Installing VMWare Server on Ubuntu 8.04 x64 beta

This isn’t extremely useful to everyone but last night I was having trouble getting VMWare Server installed and running onto my laptop running the latest beta of Ubuntu Linux.  I figured I would post my solutions here in case anyone else has any trouble.

I believe half of these problems only effect those who are running the 64-bit version of the Ubuntu 8.04 beta, but I cannot be sure as I am only running the 64 bit version and have not tried installing on a 32-bit version.  The reason I am installing VMWare Server rather than Workstation or the VMWare Player is because Server is free, unlike Workstation, and it can create virtual machines and access my physical partitions, while the Player cannot.  My primary concern is accessing my physical partitions so I can boot up my Windows installation from within Linux rather than having to reboot into it.

The first part of the installation seems to be a common  problem on all versions of VMWare for Linux, though.  VMWare requires some kernel modules to work, and you usually have to compile them as it is likely that you are not running the same kernel version as the included pre-compiled modules.  If the kernel modules fail to compile, then you will probably have to resort to the “VMWare any-any update.”

Installation

Before anything, three packages have to be installed to prep the system for running VMWare Server.

sudo aptitude install linux-headers-`uname -r` build-essential
sudo aptitude install xinetd

After this you can run the installer.  Download the archive and extract it.  In the folder there should be a file inside thats called install.pl.  Open up a terminal window, move into that directory, and run the file.

sudo ./install.pl

Unless you want things installed in special places, all of the default options should be fine.  Hit enter at each of the prompts.  Once the install is over, it will ask you if you want to run the configuration script.  Say yes and move through the options, specifying things where needed.  After a few prompts it will say that the kernel modules need to be built.  Say yes to this and let it build the modules for you.  If everything builds fine then great!  You don’t need to apply the any-any update!  If it fails you will have to move onto the next step.

Patching the installation

The latest version of the any-any update can be found here.  The file is called vmware-any-any-update###.tar.gz, in this case the ### is 115.  Download the file, extract it, and open your terminal window to its directory.  Run the runme.pl file.

sudo ./runme.pl

This script will patch your installed files and the source files for the kernel modules, and will immediately run the configuration script again.  Follow through like you did before, and hopefully if things worked right, the modules should compile fine and you will be able to finish out the configuration.

Bugs

Now here is where my problems continued.  I would click on the new menu shortcut and the application would not start.  I tried running the vmware command in my terminal window and had an error message repeat three times and exit the program.  I don’t remember what the message was, but a google search turned up a bugzilla page with a solution posted.

VMWare was having an issue with the current builds of the ia32 libs.  The version installed was ia32-libs_2.2ubuntu7_amd64 and I had to downgrade it to ia32-libs_2.2ubuntu4_amd64.  A quick Google search turned up a deb package file.  To install it I had to open up Synaptic, remove the installed package, and then I was able to double click the new (old) package and use the installer gui that came up.

This did get rid of those original error messages, but some new ones popped up.  VMWare was not able to find some of the gtk library files.  Yet another Google search turned up yet another bugzilla page and yet another solution.  It turns out that VMWare is looking in the wrong spot.  Running these three commands in a terminal fixed the issue.

sudo ln -s /usr/lib32 /usr/l32
sudo sed -i -e ’s/usr\/lib/usr\/l32/g’ /usr/lib32/gtk-2.0/2.10.0/loader-files.d/libgtk2.0-0.loaders
sudo sed -i -e ’s/usr\/lib/usr\/l32/g’ /usr/lib32/libgdk_pixbuf-2.0.so.0.1200.3

Success?

Finally things are working!  I have a gui after clicking the shortcut icon with no fuss!  Well… almost.  Sigh.

It seems that with this default installation there are a lot of permission issues, even for reading some of the button icons.  I looked around for a solution and couldn’t seem to come up with one.  When trying to create a virtual machine it wouldn’t let me save it, even when I tried to save the files in my own home directory.

My quick (and probably not very smart) solution was to run it as the root user.  I added a second shortcut icon to my applications menu, and labeled it as (root).  Rather than running just the vmware command, I have it running gksu vmware. This shortcut icon will prompt you for your password and then run the program as your root user.  Not ideal, but it works.

Does this article help you?  Is there something more that you’d want to know about?  Let me know!  E-mail me at sunny [at] h4xful [dot] net. I would love to hear from you!