VMware Installation

The installation of the other operating systems is done using VMware. You can download VMware Server at no charge from the VMware website. I prefer VMware Workstation because I don't like the Server's graphical console.

athome$  scp VMware-Workstation-7.0.0-203739.x86_64.bundle root@h1671829.stratoserver.net:

debian# sh VMware-Workstation-7.0.0-203739.x86_64.bundle

You should either note the automatically selected network of the NAT adapter or change it to a new one using vmware-netcfg.

debian# ifconfig vmnet8
vmnet8    Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:50:56:c0:00:08  
          inet addr:172.16.65.1  Bcast:172.16.65.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::250:56ff:fec0:8/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:6 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 B)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)

Note that in order to get the physical hard disk installed inside the virtual machine, a regular user running VMware needs write access to it. The easiest way to do this in Debian is to add the user to the disk group. WARNING! This is a dangerous operation, as the regular user easily could destroy all data. Do not forget to remove the user from the disk group once the VMware guest has been installed.

debian# adduser jexss disk
Adding user `jexss' to group `disk'...
Done.

The user must re-login to get the new group permissions to take effect. I run all VMware activities as root so I don't need this.

I run my VMware session inside a VNC srceen:

debian# mkdir .vnc
debian# echo 'xterm &' > .vnc/xstartup
debian# echo 'blackbox' >> .vnc/xstartup
debian# chmod 755 /root/.vnc/xstartup
debian# vncpasswd
debian# echo '$vncStartup = "$ENV{HOME}/.vnc/xstartup";' > .vncrc
debian# echo '$geometry ="1024x768";' >> .vncrc
debian# vncserver :1
debian# xvncviewer -passwd .vnc/passwd :1 &