Sunday 5 April 2009

Running oldie VMware Server 1.0.x on latest Ubuntu

If you're like me and hate to get along with the VMware Server 2.x resource hog then you will want to go for the older and more streamlined VMware Server 1.0.x (you will also get a real console client too).
Now if you do that on the modern Ubuntu distros then you will step into some troubles (Server 1.0.x shows its age). Most of them can be solved following the tips here (performance tips included!). However here are some more hidden gems:
  • The latest 2.6.27 kernels have some changes which break the building of the VMware kernel modules (stub sources are really old anyway); use the patcher here (yes, it works for Server too).
  • At least the MUI component assumes that /bin/sh is Bash, which on Ubuntu is really dash — this in turn will break setting the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment and apache will complain for missing libraries; correct the shebang magig at the top of the initialisation file /etc/init.d/httpd.vmware.
Good luck. And don't forget that 1.0.x is really old and already obsoleted by VMware in favor of 2.0.x...