How To Install VMware Server 1.0.4 On Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon)

This tutorial provides step-by-step instructions about how to install the free VMware Server on an Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon) system. With VMware Server you can create and run guest operating systems ("virtual machines") such as Linux, Windows, FreeBSD, etc. under a host operating system. This has the benefit that you can run multiple operating systems on the same hardware which saves a lot of money, and you can move virtual machines from one VMware Server to the next one (or to a system that has the VMware Player which is also free).

Build Environment

Make sure you have the needed build environment and tools to compile the vmware modules for the kernel.

sudo apt-get install build-essential linux-headers-`uname -r`

sudo apt-get install xinetd

Downloading VMware Server

Vmware Server can be downloaded from:

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

After accepting the EULA grab the vmware server .tgz file (around 102MB).

Note: As of right now VMware Server won't compile correctly on Gutsy without patching the vmmon file.

Patch information can be found here: http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?messageID=76957&tstart=0

The patch can be downloaded here: http://ftp.cvut.cz/vmware/vmware-any-any-update114.tar.gz

Installing VMware Server - Source Tar Ball

Untar the VMware Server package:

tar xvzf /Path/To/VMware-server-1.0.4-56528.tar.gz

Untar the vmware-any-any patch:

tar xvzf /Path/To/vmware-any-any-update114.tar.gz

Copy the patched vmmon modules to the VMware Source library:

cp vmware-any-any-update114/*.tar vmware-server-distrib/lib/modules/source/

Change into the install directory:

cd vmware-server-distrib

Run the installer:

sudo ./vmware-install.pl

Choose defaults to all the questions, though you will probably want to manually choose which networking features you want. To access the server run:

vmware

for the VMware Server Console.

Installing VMware Server - Ubuntu Commercial Repository

Add Ubuntu Commercial repository to your /etc/apt/sources.list:

echo "deb http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu feisty-commercial main" >> /etc/apt/sources.list

Run apt update to download latest package list:

sudo apt-get update

Install VMware Server via apt:

sudo apt-get install vmware-server

Start the remote access console by going to Applications > System Tools > VMware Server Console in the menus OR run:

vmware

from the command line.