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[Ubuntu]: How to install VMWare Server 2.0 Beta on Ubuntu 8.04

Not-so-good news: the Linux installation package of VMWare Server does not have a user-friendly graphic user interface. And very likely you will need to build the package yourself on your Linux box. It is why it is not easy or straight-forward to install VMWare Server on Ubuntu. (It’s a shame that the VMWare development team does not have a deb package for Ubuntu, or a working rpm package for Fedora Core)

  1. Download VMWare Server 2.0 Beta 2 from VMWare. You will need to register in order to get the free serial number for installation. Download the tar ball file, not the rpm package.
  2. Open a terminal and change to the directory where you saved the VMWare Server tar file.
  3. Extract the tar file by running:
    tar -xzvf VMware-server-xxxx.tar.gz
  4. A directory called vmware-server-distrib will be creaded. Now, run the following commands:
    cd vmware-server-distrib
    sudo ./vmware-install.pl
  5. Follow the instructions on the screen and accept all default values. Eventually the installation will fail. It’s OK, don’t panic.
  6. Now, install some supporting packages because by default Ubuntu desktop edition does not install them.
    sudo apt-get install build-essential linux-headers-'uname -r'
    sudo apt-get install xinetd
  7. Now, download VMWare-Any-Any-Update116 from vmkernelnewbies and use it by running the following commands:
    tar -xvzf vmware-any-any-update116.tgz
    cd vmware-any-any-update116
    sudo ./runme.pl
  8. At the end of VMWare-Any-Any-Update, vmware-config.pl will be executed automatically. Just follow the instrucations on the screen and answer all questions, and it should build and compile fine.
  9. After the installation, you have to run the following commands before you can run VMWare:
    sudo ln -sf /lib/libgcc_s.so.1 /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
  10. To launch VMWare Server, open FireFox web browser and type in http://127.0.0.1. When prompt for login username and password, enter “root” for username, and your root password.
    Ubuntu does not assign a password for “root”, you can add a password for “root” manually.
  11. Through the web interface of VMWare Server, you can create new virtual machines.

The following links helped me very much to install VMWare Server 2.0 on my Ubuntu 8.04 box.

Jeffrey:
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