How to Setup VMWare Server 1.0.4 on Debian (etch)
By wfrench | February 25, 2008
How to setup VMWare server 1.0.4 on debian stable (etch) system. Once complete we will have a VMWare server system that can be access from anywhere on the local network and authenticated via LDAP.
Download the server software
Download the latest binary
Make sure you are downloading the 1.0.4 release version, not the Beta 2 binary.
Then fill out the form to get an evaluation license key.
Install Debian Dependancies
- apt-get install linux-headers-`uname -r` libx11-6 libx11-dev x-window-system-core x-window-system xspecs libxtst6 psmisc build-essential xinetd
- Linux headers are needed because VMWare needs to build kernel modules.
- X-windows is needed to run the VMWare client and are needed even if you are not running X on your box.
Setup Networking
VMWare Server does not support IPv6 so we need to disable it. We will also need to enable packet forwarding for VMWare network support.
Enable forwarding by editing
# Uncomment the next line to enable packet forwarding for IPv4 net.ipv4.conf.default.forwarding=1
Disable IPv6 by editing
Change the following line
alias net-pf-10 ipv6
to
alias net-pf-10 off
Create the VMWare directory
This step can be done skipped because the installer will do it, but I like doing it manually so we can setup the permissions.
- mkdir /space/VirtualMachines
- chmod 1777 /space/VirtualMachines
- chgrp geeks /space/VirtualMachines
Install the VMWare Software
The installation is a scripted process. You can accept the defaults to all of the questions except for the location of the virual machines. That should be:
- cd /tmp
- tar xfz VMware-server-1.0.4-56528.tar.gz
- cd vmware-server-distrib
- ./vmware-install.pl
Install the Management Web Interface
This step is not required. All the web interface is really good for is downloaing the vmware client.
- cd /tmp
- tar xfz VMware-mui-1.0.4-56528.tar.gz
- cd vmware-mui-distrib
- ./vmware-install.pl
Configure LDAP Authentication
This step assumes that you already have LDAP authentication working for other pam authenticated services on your system.
#%PAM-1.0
auth sufficient pam_ldap.so
auth required pam_unix.so use_first_pass
account sufficient pam_ldap.so
account required pam_unix.so
Setup is complete
Setup is now complete. You should be able to browse to the web management interface on port 8222 or 8333:
http://yourserver:8222
or
https://yourserver:8333
From here you can download the client specific to your os.
