Running VMware Server on Ubuntu 64-bit

24 Feb 2009 by Simon Haslam (in Virtualization)

This article describes what you need to do to run VMware Server 1.0.8 on Ubuntu Desktop Edition 64-bit Linux (8.10 "Intrepid Ibex") using information that others have kindly posted no the web.

Last month I was fortunate enough to get to try out a development release of OFM SOA Suite 11g, provided by Oracle as a VMware image. To run this Oracle had advised a minimum of 3GB RAM which left me with a bit of a quandary - my trusty ThinkPad X40 was already at its maximum memory (1.5GB) and its 1.8" disk would undoubtedly be a bottleneck too. Therefore I bought an HP 6730s (T5870 2GHz dual core and very good value) then bumped the memory up to 4GB.

That then left me with a second puzzle: whether run Vista or XP 32-bit using only 3GB or make the most of the extra memory by installing a 64-bit OS. Note I did briefly look at using PAE (which I have used successfully with 32-bit Enterprise Linux) with Windows but after researching it a little (e.g. Microsoft 1, 2, 3) I worried that it might introduce other problems.

Therefore I looked for 64-bit Linux distribution. Given that I was installing on a recent laptop, I thought I'd better go for a distribution that would be in common use on similar hardware so decided to go for Ubuntu Desktop Edition 64-bit. Firstly I booted from the Ubuntu CD (as a live CD) to check that it recognised my hardware, then I installed Ubuntu as dual boot alongside Vista, splitting the hard disk 50/50. Ubuntu installed fine; so far so good!

Installing VMware Server 1.0.8 was not quite so easy - you get errors as a result of changes in the 2.6.27 Linux kernel. The first error you see is:

readdir() attempted on invalid dirhandle LS at ./vmware-install.pl line 458.

There are discussions on the VMTN community about this, e.g. Unable to install VMware Server 1.0.8 on Ubuntu 8.10 , along with various other posts on the web (http://ubuntu-tutorials.com/2008/11/01/vmware-server-107-on-ubuntu-810-intrepid-2627-7-generic/ which has disappeared now, and http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=788169 )

Firstly you need the kernel headers and related packages:

sudo aptitude install xinetd build-essential linux-headers-`uname -r` ia32-libs libc6-i386

where uname -r gives your kernel, e.g. linux-headers-2.6.27-7-generic .

Then you need to get a package that patches the VMware code from http://www.insecure.ws. Yes, I realise this is a bit of a random website but this patch is mentioned in various places in the web and my laptop is not a critical/production system.

wget -c http://www.insecure.ws/warehouse/vmware-update-2.6.27-5.5.7-2.tar.gz

Unzip/tar this package, then:

sudo ./runme.pl

The instructions are self-explanatory and the script will automatically kick off a vmware-config.pl. This all worked first time for me (thanks Kang! If you have problems be sure to check the comments on his blog entry).

Note: if you update your kernel (e.g. using the Ubuntu update manager) you'll find that the VMware services won't start; in this case you just need to re-run Kang's update and vmware-config.pl (just keep the existing settings and it should only take a couple of minutes).

So there you have it. If you're looking to install VMware Server on a recent Linux kernel be sure to check out VMware Server download page first in case they have released a new version.