HowTo: Windows (XP) on Ubuntu with VMWare Server

[Skootle]

Hi, i don't know if it has been covered in this guide (it's quite long and i don't fancy reading it all), but i installed vmware player the other day and had major problems with it.

As soon as the system would boot up the vmware player services were using all of my available ram and swap space.... is it meant to do this?

I'd like to install vmware server so that i can get windows working inside my linux but i don't want to have the same problems i had with player.

Is player meant to be the same thing as server or does it have different uses?

Yeah, that was happening to me as well. I also tried Workstation, but the exact same thing happened; once, I couldn't even start up Kubuntu and had to uninstall it via the recovery console.

When I installed the server edition (the one the HowTo tells you to download), I realised that "VMware-DHCP" (or something like that) was taking up around 85% of my 1024 MB or RAM. So I uninstalled (it took me a long time to type vmware-uninstall.pl ) and tried installing it again, but this time, when it automatically opened up vmware-config.pl and asked me about network information, I said "no", and that's it.

Seems to be working fine right now. I haven't finished setting up the virtual machine, but all seems to be going well. I'll keep you posted.

BTW, uninstallation of VMWare is pretty simple. Just sudo ./vmware-uninstall.pl and it'll take care of everything.

[Skootle]

OK, obviously if I do that (not configure network options), I don't have access to the internet via my Virtual Machine, yet if I do configure it, vmnet-dhcpd uses around 85% of my memory and makes it impossible for me to even use my computer (let alone a virtual machine).

Any ideas?

[dentaku65]

Running windows from an existing installtion turned out to be quite easy.
I have 2 different hard drives; /dev/hda is windows; /dev/hdb is Ubuntu. Mostly I run Ubuntu but for some stuff I need Windows. Most of the time I run the existing windows in VMWARE using the dedicated disk. It works perfectly:

- Start Windows dedicated and create a new hardware profile (called vmware of something)
- Start again dedicated, now with the vmware hardware profile. Replace the IDE-drivers with the Windows Standard IDE drivers. If you don't, windows won't start in Vmware.

In Linux in VMware, just use an existing disk instead of diskfiles. (don't know about Windows and Ubuntu on 1 disk, should be about the same)

I'm working like this for about 3 moths now; it works perfectly. I'm using my old windows installation still

Good luck!

Can you explain what are exactly "Windows Standard IDE Drivers"?
I've tried to change the IDE driver(s) on XP partition (in the created vmware hardware profile) but I'm not able to find them...

TIA

[dentaku65]

Can you explain what are exactly "Windows Standard IDE Drivers"?
I've tried to change the IDE driver(s) on XP partition (in the created vmware hardware profile) but I'm not able to find them...

TIA

Never mind... I did it!
Works perfect, the only thing was the waste of time re-registering my installed copy of XP

[KageKeeper]

Great HowTo. Worked perfectly.

Only problem is I have no sound in my XP on vmware. The option to add hardware is grayed out.

I have followed other's advice and did a sudo killall esd, but that does not help either.

Any other suggestions?

Thanks so much!

[aetherane]

Windows XP doesn't have my computer's screen resolution listed when I boot into it via vmware. How can I fix this?

[dentaku65]

Windows XP doesn't have my computer's screen resolution listed when I boot into it via vmware. How can I fix this?

Right click in the windows desktop and choose your screen resolution (i my case 1024x768 and was 800x600). Simple

[acorn22]

Ok, I keep getting this error that it is looking for vmware already installed on my machine.

here is what I did

lowell@ubuntu:~/Desktop/vmware-mui-distrib$ sudo ./vmware*
Creating a new installer database using the tar3 format.

You must read and accept the End User License Agreement to continue.
Press enter to display it.




VMWARE MASTER END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT
...
...

Do you accept? (yes/no) yes

Thank you.

Installing the content of the package.

Setup is unable to find the "vmware" program on your machine. Please make sure
it is installed. Do you want to specify the location of this program by hand?
[yes] yes

What is the location of the "vmware" program on your
machine? /home/lowell/vmware

The answer "/home/lowell/vmware" is invalid. It must be the complete name of a
binary file.

What is the location of the "vmware" program on your
machine?

What can I do?

EDIT: now I get this

lowell@ubuntu:~/Desktop/vmware-mui-distrib$ sudo ./vmware*
Password:
A previous installation of VMware software has been detected.

Failure

Execution aborted.

lowell@ubuntu:~/Desktop/vmware-mui-distrib$

and there is no folder named vmware in my etc folder. one folder named vmware-mui, tho


EDIT: This is my 100th post!

EDIT: I downloaded the wrong one! I got the mui (managing thingy) instead of the server.

EDIT: Ok, Now I'm getting this error.

The path "/home/lowell/doc/vmware" does not exist currently. This program is
going to create it, including needed parent directories. Is this what you want?
[yes]

Unable to get the access rights of source file "./vmware-vix/bin".

Execution aborted.

[ramasdf123]

$ vmware
bash: vmware: command not found

[jocheem67]

Yes

Got XP up and running with vmware under dapper. Sound, usb, video all working perfectly. So a big thanks from here.

Some questiond though:

can I approach my ext3 ubuntu files and folders as well as my fat32 xp files and folders ( dual-boot ) in vmware--xp--ntfs???

The funny thing is that I can mount my usb backup disk which is ntfs within vmware--xp.....
I am playing music, with a very old version of winamp ( 2.70 ) as we speak, and can swap files from my vmware installation to my usb-disk...
Is this a file-system matter????