Installing VMware Server on Fedora Core 5

From MyWiki

Jump to: navigation, search
  • Get VMware server. 
 http://www.vmware.com/download/server/
  • Make sure you register because you will need a serial number to complete the install. You can register at: 
 http://register.vmware.com/content/registration.html
  • The rpm's seem to work fine so just install that way.
  • Make sure you have the kernel development libraries installed. 
 [root@grids2 ~]# yum list installed | grep kernel
 kernel-smp.i686                          2.6.17-1.2157_FC5      installed
 kernel-smp.i686                          2.6.15-1.2054_FC5      installed
 kernel-smp-devel.i686                    2.6.17-1.2157_FC5      installed
  • If you don't, use yum and install them: 
 [root@grids2 ~]# yum list available | grep kernel
 [root@grids2 ~]# yum install kernel-smp-devel.i686
  • You will also need to have gcc installed and xinetd. 
 [root@grids2 ~]# yum install xinetd
 [root@grids2 ~]# yum install gcc-c++.i386
  • Now just use rpm: 
 [root@grids2 ~]# rpm -i VMware-server-1.0.0-28343.i386.rpm
  • Once rpm completes you will need to run: 
 [root@grids2 ~]# /usr/bin/vmware-config.pl
  • This might work but most likely will not. You will get a question asking for the location of the kernel header files. If the default line listed at the end of the question does not look something like this: 
 /lib/modules/2.6.15-1.2054_FC5smp/build/include
  • Then you have a problem. There seems to be a patch that is available from VMware, it can be downloaded from: 
 http://tredosoft.com/files/download/vmware-any-any-update101.tar.gz

or 

 http://ftp.cvut.cz/vmware/vmware-any-any-update101.tar.gz
  • Once you have the script, untar it and run: 
 [root@grids2 ~]# tar -zxf vmware-any-any-update101.tar.gz
 [root@grids2 ~]# ./runme.pl
  • It will install some patches and then ask if you want to run vmware-config.pl, answer "Y".
  • Go with the default values for each question. You might get a warning about gcc being the wrong version. This does not seem to be a major issue and you can just tell the script to use the gcc it has found.
  • One other issue seems to be with the port that VMware wants to use. By default it uses 902. However, it seems that FC 5 has something called ideafarm-chat that is assigned to 902. I have no idea what this is but after looking at netstat, and ps there didn't seem to be anything using 902. So, I just commented out the line for ideafarm-chat in /etc/services and let VMware use that port.
  • You could use a different port (http://pubs.vmware.com/server1/wwhelp/wwhimpl/js/html/wwhelp.htm) but then you would have to reconfigure the client console and this might be a problem. It does not seem like you can tell the console to use one port for one server and a different port for another server. So, if you have several VMware servers running and some of them are on the default port of 902 you would not be able to use the console anymore to talk to them. You would have to go in and change the port setting in the config file each time you wanted to talk to a different server.
  • Make sure iptables has a line that will open port 902, or whatever port you have chosen.
  • At this point you should have VMWare up and running on FC5.


Other Resources

Administration Guide: Chapter 3 Migrating from GSX Server to VMware Server [1]

Retrieved from "http://mywiki.ncsa.uiuc.edu/wiki/Installing_VMware_Server_on_Fedora_Core_5"
Personal tools