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Information and articles about VMWare Workstation, VMWare Server and VMWare Player
VMWare is a company specializing in virtualization products which allows guest "virtual machines" to run inside a host operating system. They have a number of products including the free VMWare Player and VMWare Server applications, and paid for applications such as VMWare Workstation.
I have been using VMWare Workstation since 2003 to run Microsoft Windows XP inside my Linux host computer so I can continue to run applications such as Adobe Photoshop and test websites with Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox on a native Windows platform. It's also extremely useful for testing out Linux distributions without having a dedicated computer to install them onto.
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VMWare Writelock Disk Error
Posted July 16th, 2004 in Applications and VMWare (Updated May 24th, 2005)
VMWare is virtual machine software that lets you run a guest operating system inside your operating system without having to reboot your computer. This article covers an error that can happen which prevents VMWare from starting up in the event of a crash.
Installing VMWare on Gentoo
Posted March 10th, 2005 in Applications and VMWare
This article covers how to install VMWare on Gento Linux if you are getting errors like the "/etc/init.d/vmware: line 919: [: -: integer expression expected" error when trying to configure the VMWare options.
Using Ctrl+Alt+F1 in a VMWare Virtual Machine
Posted August 9th, 2007 in VMWare
I use VMWare Workstation 6.0 for testing out various Linux distributions either to run live CDs or install a full operating system without having to have a dedicated computer for that specific purpose only.
While playing around with a Linux distribution in VMWare Workstation the other day, I realised I needed to drop to the console, log in as root and do something from the command line. So I hit Ctrl+Alt+F1 expecting this to do it in the virtual machine, but it instead dropped my host operating system to the command line console. Not quite what I was expecting, but as I quickly remembered, Ctrl+Alt has special meaning in VMWare Workstation as a way of releasing keyboard and mouse control from the guest and returning it to the host.
vmware-config.pl 6.0.0-45731 failed on openSUSE 10.3
Posted September 23rd, 2007 in VMWare
After I unwittingly upgraded from openSUSE 10.2 to openSUSE 10.3 last week, the Linux kernel upgraded from 2.6.18.2-34 to 2.6.22.5-18. I run VMWare Workstation on this desktop machine, and each time the kernel is updated VMWare must be reconfigured and the kernel modules recompiled. After the upgrade I got error messages when running vmware-config.pl.
VMWare USB device issues on openSUSE 10.3
Posted October 4th, 2007 in VMWare
After upgrading from openSUSE 10.2 to 10.3 I had issues trying to connect my USB Canon Pixma ip4300 printer to the Windows XP virtual machine running on VMWare Workstation. After a fair bit of messing around I managed to get it to work when plugging in multiple USB devices and ensuring focus was kept on the guest operating system.
Configuring VMWare Tools stops the network
Posted October 31st, 2007 in VMWare
You can install vmware tools on a guest machine in vmware server using an ssh session, but after installing it, vmware tools must be configured by issuing the vmware-config-tools.pl command. This configuration script actually stops the network connection completely, so you cannot install it from an ssh session. If you attempt to do so you'll see a message like this:
"It looks like you are trying to run this program in a remote session. This program will temporarily shut down your network connection, so you should only run it from a local console session. Are you SURE you want to continue?"
Running all desktops on VMWare
Posted November 22nd, 2007 in Linux/Unix/BSD and VMWare
I have become increasingly dissatisfied with openSUSE, particularly since upgrading from 10.2 to 10.3 with a large number of breakages and general instability after the upgrade and am currently moving to a new setup with all my day to day desktop operating systems running as virtual machines in VMWare.
Keyboard shortcuts to switch between running VMWare Virtual Machines
Posted November 25th, 2007 in VMWare
I run VMWare Workstation on a Linux host machine with multiple virtual machines as my day to day desktop environments: one with Linux as my primary desktop with email, development environment, web browsing etc, and the second with Windows XP to run applications like Adobe Photoshop, CD label printing, and to test websites in Internet Explorer.
I have VMWare Workstation running in full screen mode, and there's a nifty little auto-hiding toolbar that sits at the top of the screen with access to the VM settings and to be able to switch between the other virtual machines.
VMWare rant about Ctrl-Z
Posted December 26th, 2007 in VMWare
VMWare's virtualisation products are great. But I have one thing I need to have a rant about. The "suspend" function uses the Ctrl+Z keyboard shortcut and there doesn't seem to be any way to be able to change it. If there is, suggestions about how to change it are welcome.
Host operating system reinstall
Posted January 3rd, 2008 in Linux/Unix/BSD and VMWare
I currently run VMWare Workstation on my desktop computer, using the Linux host operating system to mainly just run the VMWare sessions; I run two main desktop environments (Linux and Windows XP) and one development webserver (CentOS) in Virtual Machines. Just over a month ago I was using SUSE Linux as my main desktop computer, and just using a Windows XP virtual machine, but after upgrading from 10.2 to 10.3 things started to go wrong so I changed to running my desktops on VMWare instead, with a fresh install of Kubuntu 7.10 as my primary Linux desktop / virtual machine.
VMWare Server Console Connection Refused
Posted February 10th, 2008 in VMWare
VMWare Server Console allows you to connect to a VMWare Server virtual machine running either on your local machine or a remote machine. The remote machine might be on your local network or located somewhere on the Internet. This post looks at how to deal with the error message in the VMWare Server Console "unable to connect to remote host: cannot connect to remote host x.y.z.a: connection refused" when trying to connect.
Install VMWare Tools on a Linux Guest Virtual Machine
Posted February 17th, 2008 in VMWare
VMWare Workstation and the various flavours of VMWare Server allow you to install a package called "VMWare Tools". These VMWare Tools contain various methods of communication between the guest virtual machine and the host and in general should make the guest VM run better. This post looks at how to install VMWare Tools on a Linux guest machine, specifically on a CentOS guest (and therefore should be the same for Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Fedora and their derivatives).
Access denied when logging into VMWare Infrastructure Web Access on Windows
Posted May 8th, 2008 in VMWare
A couple of days ago I decided to try out Beta 2 of the free VMWare Server version 2. After installing it on Windows Vista I attempted to log into the VMWare Infrastructure Web Access but got an error message saying "Access Denied". This post looks at how to successfully log into the web access console on Windows Vista.
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