Installation & Configuration of VMware

Installation

Follow the installation guidelines on VMware's site (www.vmware.com) and install VMware workstation 5.x on your version of the Linux host and then setup the virtual network for NAT on VMNET5 as described below.

Configuring vmnet5

1. The network is configured by executing the vmware-config.pl (must be super user) and answering to the prompts as below.

• Do you want this program to try to build the vmmon module for your system [yes]

• What is the location of the directory of C header files that match your running kernel [/usr/src/linux/include] [enter.]

• Would you like to skip networking setup and keep your old settings as they are? [no]

• Do you want networking for your virtual machines [yes]

• Would you prefer to modify your existing networking configuration using the wizard or the editor [editor]

• exit out of the current configuration by pressing “q”

• Do you wish to make any changes to the current virtual networks settting? [yes]

• Which virtual network do you wish to configure? 5

• What type of virtual network do yo wish to set vmnet5? [nat]

• Do you want this program to probe for an unused private subnet? [no]

• What will be the IP address of your host on the private network? [172.17.2.1]

• What will be the netmask of your private network? [255.255.255.0]

• vmnet5 should be listed as NAT on a private subnet 172.17.2.0. Press “q”

• Do you wish to make additional changes to the the current virtual networks settings? [no]

• Do you want this program to automatically configure your system to allow your virtual machines to access the host's file system? [no]

Verifying the VMware configuration

1. Verify the vmnet5 configuration

• Start vmware

• su to root in a terminal window

• Type ifconfig to view the network configuration

• You should see vmnet5 configured with an address of 172.17.2.1 with a mask of 255.255.255.0

Reconfiguring the network

There may be times when you might be required to reconfigure the network to meet a special requirement. Examples of such a need would be at a demo counter where you have a set of vms being hosted on multiple hosts but still needing connectivity between vms regardless of where they are being hosted. Another example would be if your host machine is not powerful enough to host all the vms on a single machine. For an understanding of VMWare networking and how to adapt to such situations refer to slides in the Train-The-Trainer presentation

Modifying the VMware DHCP server configuration

To comply with the Utopia standards, Vmware's DHCP configuration file needs to be modified. The location of this file is /etc/vmware/vmnet5/dhcpd/dhcpd.conf

NOTE: Each time you run the vmware-config.pl script, you will need to perform set the DHCP configuration file

You have 2 choices for modifying the dhcpd.conf file:

Use your favorite editor and modify the following entries in the files

range 172.17.2.150 172.17.2.199

option domain-name-servers 172.17.2.51,172.17.2.71,172.17.2.91,137.65.1.3

option domain-name “utopia.novell.com"

Using Utopia with VMware for Windows

VMware guest migration from Linux to Windows

All Utopia images have been designed and built on a Linux platform running VMware, however they will also work on VMware for Windows.

The only issue is that hardware configuration may not match. All Linux-built Virtual Machines will address their hardware /dev/xxx where in Windows they are addressed xxx . ie Linux /dev/vmnet5 | Windows VMnet5.

When starting an image on a Windows host you may see the following error message:

“Bad Parameter -------” to overcome this simply go into the Virtual machine configuration and type the correct string for the virtual network.

Setting up vmnet5 on a Windows Host

Please watch the attached Flash demo:Vmnet5.zip

Setting up vmnet5 with VMWare 6.5 on a Linux host

With VMWare 6.5 the vmware-config.pl script doesn't exist anymore. Use vmware-netcfg tool instead, see the attached screenshot below as reference:

Setting up vmnet5 with VMWare Fusion on a Mac OSX

Download PDF

Attachment	Size
Vmnet5.zip	656.48 KB
Vmware-netcfg.png	133.63 KB