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VMware Player for Free Virtualization

VMware has a free edition for creating and using personal virtual environments, called VMware Player. If you want to run linux as a virtual machine on your Windows desktop/laptop, here is a very basic walkthrough. You can use VMware player to deploy in any combination of host and guest operating system. I have been using Linux on Windows host for quite some time and the product is pretty good. I have recently tried running Linux on Linux host and I am all for it, I have covered this in another article on my site.

The prime difference between the free software player and VMware licensed equivalent workstation is that most of the GUI functionality is missing. I had to manually configure the environment and get it up, it is fun though. Another interesting fact is that Player always runs in single CPU mode, irrespective of the number of CPUs at host level.

• Install Software
  VMWare player is freely available, download it from vmware.com site . Installation on windows environment is pretty straight forward. Your login should have admin access so that vmware can create virtual network links that are then mapped to the actual existing host networks (either through Natting or Bridge option). Execute the executable and follow the instructions on each screen.
  
  
• Readily available virtual machines.
  Once the installation is complete, you now need the guest environment. The virtual environment can be created from scratch or can be downloaded from various sites. VMware has posted many virtual machines on their site that can be downloaded and fired up, as easy as that.
  
  Alternatively, we can create your own machine. To file types are basically needed for running a VMware virtual machine. A VMX file that is a configuration file defining the various arguments for the machine runtime, and a VMDK file that acts as the harddisk for the virtual environment. Create this file online from easyvmx.com site. The site will provide you with both VMX and VMDK files, copy these to a directory and start the VMware software. Provide the VMX file and the software will fire up the virtual machine. The CDROM should get recognized. Place the Operating system CD/DVD you want to install and VMWare player will auto-run it.
  
  
• To add additional vmware disks.
  Each VMDK file is considered has a hard disk on the virtual machine. To add additional disk to the virtual machine, you can create VMDK image files from free sites. One more easy way I resort to is to simply copy the existing VMDK image file and mount it as a new disk (the data on the new disk remains as is and can be dropped once the disk is mounted). I do the following for this.
  
  
  • Each disk will be connected to two files, both of type .VMDK. For instance, in my case it is FedoraCore5-flat.vmdk and FedoraCore5.vmdk.
    
  • Change the name of the flat file "FedoraCore5-flat.vmdk" (retain the -flat.vmdk at the end, e.g.: linuxdisk2-flat.vmdk).
    
  • Change the name of the config file "FedoraCore5.vmdk" same as above (retain the .vmdk extention, e.g.: linuxdisk2.vmdk).
    
  • Edit the above config file in wordpad and modify the below entry, specify the new flat file name.
    

    RW 10485760 FLAT "FedoraCore5-flat.vmdk" 0
    

  • now open the VMX configuration file present in the vmmachine folder. Add the below lines for the new disk. In the below example, my scsi disk number is 4. Check the last scsi number from the file and add one for the new disk. If the disk is in a different folder than the machine, prefix the path in filename.
    

    scsi0:4.present = "TRUE"
    scsi0:4.fileName = "FedoraCore5.vmdk"
    scsi0:4.redo = "" 
    

  • start the virtual machine and the new disk will be visible.
    
    
• Mounting iso as cdrom
  An ISO image file can be read directly in a virtual machine, this saves the trouble of buring CD/DVD to read from it. CDROM drive will be available on linux. Comment the existing entries and add the following lines in vmx file, this will replace the existing physical disk. Once the iso requiement is over, remove this entry and uncomment the existing entries to access the physical cdrom. If there are multiple ISO, create a single ISO file using some free tools and then mount.
  

  ide1:0.present = "TRUE"
  ide1:0.fileName = "RHEL4-U4-i386-AS-disc1.iso"
  ide1:0.deviceType = "cdrom-image"
  

  Alternatively, copy the iso to linux using ftp or samba and use it inside the virtual machine itself.

Checkout some more information on VMware player virtualization and screenshots in the "running linux on windows article"

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This page was created on 23-apr-2007. Last updated on 04-dec-2007.
please forward all queries to amar_padhi@fastmail.fm