So I am a fan of VMWare for my testing environments and sharing with colleagues. Now that I finally upgraded my VMWare Server boxes to 64 bit, I can finally start using 64 bit images, this is my first try at it.

Install went fine the first time, but I thought I would be clever and select to encrypt my home dir, not a good idea, there looks like a defect or something that this causes a kernel panic and a failure mounting /dev/mapper/crypt-swap and the system is pretty much hosed. Needless to say I would recommend holding off on that for now. Without that option everything went smooth, and the install works as advertised.

So let’s install VMWare tools, first we mount the VMWare tools from the VM Server console, then we can go to the image and make the magic happen, but first we need to do some setup on the Ubuntu machine itself.

sgw@u910x64srv001:~$ sudo apt-get install -y build-essential linux-headers-`uname -r`
[sudo] password for sgw:
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
<...>
sgw@u910x64srv001:~$ ls /usr/src/linux-headers-`uname -r`/include/linux/config.h
ls: cannot access /usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.31-19-server/include/linux/config.h: No such file or directory
sgw@u910x64srv001:~$ sudo touch /usr/src/linux-headers-`uname -r`/include/linux/config.h
sgw@u910x64srv001:~$ ls /usr/src/linux-headers-`uname -r`/include/linux/config.h
/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.31-19-server/include/linux/config.h
sgw@u910x64srv001:~$ sudo mount /media/cdrom0/
[sudo] password for sgw:
mount: block device /dev/sr0 is write-protected, mounting read-only

sgw@u910x64srv001:~$ tar xvzf /media/cdrom/VMwareTools-7.7.5-156745.tar.gz
< ... >
vmware-tools-distrib/installer/
vmware-tools-distrib/installer/services.sh
vmware-tools-distrib/INSTALL
vmware-tools-distrib/FILES
sgw@u910x64srv001:~$ cd vmware-tools-distrib/
sgw@u910x64srv001:~/vmware-tools-distrib$ sudo ./vmware-install.pl -d
<...>
No X install found.

 Checking acpi hot plug                                              done
Starting VMware Tools services in the virtual machine:
 Switching to guest configuration:                                   done
 Guest operating system daemon:                                      done
 
The configuration of VMware Tools 7.7.5 build-156745 for Linux for this running
kernel completed successfully.

You must restart your X session before any mouse or graphics changes take
effect.

You can now run VMware Tools by invoking the following command:
"/usr/bin/vmware-toolbox" during an X server session.

You will need to either manually start /usr/bin/vmware-user or log out and log
back in to this desktop session to obtain the following features: guest
resolution fit, drag and drop, and file and text copy/paste.  vmware-user is
configured to automatically start at a graphical login, but that won't take
effect until the next login.

Enjoy,

--the VMware team

sgw@u910x64srv001:~/vmware-tools-distrib$

Ok so we are up and running, the guest services should be set to run at startup and you should have access to some of the vmware services assuming that your modules actually compiled, looking through my output, none of the fun ones did so I will have to go back and check them out another day…

One important note, since these modules that make up the vmware-tools application are compile the vmware-tools-config.pl command needs to be re-run each time the kernel is updated, here is a quick version of the commands to update it.

sudo apt-get install -y linux-headers-`uname -r`
sudo touch /usr/src/linux-headers-`uname -r`/include/linux/config.h
sudo vmware-config-tools.pl -d

Reference:

• https://help.ubuntu.com/community/VMware