A while ago I used VMware server to running a few virtual instances for testing purposes. Everything worked really flawless. Yesterday I wanted to have some virtual server on my home computer again and encountered many problem with the current version of VMware Server on my Ubuntu 10.04 LTS.
There where some problems with the installation, some to get the VMware console running and also a few the keyboard input on the console.

It took a while to get everything running and I pulled all the information I needed from many different sites. So pulled them all together in this blog entry:

  1. Register at the VMware page. Download the package for VMware server as *.tar.gz. Extract the archive.
  2. Current VMware products do not support the Linux kernel 2.6.32. Therefor you need a patch for the installation archive. Download the patch from the following link and extract it in the parent folder of you VMware download: VMware patch for Linux kernel 2.6.32. More information could found on this page and pages linked on this page.
  3. Run the script with super-user rights. It is quite simple to install. Most of the times you could just hit enter for every question of the installer. At one point the installer ask for a system user which runs the Vmware instances. If you leave it at the default choice, root will be the user. Make sure you have password to log in as root user. (You can set a root password by running the following command on a terminal:

    sudo passwd root

  4. If you are running a new Ubuntu system you might have get a Firefox version >= 3.6. In these versions the VMware console plugin for the browser won’t work, so download a older version of Firefox from this page (3.5.9 should be highest working version number).
    Extract it somewhere and run it:

    ./firefox -no-remote -P

    You might create a new Firefox profile (-P) and make sure a new instance of the Firefox is starting (-no-remote)

  5. On a few guest operating systems you might have some trouble with some of the arrow keys of you keyboard. To get them working run this command from a terminal:

    sudo echo “xkeymap.nokeycodeMap = true” >> /etc/vmware/config

    You need to run this on the computer where you want to start the VMware console. More Informations could be found here.

  6. Browse to you VMware administration panel (http://localhost:8222 or https://localhost:8333). Create and start a virtual machine. Install the browser plug-in. Launch the console.
VMware admin & console

VMware admin & console