Installing VMware Server 2.0.1 on Ubuntu 9.04

I use Ubuntu on daily basis and I can live without Windows most of the time. However, once in a while I need to use Windows for things like accessing the iTunes store and editing Microsoft Word documents (yes I know OpenOffice.org works but it messes up the style from time to time). I created a WIndows VM image under VirtualBox, which worked quite well except that I noticed the constant high CPU load as mentioned by several other users. I tried their suggestions such as using nohz=off and turn off ACPI, which did reduce the CPU load to 50% on one core but didn't get rid of the problem completely.

I eventually decided to give the free VMware Server a try. Setting it up on Windows was pretty simple, just double click and then click through the Wizard. However, installing it on Ubuntu 9.04 is a non-trivial task and took me a little while to complete.

1. Launch Synaptic package manager and make sure you have linux-header, linux-source, gcc and binutils installed.
2. Download the .tar.gz package from VMware web site (VMware-server-2.0.1-156745.x86_64.tar.gz in my case).
3. Extract the files then run the the installation script as super user

   sudo vmware-install.pl

4. The installer will prompt you with half a thousand questions, I just use the default value for most of them.
5. Eventually the installer will start compiling and loading kernel modules, most of them will go through fine but the VSOCK module installation will fail with the following error message.
   

   Unable to make a vsock module that can be loaded in the running kernel:
   
   insmod: error inserting '/tmp/vmware-config0/vsock.o': -1 Unknown symbol in module

   Ignore this insmod error for now and continue to finish the installation.
6. Apply the following patch to vmware-config.pl, this fixes the insmod error above so we can re-run it to complete the VSOCK module installation.

   +++ /usr/bin/vmware-config-tools.pl 2008-12-01 16:55:59.000000000 +0100
   @@ -4121,6 +4121,11 @@
        return 'no';
      }
    
   +  if ($name eq 'vsock') {
   +    print wrap("VMWare config patch VSOCK!\n");
   +    system(shell_string($gHelper{'mv'}) . ' -vi ' . shell_string($build_dir . '/../Module.symvers') . ' ' . shell_string($build_dir . '/vsock-only/' ));
   +  }
   +
      print wrap('Building the ' . $name . ' module.' . "\n\n", 0);
      if (system(shell_string($gHelper{'make'}) . ' -C '
                 . shell_string($build_dir . '/' . $name . '-only')
   @@ -4143,6 +4148,12 @@
        if (try_module($name, $build_dir . '/' . $name . '.o', 0, 1)) {
          print wrap('The ' . $name . ' module loads perfectly into the running kernel.'
                     . "\n\n", 0);
   +
   +      if ($name eq 'vmci') {
   +        print wrap("VMWare config patch VMCI!\n");
   +        system(shell_string($gHelper{'cp'}) . ' -vi ' . shell_string($build_dir.'/vmci-only/Module.symvers') . ' ' . shell_string($build_dir . '/../'));
   +      } 
   +
          remove_tmp_dir($build_dir);
          return 'yes';
        }

7. Now run the vmware-config.pl script as super user and the VSOCK module should compile and install fine now.

   sudo vmware-config.pl

8. Now run vmware from the command prompt to launch vmware UI in your browser. You will see following error message as shown below:
   
9. Click on "Add Exception", which will pop up another dialog. Click on "Get Certificate" and then "Confirm Security Exception" to add the VMware URL to the exception list.
   
   
10. Finally, you should see the login screen. You need to login as the root user but Ubuntu does not set password for root user by default. Therefore, you first need to set the password by executing

    sudo passwd root

    after setting the password just login as root and enjoy.