Installing VMWare Server 2 Beta in Ubuntu Hardy 64bit

After upgrading to Hardy Heron, I found that my VMWare no longer worked. No good! So being the early adopter that I am, I decide its time to give VMWare Server 2 Beta a spin. Oops…. just a bit painful. Thankfully, I finally figured it out through the help of several websites. Here is the step-by-step that should save you a few hours.

Some Background:

I had VMWare Server 1 (that stopped working upon upgrade) with Windows XP installed previously. I am running a Dell Precision 690 with Ubuntu Hardy Heron 8.04 64bit. My kernel is (output from cat /proc/version) 2.6.24-19-generic (buildd@yellow) (gcc version 4.2.3 (Ubuntu 4.2.3-2ubuntu7)).

Current Situation:

VMWare Server 2 beta is running great with my previous Windows XP virtual machine in tact. The first thing I did was power up the console and install the VMWare tools from the browser; that automatically started the installation from within the VMWare console under XP.

Step-by-Step:

Install Preliminary Packages

sudo apt-get install build-essential linux-headers-`uname -r` xinetd
source

Disable ipv6

You need to do this because VMWare Server 2 is not compatible with ipv6 in Ubuntu. Follow the instructions here.

Update hosts file

Make sure you have an entry in your /etc/hosts file that looks like this:
127.0.0.1 localhost
source

Install VMWare

Download the beta here.

I used this guide to do the install.

Change User Access

“Because Ubuntu does not use the root user account we also need to setup access for your main user. Replace root with your username on line 10 of: /etc/vmware/hostd/authorization.xml (ACEDataUser).”
source

Restart Your Machine

I’m not sure if this is completely necessary, but the tutorial about disabling ipv6 recommended it.

Experience VMWare heaven

Open a terminal and type in vmware. Firefox will open and tell you something is wrong with the certificate. Click ok, then click the link that says “Or you can add an exception…”. Add and confirm the certificate and you should be good to go. Login with your system username and password.