Red Hat & VMWARE
 

I have tried 3 times to get RH9 and 8 to work on VMWARE but to no avail. Has anyone used VMWARE and run Red Hat on it??

I used to run vmware on rh9 (before i switched to slackware) without problems.
What problem do u have ?

mysticpain

What is your host operating system?
I currently have rh9 and suse8.2pro running on vmware workstation 4.0.5 on win2k and winXP (for tablet) host OS machines. However, if you are running a Linux host I am not sure that I can help.

I started using linux (RH9) one week ago no problems running vmware at all run xp/ advanced server 2000 - followed instructions from the dummies book - worked perfectly

OK, my host OS is windows XP Pro. The problem I am having is that the CLI works fine however the GUI isn't working at all.

Should I try a different monitor setting than the Generic one RH selects for me?? Also, I am running it on an IBM Thinkpad G40

I use Red Hat 9 and VMWare. Red Hat 9 is my host operating system and one of the guests are Windows 2000. I am definately not an expert at any of this but I did get it working. The VMWare website mentions that it is supported with Red Hat 9 and the 2.4.20-13.9 kernel. It only mentions that specific kernel when Red Hat 9 is used as a guest. I think that some poeple actully use a different kernel but I decided to install that kernel before trying to install VMWare. I do not know much about installing kernels but I downloaded an RPM file for that kernel. If I remember correctly all I did was run the RPM file. I then found that when I booted up my computer LILO now had Red Hat 9 with that kernel as a choice.

I then installed VMWare and it worked. I use the Linux version of VMWare and it is version 4.0.2. It works good. The guests that I have installed include Winows 2000, Red Hat 9, Red Hat 8, Windows NT 4.0, and PC-DOS 2000. My virtual network is also working and they can all ping each other except for DOS. I have not yet figured out how to get my printer to work from the Windows 2000 guest. The VMWare manual makes it sound like Linux hosts are not very good about sharing USB devices and parallel port devices. They do vaguely suggest what to do but, their vaguely worded suggestions require more knowledge about Linux than I currently have. They talk about how different modules get loaded and that type of thing.

Sometimes I click the icon on the taskbar that launces up2date to see what seurity patches and updates are available. It then always offers to upgade my kernel for my. So far I have avoided doing that because I am not sure how that would affect VMWare. I am still wondering if it would be OK to upgade the kernel or not. I use this on my computer at home.

As you probably know the updates for Red Hat 9 will end on April 30th. I will probably eventually switch to some other version of Linux as my host OS.

mysticpain

did you originally start your linux (rh9) machine in text mode [skipping the auto monitor/display setup option] and then load vmware tools and then startx ? If not .... then I can only suggest that you create a new virtual machine and try again. I have had no problems whatsoever if you follow these instructions to the letter. I would note however that suse8.2 somehow know I was creating a a vmware vitual guest machine and did all this for me. One last note ... be very careful about your host OS graphic settings as the virtual (guest) machine inherits your host color settings ... however the vmware xFree86-4 config file loaded as part of the vmware toolbox will only support 16 bit graphics (64k colors) no matter what graphics card your PC/Laptop and monitor are capable of. So make surfe before you start, both on the initial install and on any subsequent resumes or starts of your linux virtual machine that you have not selected millions of colors on your host machine. I presume you know how to change these - right click on XP desktop - properties - settings etc. I would also suggest that you avoid extremely high resolutions - I find 1024x768 more than adequate for all flavors of linux - however this depends, to some extent, on what your laptop's native resolution is.

If you try different settings you may well find that your linux machines (guests) will crap out on you for no apparent reason or they will run so slowly that no matter how much RAM you allocate to the machines you get sluggish response even when only running consoles.

HTH

Ooops, sorry I did not notice that you host OS was Windows XP. Somehow I was thinking that your host was Linux. You can ignore my previous comments. The concerns I had about which kernel you are using would be less relevant with a guest OS. I did not worry about which kernel I had when Red Hat 9 was the guest.

VMWare creates virtual hardware devices for the guests. When installing a guest OS you are asked questions such as what video card you are using and what sound card you are using. In many cases what the virtual machine is providing is different from your real hardware. When installing RH 9 or any other guest did be carefull what hardware you say you are using. If the RH 9 installation program thinks it has found something that differs from your real hardware, perhaps that really is the correct choice. Somewhere in the VMWare manual it says what emulated hardware is being provided.

You said that your GUI is not working. My guess would be that you told it what video card you computer really uses. I use the Linux version of VMWare so some details may be different. Sorry about my incorrect previous response.

The more I think about it I am not sure what video card choice should initally be made. What I just said above also may or may not be totally true. Just now I started up my RH 9 guest under my RH 9 host which does not yet have VMWare Tools installed. Right now the RH 9 guest is using a generic VESA driver with 16 MB of RAM. My real video card is a Verto MX400 AGP video card with 64 MB of RAM. If I am not mistaken, once the VMWare Tools are installed a better emulated video card becomes available. If I remember correctly, it has VMWare in the name and supports higher resolutions. Even using the generic VESA driver Gnome is running under X-Windows so I am looking at the GUI interface.

Thanks for all your help. It turns out all I needed to do was change the color to 256 instead of high color and reduce resolution to 800x600 within my RH install. I am now trying to get VMWARE to install VMWARE tools, however it doesn't like it when I have RH running. I am still trying to figure that out, but other than that, and the fact that I can't get RH to recognize my winmodem (which is a whole other complicated process that I gave up on long ago because it seems impossible to find a driver for it) everything seems to work fine.

Yep - you can't install VMware tools until you start linux [either grub or lilo

] in text mode - try: init 3, su to root and then type in the installation script. you will need to have clicked on the 'install VMware Tools option' on the File menu on your VMware host system startup screen.

HTH, good luck

still having a bit of trouble installing VMWARE tools. Could you give me a step by step description? There is somwthing I am not doing and I am sure it is something stupid that I am over looking.

to be absoloutely honest all I did was follow the instructions from RedHat from dummies
and it wotked, I did install the vmtools though after i started xp

mystic...

If you have version 4.0.5 build-6030 -as I do- you should be able to find thye exact installation instructions (navigating as follows): Help; User's Manual...; Creating a New Virtual Machine; Installing VMware Tools; VMware Tools for Linux Guests.

If you have an earlier version the 'script' is somewhat different.

Let me know if you need more help. From a quick visit to your blog site you don't seem to need that much hand holding.