Category Archives: VMware

Distributions, Memento, Virtualization, VMware

VMware Server [1.06] on SLES 10 x86_64

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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Proprietary Software, Virtualization, VMware

Howto: Install Win98SE in VMware Server for Linux

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.

Distributions, Virtualization, VMware

VMware / time sync with linux guests

1 Comment

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 : )

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