[PLUG] VMplayer at the linux clinic

Keith Lofstrom keithl at kl-ic.com
Mon Feb 19 05:26:42 UTC 2007


To the potential clinic attendee who asked about VMware installs
at the clinic, sorry, I had left by 11.  I was busy helping other
folks all day, so I might not have had time to work on VMware 
anyway.  Perhaps we need to schedule an alternate time for VMware
installs.  Does someone want to organize this, and find a venue?


On Sun, Feb 18, 2007 at 12:29:57PM -0700, Carlos Konstanski wrote:
> Just thought I'd mention that VMPlayer will not help you to install a
> new guest OS from scratch.  You'll be dependent upon someone with
> VMWare Server or Workstation.  VMWare Server is a free product, and it
> allows you to play as well as install.  If one were to ask me for
> advice, I'd say "forget VMPlayer; get VMWare Server instead".

This is obsolete information.  While I have experimented with Server
and Workstation, I did not need either product to create the vmdk
and vmx files necessary to create fully functional vmplayer guest
instances.  I just used easyvmx.com. which generates them for 
download after filling in a web form.  There are half a dozen sites
like easyvmx.com that offer similar services, and some might be
better, but I've done about 10 guests with easyvmx and I'll stick
with what works . I don't know whether they use a vmware product to
generate these files, but I could easily imagine a simple script
could do it.

It does help to have a copy of vmware tools, which does not come
with vmplayer, but you can get the tools from one of the demo
install disks for the spendy products, or download it from some
places on the net, or get it from a friend.  It is mostly a few
megabytes of better drivers for the vmware virtual peripherals.

In my experience, the beta versions of the products are crippleware,
which is why I don't use them.  They are instrumented with all sorts
of debug stuff, and are very slow compared to VMplayer.  YMMV.

The biggest problem with vmware so far is that the installer wants
to set you up with the wrong kind of networking.  VMware offers 
three kinds of networking, NAT, host-only, and bridged.  IMHO,
the best for most applications is host-only with NAT, but the
installer has a strong bias to build bridged networks.  That is
true (so far) of Server, Workstation, and VMWare player. 

When designing a Windoze guest, it is better to use a small vmdk
virtual disk, and to keep as much of the Windoze data and programs
in the Linux file system, and let Samba share them with Windoze.
That keeps the vmdk files small.  This means setting up Samba
fairly early in the guest install process.   However, when you 
are done, many Windoze programs will install entirely in the
mounted share, which means multiple guests can share the same
programs and data.  With enough memory and CPU for the host, it is
possible to run a "Windows Server" that supports perhaps 10 or 20
Windows guests, each run over X from other physical computers 
on the LAN, all using the same copy of a program.  If the program
is old enough, the program's EULA may not forbid this kind of
multiple simultaneous access.  

Keith

-- 
Keith Lofstrom          keithl at keithl.com         Voice (503)-520-1993
KLIC --- Keith Lofstrom Integrated Circuits --- "Your Ideas in Silicon"
Design Contracting in Bipolar and CMOS - Analog, Digital, and Scan ICs



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