tom’s blog

A few days ago, VMware Server 1.0.7 has been released.
The update mainly cares about security issues:

• Security Fix for VMware ISAPI Extension
• Setting ActiveX killbit
• Security Fix for Local Privilege Escalation on Host System
• Update to Freetype 2.3.7

More info can be found in VMware’s Release Notes

OS: SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 SP1 (x86_64) [64 bit]

VMware Server [1.06] depends on some 32 bit software:
+ xorg-x11-libs-32bit-6.9.x (should automatically add the other packages, too)
- expat-32bit-2.0.x
- fontconfig-32bit-2.3.x
- freetype2-32bit-2.1.x
- glibc-32bit-2.x
- ncurses-32bit-5.x
- zlib-32bit-1.2.x

Additionally gcc, make, kernel headers, etc. have to be installed to run vmware-config-tools.pl properly.

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A new version of VMware Server 2.0 has been released – Version 2.0 beta 1 is available right now.

New features:

• improved web-based management interface
• more operating systems are supported
• better support of high end hardware (up to 8 GB per virtual machine, etc..)
• 64 bit os support
• support for usb 2.0
• …

Just a short howto for installing Windows 98 SE (R) in VMware Server (1.0.3) for Linux. Although I’m not a big fan of M$, sometimes I have to use it. I.e. my bank does not have any linux software for online banking… whatever.. I had an old Win98SE license at home and that crap of software is quite fast as a virtual machine and as long I don’t have to use too often, stability is not the essential part for me..

Prerequisite: You already have installed VMware Server

Create a new virtual machine and choose Win9x as guest system. As the Win9x cdrom is not bootable, boot with a dos disk and create a partion using fdisk (If you lost your dos disk or you don’t have a floppy drive, you can get an image i.e. at http://www.bootdisk.com).

After rebooting your computer, format drive c: using
format c: /s

Reboot your computer again and ensure that atapi/scsi drivers are loaded so that you can access your cdrom-drive (or image).
Start installation with
Z:\setup.exe /iv

The rest is quite easy – follow the installtion steps in the setup program and install the VMware Tools when your system is up and running.

If you want to enable sound, add a sound device for the virtual machine and install the Sound Blaster PCI 128 (R) driver from the creative labs archive.

In my default configuration, time was running way too fast in VMware linux guests. After spending hours of searching howto solve the problem, I finally found a few different points that might work as a solution.

Enviroment:
Host: SuSE Linux 10.1
Guest: SuSE Linux 10.1
VMware Server: 1.0.2

• Install the vmware-tools on the guest.
  Don’t forget to install the kernel-sources if you have to recompile some modules.
• Insert clock=pit into the guest’s kernel boot options.
  When you’re using grub, it kinda looks like this:
  kernel /vmlinuz root=/dev/sda3 apm=off acpi=off clock=pit
• Set tools.syncTime = “TRUE” in your virtual machine .vmx-file
  (found on the host machine [default in /var/lib/vmware/..])
  Your guest has to be rebooted to activate this setting.
• Finally, I had to change a little thing on the host machine:
  Disable powersaved (or powernowd or whatever applies to you)

From that time on, my guests are perfectly in sync with the host’s time.

Note: Nov, 23th 2007: .. or not … time is still too fast on some virtual machines : (

Next thing I tried right now is to add the following lines in /etc/vmware/config:
host.cpukHz = 2200000
host.noTSC = TRUE
ptsc.noTSC = TRUE
Where 2200000 (2,2 GHz) is the max speed of the host cpu.

+ Updated to VMware Server 1.0.4
^^ At first sight, this works perfectly for me : )

Useful Links:

• VMTN (VMware Technology Network)
• Timekeeping in VMware Virtual Machines
• Uhrzeit läuft im Gastsystem viel zu schnell (de)