EasyVmx.com – Online Vmware Virtual Drive Creation Tool

I was tinkering around trying to figure out a way to get vmware player 2.0 to install an OS of my choice and in googling for a solution, I stumbled upon this great little site on how to create a blank virtual using their online application. You get the option of using the site at three different levels of customization and just download the complete virtual os setting file and virtual drives premade in a small zip file. All you need to do is find a place to unzip them and off you go.

Here are some shots of the website’s creation wizard – I chose the EasyVMX option.

I’ve already used this site to setup vmware 2.0 player to run Windows Vista, Longhorn Beta 3, Fedora Core 7, CentOS 5.0 and Ubuntu Gusty Gibbon 7.10.

I’m planning on trying this out on some virtualization our department is planning on rolling out in the near future. I’m sure my supervisor will like this nice little gem taking the guess work out.
-dhashi

VMware Player 2.0 on Ubuntu Feisty

I recently saw that vmware released a new version of vmware player with the following new features so I opted to install VMware Player 2.0 on my Ubuntu Studio system to see how things run. Our campus is going to be switching to MS Vista soon, so I hope that a newer version of the free Vmware server that officially supports Vista with video acceleration will be out soon.

Here´s whats new! (taken from the vmware website)

Key Features in Version 2.0

VMware Player 2.0 adds the following features:

• Windows Vista support — You can use Windows Vista as a host and guest operating system.
• USB 2.0 Support (About Time!)— You can use peripherals that require high-speed performance, such as MP3 players and fast storage devices, in your virtual machines.
• Shared folders — If the virtual machine has shared folders enabled, you can use this feature to move files between the host and guest operating systems. The virtual machine must be preconfigured with shared folders enabled, and with the path specified to the designated shared folder on the host. As a security precaution, shared folders are disabled by default in VMware Player. When you open a virtual machine with shared folders in VMware Player, a notification message explains that shared folders have been disabled, and tells you how to re-enable the feature.
• Appliance view — Virtual machine appliances can now be preconfigured to display an appliance view. A virtual appliance is a fully pre-installed and pre-configured application and operating system environment that runs on any standard x86 desktop or server in a virtual machine for example, a Web server application with a browser-based console. The appliance view gives you a brief description of the type of server or appliance and provides a link that opens the browser on the guest system and connects to the correct port for the server console. If a virtual machine is configured with an appliance view, VMware Player defaults to the appliance view. You can also use the traditional console view if you prefer.
• Welcome page — The user-friendly Welcome page gives you the option of browsing to a virtual machine file, opening a recently used virtual machine, or downloading a virtual appliance from the VMTN (VMware Technology Network) Web site.
• Experimental support for Virtual SMP — You can use VMware Player to power on a virtual machine that has more than one virtual processor assigned.

Now to get Vmware Player 2.0 running on Ubuntu Studio, I installed some essential items as outlined on howtoforge.net´s how-to-guide on installing vmware on ubuntu prior to install. The nice thing is all I needed to do was just the Build environment portion – no patch required like in vmware server.

From a terminal -

sudo aptitude install linux-headers-`uname -r` build-essential

sudo aptitude install xinetd

You can download the player from the vmware site – make sure you download the .tar file http://www.vmware.com/download/player/

I followed the defaults for the install and it completed successfully.

Please note there are differences with the Player vs Server. The major thing is that you cannot create images.

I installed Vmware Player 2.0 on Ubuntu Studio Feisty Edition – I believe it should work just the same on a standard Ubuntu Feisty install.

-dhashi

Vmware broke after Ubuntu Kernel Updates

Well as I predicted my Vmware install failed to start after the kernel updates that I downloaded and installed. Since there is a new version of VMware available now – 1.03. I decided it was time to upgrade my installation anyways – this would mean a full install.

So on my Ubuntu Feisty – there is a great tutorial that I followed from howtoforge.net that outline how to go about getting vmware to run on Ubuntu Feisty. Note the part about the patch that is required since even the latest version of Vmware Server doesn’t compile properly using the new kernel headers.

This how-to guide was a little dated so after a little looking around on the vmware forums – I came across a post with the newest source for the patch.

Just follow the tutorial on HowToForge.net and substitute the newer patch.

howtoforge.net is an excellent source for the newbie admin who wants to learn more about building out more different flavours of Linux and open source solutions.

-dhashi

Windows inside Ubuntu ala Vmware

Well, I was able to tackle getting my original XP workstation converted into a Vmware virtual drive and got it running inside my Ubuntu. I realized that I didn’t have sufficient memory – I ended up swapping out my 512MB to 2GB for my Dell Optiplex. Man, that made a world of difference on both sides of the house.I have to admit asides this weird drive controller detection error in my virtual Windows – it seems to be working adequately. Thumbs up for the vmware convertor – I gonna have to try using that to consolidate our servers here at work. If you are considering following a similar route – my VM’d XP is still lacking sound and true video acceleration. For straight office and network management use – its proving to be very good.

-dhashi

Dual Boot is a drag!

Well after dealing with issues here at work, it has been a drag having to shut down my ubuntu and boot into Windows throughout the day. Unfortunately I haven’t had time to figure out if the Windows management tools work in Ubuntu using a program like Wine, so I am currently in the process of installing vmware server on my feisty install and planning to use the vmware convertor to capture my Windows XP install into a virtual drive.

So here is my game plan:

1. Install VMware server on Feisty.

2. Install Vmware Convertor on my Windows XP and capture my XP install into a vmware virtual drive.

3. Repartition my dual boot setup so my ubuntu partition can accomodate my new virtual drive.

4. Import the capture vmware drive and hope for the best it worked!

This way I can simultaneously run ubuntu and windows xp without rebooting. I also need to add more physical RAM for the virtual machine…

Update: I had to borrow memory from my personal lab pc – basically swapped between the two boxes. I’m sitting happy with a 1.5GB upgrade.

I’ll let you know as things progress.

Oh – I almost forgot to show where you can get vmware – http://www.vmware.com/products/free_virtualization.html

-dhashi