmware default

Before you can access the web ui you need to add a user to the vmware group

~ # usermod -a -G vmware {username}

Note the -a, this is important because without it you'll unset the current groups.

That should give you a working vmware-server test it using :

~ # vmware

You'll need to add the execption to firefox or your chosen browser.