On Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 12:49 PM, Richard Freeman <[email protected]> wrote: > Mark Knecht wrote: >> >> I'm now officially into #6 above and I don't have a clue where to go. >> ;-) (Of course, anyone here who has good info I'm up for receiving >> it. Drop me a note privately or post back on this list as long as >> folks subscribed here have an interest in watching me struggle a bit!) >> ;-) > > I was having issues with vmware a while ago (I forget the details), and I > ended up switching to v2 of vmware-server, which is in the vmware overlay > (available via layman). This version eliminates the need to have > vmware-server-console as it has a web-based management system with a plugin > for console access (works fine on firefox). > > Vmware uses a kernel module, so you need to be root to get it started up > (you can put it in your init.d). Once you set everything up you can log in > as an ordinary user via the management console. > > I agree with your points on antivirus/etc. I just run avast so licensing > isn't an issue - just set it up on each VM. I don't think you'll find any > virus solutions that will work through the virtualization layer, but you > might find some whose license agreement permits installation on multiple VMs > with a single license (probably on the honor system). > >
Hi Richard, I reinstalled vmware and in doing so saw that there were additional requirements that I hadn't noticed yesterday: 1) Add users to the vmware group 2) Start the vmware process using the normal setup (rc-update vmware add default) Having done that I can now run as root the VM I built yesterday as root so that's good news. I'm now puzzling through how this is all supposed to done from a security point of view: 1) I must run vmware as root to do overall settings. How much memory to use overall, how much to swap, other global things like that. When in the console as root I can see the machines users in the group have set up. 2) As a user I run vmware and should (I think) be able to create my VMs. I do that preallocating my hard drive space and assigning two CDs to the XP and ME iso file. So far however when XP actually tries to install (as a user) it says it cannot find a hard drive on the system. The files are there where they are supposed to be so possibly I have some permissions problem? I guess it's trying to use SCSI emulation to make the file look like the virtual hard drive but it's not working as a user. Anyway, I am making some headway. One question - is there a way for me to simply copy the installation root did yesterday and use it today as a user? That would be very cool and would save hours of install time. Seems like a natural so I'm sure there's some way to do it. Thanks, Mark
