How-to: VMware player modification

posted Oct 24th 2005 11:00am by Eliot Phillips
filed under: pcs hacks

VMware
Last week the free VMware player was released. It lets you run virtual machines, but not create them. [Faileas] contributed today’s how-to for creating your own virtual machines.

Programs required to carry out hack:

Copy of VMware Player
Browser appliance or another virtual machine(browser appliance is the smallest one, by size, and thus I am using that)
Notepad or other text editor
ISO image or CD/floppy of FreeDOS (I’m using the ripcord distribution) or MSDOS 7.1 would work as well, but i haven’t tried it yet.
Replacement OS (must have SCSI HDD support)

Once you’ve downloaded the browser appliance or whatever image you intend to use, the first step is to open up and edit the browser-appliance.vmx file. I used notepad for this, though any text editor should do.

I’d reccomend changing the settings as needed, though these are what i suggest. Change the value of memsize to 64 from 256. For most operating systems this is sufficient and you can change this later as needed.

Part 1: Using an ISO
The image i am using has been setup to use the physical CD-Rom drive of my system. Not really desireable when you want to install from a downloaded ISO. While using daemontools, or a similar CD mounting program is an option, a more elegant method would be to use VMware player’s own ability to read ISOs.

At this point i suggest saving and making a copy of the browser-appliance.vmx file, since it might be desireable to use a physical CD-Rom drive at a later point of time.

To do this replace:
ide1:0.fileName = "auto detect" ide1:0.deviceType = "cdrom-raw"

with:
ide1:0.fileName = "C:targetcd.iso" ide1:0.deviceType = "cdrom-image"

Where C:targetcd.iso is the location of the disk you intend to use. Once this is done, save the edited vmx file and run it.

Part 2: Removing the current OS

Now, at the startup screen start screen
press escape and choose to boot from the CD drive at the next screen. If all goes well, you should be greeted by
boot
where you should choose to boot from CDrom. From there menu
choose to boot to the second option “FreeDOS ** FAT32. At the next screen toreto
pick the first option, to “boot with el toreto cd rom driver” (default) driver
and then the second option, to run FreeDOS from CD command prompt.

Now the fun part

Comments [118]

Reader Comments

Now the next thing to do would be to create a portable version of the vmware player, so that you can have the image and player on a flash drive / other portable storage. Anyone attempted doing that?

Posted at 11:49 am on Oct 24th, 2005 by hex4def6

I do know something similar has been done with small distributions of linux, but I don’t know it’s been done with vmware specifically.

Posted at 12:53 pm on Oct 24th, 2005 by joshua holbrook

Works great with ubuntu. After step one you can install it normally. Get the .iso here: http://www.ubuntu.com/download/

Posted at 1:24 pm on Oct 24th, 2005 by Pyr0

CAKE! I’m installing Ubuntu onto my virtual drive now… will be installing OSX, once I get a good IMG.

Posted at 1:32 pm on Oct 24th, 2005 by vbrtrmn

Not bad, not bad. I’ve been using VMware Workstation 5, it’s great. I run it inside linux, so when I *need* windows support I can have it. Just need to stick it on my iPod so I can use linux at school…..

Posted at 2:51 pm on Oct 24th, 2005 by n3ldan

i don’t want to sound too stupid, but what is this for?

Posted at 2:53 pm on Oct 24th, 2005 by confused

I think the point of this is you can make your own virtual machines with a free program (vmware player) and not have to pay a crapload or pirate the vmware workstation or server software. Its a win win.

Posted at 4:07 pm on Oct 24th, 2005 by george

The vmware player poses great potential for modification of exsisting files. If someone would write a howto on editing your own files. If some one create a site then it could, in effect, create a free vmware for hardcore geeks.

Posted at 4:07 pm on Oct 24th, 2005 by Hal Hockersmtih

The “browser appliance” comes with ubuntu linux,gnome, and firefox. It’s a great setup.

Thanks for the hack! I’m sure it’ll come in handy.

Posted at 4:50 pm on Oct 24th, 2005 by flaunt_dzx

awesome one :) *bookmark*

Posted at 5:01 pm on Oct 24th, 2005 by Ixje

“…comes with ubuntu linux,gnome, and firefox”

I have ubuntu running on my desktop and I was very confused when I opened vmplayer and ubuntu started loading. I thought it was reloading my OS in a window.

BTW, if you are running Ubuntu 5.10, you will have to run the following command:

apt-get install gcc-3.4 g++-3.4

You might need to do some more as well… a quick search for vmplayer on the ubuntu forums will yield results.

Posted at 5:14 pm on Oct 24th, 2005 by covert.entity

Hmm… I wonder if I can get Windows going well enough using VMPlayer under Linux to use Launchcast. I’ve had no luck getting Launchcast to work under QEmu or WINE.

Posted at 5:25 pm on Oct 24th, 2005 by Tom61

So how would I set up an xp instance under ubuntu or fedora? Also, does any one know how this will work with 64 bit stuff?
-bryan

Posted at 5:25 pm on Oct 24th, 2005 by bryan

Considering i wrote this :)

#1- been thinking about that. VMware uses its own drivers to hook onto the host system’s networking so its a little tricky. If i figure it out, i’ll be sure to let you know.

I do believe that technically you *could* make a live CD with VMware player for linux, and add in the appropriate drivers for accessing images from a HDD(maybe Knoppix?).Its a total cludge IMHO, but could work.

Ravi “Faileas” Mohan

#5-Its a workaround for some functionality missing in the free version of VMware.

#7- i’m going to be working on that next holidays and trying to document the VMware player’s config files, and methods of editing the HDD images(IE adding in files into the client from the host).

#12- If the processor on the host is 64 bit,you can run 64 bit operating systems. The process is almost the same on linux, and you can, by editing the config file to point at a windows ISO, or windows install cd, get XP on it. In fact, i have (thanks to one of my computers getting fried) a stripped down (using http://www.nliteos.com/ nlite to modify the cd to remove unwanted components) install of windows XP running happily on 64 megs of ram on VMware, so yeah, it works, and is pretty much the same as installing any other OS

Posted at 7:27 pm on Oct 24th, 2005 by Faileas

I got so far that I could start installing Windows XP, but some minutes into the installation it complained that I did not have any hard drives. Any idea on which step I did wrong or is this a XP-only issue?

Posted at 7:38 pm on Oct 24th, 2005 by brakjoller

#14: i did some checking up, apparently windows XP lacks the SCSI drivers that VMware virtutal SCSI hdds need.

http://www.vmware.com/support/reference/common/guest_win_scsidrv.html
you can download the driver from there, edit the line in the config file from floppy0.fileName = “A:” to point to the driver image, and when installing tell the win XP installer that you need additional SCSI drivers. I haven’t had a chance to test this out personally, but it should work.

alternately you could find a IDE based disk image, such as the syllable OS disk image ( http://www.fprintf.net/atheos/atheosvm.html ) uses, and use that directly

Posted at 8:22 pm on Oct 24th, 2005 by Faileas

If I remember right #14, Win XP can have problems when trying to use non standard SCSI drivers during install (it prefers IDE drives.) I think there is some way to work around it by picking an option to load the driver from a floppy at install, but I’m not sure how that would work through VMware. Someone correct me if I am wrong however.

Posted at 8:25 pm on Oct 24th, 2005 by light

The syllable vm rocks! #16 was right-on. I think the key to hacking success will be in the proper documentation of the vmx and vmdx files. So far, I think they’re not documented too well because everyone has relied on the official tools to create the files for them.

Any links to the specific files format values are welcome.

Some interesting links I’ve found:
VMware files: http://www.vmware.com/support/ws5/doc/ws_learning_files_in_a_vm.html
Some tools and links: http://chitchat.at.infoseek.co.jp/vmware/index.html
VB/GUI front-ends to official tool console apps: http://petruska.stardock.net/software/VMware/index.html

Thanks to VMWare for opening the door to us hackers in a somewhat legitimate fashion. I forsee a lot of converts. My experiences so far will probably allow me to get rid of a computer or two that I use for client/server testing.. The money saved may very well go into a full version of this software!

Posted at 10:03 pm on Oct 24th, 2005 by deltaf

I just popped my fedora core four dvd in, hit escape, and booted from cd. It is installing over the ubuntu stuff right now, no problems. How does VMware work for graphics? ex: have vmware player running xp under fedora, how would 3d and fast graphics look?
-bryan

Posted at 11:46 pm on Oct 24th, 2005 by bryan

It was only a matter of time until someone did this. I’m glad you guys were quick about it. This should be fun. :)

Posted at 1:47 am on Oct 25th, 2005 by Scott Johnson

Hey, Incase you don’t read slashdot? You can use QEMU-img.exe to create VMDK(VMare virtual disk files meaning you don’t need to download the browser image. Also I think this will create files that can be used as ide drives.

Quick and easy:
1 Download the the vmplayer
2. create a vmdk disk file like this:
qemu-img.exe create -f vmdk
3.Create a vmx config file. Here are the basic options you need:

config.version = “8″
virtualHW.version = “3″
memsize = “128″
ide0:0.present = “TRUE”
ide0:0.fileName = “DiskFile.vmdk”

——-TO BOOT AN ISO———-
ide1:0.present = “TRUE”
ide1:0.fileName = “c:debian.iso”
ide1:0.deviceType = “cdrom-image”
———————————–
OR
——-TO BOOT CDROM———–
ide1:0.present = “TRUE”
ide1:0.fileName = “auto detect”
ide1:0.deviceType = “cdrom-raw”
———————————
floppy0.fileName = “A:”
ethernet0.present = “TRUE”
ethernet0.connectionType = “nat”
usb.present = “TRUE”
sound.present = “TRUE”
sound.virtualDev = “es1371″
displayName = “Debian 1″
guestOS = “other24xlinux”
nvram = “debian1.nvram”
scsi0:0.redo = “”
ethernet0.addressType = “generated”
uuid.location = “56 4d f3 a5 03 8c cb b9-ed bb 8f 10 a3 de b0 10″
uuid.bios = “56 4d f3 a5 03 8c cb b9-ed bb 8f 10 a3 de b0 10″
ide1:0.autodetect = “TRUE”
ethernet0.generatedAddress = “00:0c:29:de:b0:10″
ethernet0.generatedAddressOffset = “0″
checkpoint.vmState = “”
tools.remindInstall = “TRUE”
ide0:0.redo = “”

Now just run up the vmx file in the player. Boot the cdrom/iso and install the os as usual.

EasyAs!
Cheers,
Rhys

Posted at 2:04 am on Oct 25th, 2005 by Rhys

so..does this let me run a virtual copy of mac osx on my windows xp machine?

Posted at 6:05 am on Oct 25th, 2005 by pman

Thanks rhys (21),
Used QEMU created a 1GB virtual drive, created a vmx file for it and booted from a live cd image (slax). Now I have a place to store settings for slax (virtual hard drive). The empty drive takes up less than a 0.5MB which will grow as I add files, not an 800MB image. With VMPlayer installed on the machines I use, I could fit my new Slax iso image and a virtual hard drive on a 256MB thumb drive. Which will run much faster than using QEMU, etc.

Also if you enter the bios setup you can set it to boot from the CD-ROM first automatically.

Posted at 8:15 am on Oct 25th, 2005 by LEMMYSLENDER

#22 (pman)

No, not with the PPC version at least. Maybe the x86 version is supported, although I doubt it.

Posted at 9:28 am on Oct 25th, 2005 by covert.entity

To #22 & #24, yes tiger_x86 booted for me, first try. It was very slow and I had some glitches in the font rendering.

I don’t know if it was a glitch in the image, a hardware conflict that required some 3D acceleration that I didn’t have, or what..

Then I realized I don’t care about osx and dumped it all. ;)

Thanks for the qemu link!

Posted at 10:29 am on Oct 25th, 2005 by deltaf

Hah, my school blocks your site under the category of \’hacking\’.

Posted at 11:16 am on Oct 25th, 2005 by Ben Hiller

22&24 It looks like VMware is emulating a 440bx motherboard. I think the motherboard that apple was shipping was a i915G. That may be a problem.

I think it will mostly have to do with your processor supporting sse2 and sse3 though.

If someone has an image of osx x86 they should try it and let us know.

Posted at 11:37 am on Oct 25th, 2005 by flaunt_dzx

Actually, if I’m not mistaken, it looks as if the image that everyone is downloading to install os x is a vmware image.

I’d have to say it may work then.

Posted at 11:49 am on Oct 25th, 2005 by flaunt_dzx

You could also just download the fully functional VMWare Workstation demo, create your virtual machine, and then use the player to run it after the 30 day evaluation period is up on the full version.

Posted at 7:24 pm on Oct 25th, 2005 by grundlebug

Has anyone noticed that although the VMware player site says you can only run one image at a time, that’s not in fact true! Just by double-clicking on the container files, you start up another copy of the program and can run as many images as you want simultaneously. By the way I had a WinXP image left over from an expired trial download and it ran fine in the player. Saved all changes etc, just as good as the full program. I wonder if they’ll dumb it down when it comes out of beta – I think they may not have realised just how much they were giving away :-)

Posted at 11:13 am on Oct 26th, 2005 by gtoal

still no joy on the scsi drivers. I have tried two different drivers (provided by vmware) so far: vmscsi-1.2.0.2.flp and VMware-BusLogic-SCSIDriver-1.2.0.0.flp. However, the Ubuntu VM is telling me that I have a LSI Logic / Symbios Logic 53c1030 PCI-X Fusion-MPT Dual, so it’s probably NOT the second one. Also, all the tips on qemu-img are crapping out because it reports back as an invalid format. would love to get 2000 / xp running on this…

Posted at 12:27 pm on Oct 26th, 2005 by pau1

I’ve got the qemu-img volume working just fine, no SCSI drivers required. I’ve got two images running on my XP machine – a 2000 server and a FreeBSD server, both using 8G virtual disks and 128M memory, bridge-mode networking. Couldn’t be smoother. The instructions for running the qemu-img command were a touch lacking – the actual command line is:
qemu-img create -f vmdk filename.vmdk 8G
(or whatever size/filename you need). Worked perfectly (at least under XP pro). Make sure you customize the .vmx to point to seperate nvram and vmdk files, include ONLY the CD section you need (attached to real drive or image, not both), then just double-click on the .vmx.

Posted at 1:30 pm on Oct 26th, 2005 by Gurubuckaroo

Here is the link to Qemu for the Qemu-img program

For windows: http://www.h7.dion.ne.jp/~qemu-win/
For Linux: http://fabrice.bellard.free.fr/qemu/download.html

For Mac Users I dont think this applies sorry.

Posted at 1:08 am on Oct 27th, 2005 by Hal Hockersmith

I forgot to mention that you will have to download the full package (qemu-0.X.X) as the img program is not distributed by its self.

Posted at 1:10 am on Oct 27th, 2005 by Hal Hockersmith

#31
try the athena disk image on #16

Posted at 1:41 am on Oct 27th, 2005 by Faileas

A little howto based on stuff I read here (installing XP Pro, but also works for Win2Kpro):http://johnbokma.com/mexit/2005/10/26/vmware-player-windows-xp.html

Posted at 6:37 am on Oct 27th, 2005 by John Bokma

So for those of you who are lazy (like me) i created an image using directions provided by Rhys (#21). The image is a 100GB disk and has a vmx file that is the default provided above(CD is .iso)

http://www.blankstare.net/blank.zip

The file is about 12MB extracted, and 22KB compressed. Enjoy.

Posted at 11:46 am on Oct 27th, 2005 by spaz

Does anyone know if it is possible to coax vmware player into using the native partitions of a dual-boot Windows/Linux setup?

Posted at 3:15 pm on Oct 27th, 2005 by Les Mikesell

is there a way to make it so that I can access my VM from different computers. When I try to access my VM which is on an ipod from a computer different from the one that I created it on the initial screen will display but I can’t do anything to interact with the VM.

Posted at 5:30 pm on Oct 27th, 2005 by jp

I can confirm that post #21 works great for creating an image and installing Windows 2000. Just need to get the video drivers now. Usually they come with vmtools and are part of the VM Workstation package. Any idea how I can get them otherwise? Also, in response to #39’s post… you may want to check and make sure the drive your vm lives on is compatible with VMPlayer. I was using an ext2 drive mounted under Windows 2000 (using ext2fsd drivers) and it just would not work. Put it on an ntfs partition, and all was good.

Posted at 7:28 pm on Oct 27th, 2005 by pau1

Really quick, all I did was make the changes below and it worked:
replace:
ide1:0.fileName = “auto detect”
ide1:0.deviceType = “cdrom-raw”
with:
ide1:0.fileName = “an iso of an os right on the root of C:”
ide1:0.deviceType = “cdrom-image”

Posted at 10:28 am on Oct 28th, 2005 by Ciosciammocca

In reply to post #38. This site on VMWare deals with booting from a raw disk. I haven’t tried it though.
http://www.vmware.com/support/ws45/doc/disks_dualboot_ws.html

Posted at 8:19 am on Oct 29th, 2005 by Chui Tey

How is it exactly that you can transfer files INTO to virtual machine. I cant get the virtual machine to see a flash drive and I wan to throw some files back and forth.

Posted at 10:03 am on Oct 29th, 2005 by Borgel

I an tring to boot off an Longhong.iso but its a DVD image. I have tried the above configurations, but no luck. I am able to use a CD image(XP).
Any suggestions.

Posted at 11:55 am on Oct 29th, 2005 by rich

DSL does something with quem or however its spelt to run from a jump drive. You could go check out their site and ask them if they have any tips for you. damnsmalllinux.org I belive if not a google search should turn something up for you.

Posted at 12:51 pm on Oct 29th, 2005 by nugget

hello I am quite new to vmplayer and I was wondering if I choose the option in fdisk to delete my non-dos partition.
I am goign to really format it and then loose all my datas on that partition? as i use my computer for work it will be hoffic to loose those data.

Thanks for you help.

Posted at 12:53 pm on Oct 29th, 2005 by eliphas

Thanks for you help.

Posted at 1:33 pm on Oct 29th, 2005 by eliphas

“One limitation is that you cannot use this disk image to install an OS without SCSI support.”

I don’t seem to undestand why SCSI support is nessary for this to work? Dosn’t VMware support virtual IDE disks?

Posted at 1:46 pm on Oct 29th, 2005 by Jriff

the image of the hard disk, is a 10g scsi.

even virtual, the drive is a scsi emulated one.

BTW, is there any way to “shrink” a disk image?
I mean if the file is 2g big, but you flush all file, the file on the hard disk is still 2g.

Posted at 9:28 pm on Oct 29th, 2005 by Flisher

#47
Quite simply because the disk i was working off was scsi based. The method that was suggested later (to use QEMU instead to create the disks) bypassed that, but quite simply i was “stuck” with a scsi disk.

it should however work with an IDE image as well, though a great deal of what i ended up doing could be bypassed

#45/46
I assure you in the method i was using its totally safe. You need to think of it as a computer in a computer and whatever you do in the VM (or in VMplayer) should not affect the rest of your system.

Though, i think the QEMU based method, together with the script provided in a later hackaday links post seem to be a better way to do it, once you figure out the config file.

Posted at 6:53 am on Oct 30th, 2005 by Faileas

Ive tried both methods (the main article method and using qemu) however when i try to boot my slackware 10.0 cd using any of the kernels it keeps getting a kernel panic and stops loading… anyone know how to fix this problem, or how to find out what’s causing it?

Posted at 7:22 am on Oct 30th, 2005 by mtxf

#21. I have try the QEMU method and it works. Forget the SCSI image stuff, just create an file image using QEMU and boot using an ISO cdrom image (for some reason, the reading from phyical CDROM does not work, for WINXP anyway).

Posted at 4:43 am on Oct 31st, 2005 by Bench

Wanted to re-use a WIN98 license recovered from an old PC not used anymore with vmplayer under ubuntu 5.10. Tried the images in #16 and #21.
DOS-floppy and WIN98 setup (copied from original CD to c:-drive) is starting fine, but hangs several times (I did a reset when it was hanging). Can’t get it working (apart from command line mode). Does anybody know how to do this. Is maybe the creation of and image with vmware trial version needed?

Posted at 7:39 am on Oct 31st, 2005 by beamer

this is great! perfect tool for those who like to tests and try apps before install on “production” mashine.

But we come to the next step in exploring posibilities of vmware toy.
Actually I need to have two NIC cards on VM in order to be able to test some software routers (i.e. MikroTik). So, is tehre a way to get second virtual NIC card?
I’ve checked on the net but with no success.
Any idea?

Posted at 1:26 pm on Oct 31st, 2005 by zox

As an addition to #40, if we can’t get the vmtools package, is it possible to find out what video card vmware is emulating under Windows 2000, and download some manufacturers drivers for that?

Posted at 8:54 pm on Oct 31st, 2005 by Kim

beamer: maybe its an issue with the install CD. I got win 3.11 working (over what seems to be a GPLed MS dos7), and managed to install win 95 over it with no problem

Zox: i think dual virtual NICs are a feature thats only on their server based systems. Its a hardware issue and VMware hardware is generally fixed.

Posted at 1:57 am on Nov 1st, 2005 by Faileas

Another way to make your own virtual machines (or templates to install whatever you want on it)

Get the trial version of vmware Workstation and create the machines. They will still work after the trial expired

Posted at 6:41 am on Nov 1st, 2005 by geezus

should solve any scsi problems

#!/usr/bin/vmware
config.version = “8″
virtualHW.version = “3″
scsi0.present = “FALSE”
scsi0.virtualDev = “lsilogic”
memsize = “256″
MemAllowAutoScaleDown = “FALSE”
scsi0:0.present = “FALSE”
scsi0:0.fileName = “x.vmdk”
ide0:0.present = “TRUE”
ide0:0.filename = “x.vmdk”
ide1:0.present = “TRUE”
ide1:0.fileName = “auto detect”
ide1:0.deviceType = “atapi-cdrom”
floppy0.present = “FALSE”
ethernet0.present = “TRUE”
usb.present = “FALSE”
sound.present = “FALSE”
sound.virtualDev = “es1371″
displayName = “TEST1″
guestOS = “ubuntu”
nvram = “x.nvram”
MemTrimRate = “-1″

ide1:0.autodetect = “TRUE”
ide0:0.autodetect = “TRUE”

scsi0:0.redo = “”
ethernet0.addressType = “generated”
uuid.location = “56 4d 85 72 dd 09 67 73-96 00 f8 f3 02 29 1f 18″
uuid.bios = “56 4d 85 72 dd 09 67 73-96 00 f8 f3 02 29 1f 18″
ethernet0.generatedAddress = “00:0c:29:29:1f:18″
ethernet0.generatedAddressOffset = “0″

tools.syncTime = “TRUE”
ide1:0.startConnected = “TRUE”

uuid.action = “create”

checkpoint.vmState = “”

ide0:0.redo = “”
tools.remindInstall = “TRUE”

Posted at 6:17 pm on Nov 1st, 2005 by bcp1551

one more thing:
http://fabrice.bellard.free.fr/qemu/qemu-doc.html#SEC15
Use qemu-image to make an IDE img and convert to vmware’s format use vmx above…this way you don’t need any scsi support
qemu-image (make an image)
qemu-image convert (your image)
maybe somebody can distribute a blank IDE HD image made this way…

Posted at 6:26 pm on Nov 1st, 2005 by bcp1551

for more info on vmx files:
http://blog.lorenzoferrara.net/

Posted at 11:47 am on Nov 2nd, 2005 by debianoid

Thanks to the great link in #60 I finally got win98 running (issue #53). set guest os to the right value “win98″ and it works fine. Now needed to get video drivers (issues #40 and #55). After some googling, I found an iso-image with the drivers under http://www.vmware.com/download1/software/support/windows.iso

Posted at 9:12 am on Nov 3rd, 2005 by beamer

working or template files for creating your own virtual machine. qemu-img.exe is included along with some very terse guide/example text files.

http://s42.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=1BE5NA22M9B6C0VVKQMJF51HVJ

Posted at 5:33 pm on Nov 4th, 2005 by ricardo

I installed windows 2000 Pro on a VM hosted in Ubuntu 5.10 using this method, and Launchcast works perfectly (though IE responds slowly with 64M of ram). The graphics are awful, but I haven’t yet installed the SVGA drivers from #61.

This could open the door for a lot people that can’t use Linux full-time because they need one or two windows only apps. Great work.

Posted at 1:43 am on Nov 6th, 2005 by alex

@#63
yep, i’m thinking who needs cygwin anymore?
i’m running an ftp server on my virtual machine and accessing it from anywhere. for some reason, it’s VERY slow to connect, but once it connects, response times are fine. i’m working on setting up an apache/web server now…

Posted at 9:56 pm on Nov 6th, 2005 by ricardo

We need someone with VMWare Workstation 5 to install windows and linux and extract the VMWare Tools Images once they are mounted for install. The other posibility would be to find the files in a full install of VMWare Workstation 5 and then post them online.

BTW. would a linux distro like Ubuntu with VMTools passed around be wrong or not?

Posted at 2:19 am on Nov 7th, 2005 by Hal Hockersmith

OK i have figured it out.
For those who want a truly VMWare experience with the mouse that hops out at the edge of the screen and all here is what to do (BTW this is legal and it doen’t involve wares, i think)

1) Get a copy of VMWare Workstation by Evaluation the latest version.
>> NOTE: You will need to register for the download. I recommend using a site like Dodgeit .com for a temp email or look at Bubmenot.com for an email/pass. Try bugmenot first.

2) If you have installed the player already you will need to uninstall it as VMWare Workstation will not side by side.

3) After installing it go to the folder you installed it at. (On windows it is most likely C:Program FilesVMWareVmware Workstation)

4) In the folder there are a few ISO images. (freebsd, windows, linux, netware) these contain the VMTools that make things look, sound, and act better for the guest environment.

5) Copy which one you want or copy them all it doesn’t matter to me to a different folder.

6) Now uninstall VMWare Workstation and reinstall VMWare Player. (This is where the leagaities get shakey. If by keeping the tools and deleting the rest of the program did i break the EULA, bla bla bla … ah well)

7) Change your VMPlayer config to reflect the ISO file.

8) Procede with the install and you are done.

Now you can delete the installers and you are back to using free programs with the vmtools.

Posted at 11:23 am on Nov 8th, 2005 by Hal Hockersmith

I’ve just made the first beta of VMXWizard available for download
http://rhysgoodwin.orcon.net.nz/vmxwizard/
This will allow the easy creation of virtual machines for VMware Player

Posted at 9:22 pm on Nov 8th, 2005 by Rhys

This works great with Auditor. Thanks.

Posted at 12:46 am on Nov 10th, 2005 by Jeff

Hehe, so now I am running Windows on Windows… Why ? Well because I can (First post from virtual win xp ;)…

Thanks for advice, now I just gotta figure out why to to do it.

Posted at 5:00 am on Nov 12th, 2005 by perniciosus

rhys your vmxwizard worked fine to create an Ultimate Boot CD for Windows (UBCD4Win) config file. Nice work!

Posted at 6:34 pm on Nov 12th, 2005 by Gary

Great guide and great comments. I’m proceeding through the steps from comment 66 right now. I enjoy being able to use an easy to use, quality, and free virtual machine program. Does anyone happen to know a good site that lists the plethora of vmx file options for vmware? I did however find another useful comment sight here:
http://www.consolevision.com/members/dcgrendel/vmxform.html

and another guide like this only using the qemu image maker here:
http://johnbokma.com/mexit/2005/10/26/vmware-player-windows-xp.html (he credits the hack a day site taboot)

Posted at 5:27 pm on Nov 13th, 2005 by nathaniel

chido

Posted at 12:16 am on Nov 16th, 2005 by ala

chido

Posted at 12:18 am on Nov 16th, 2005 by ala

jeje

Posted at 12:28 am on Nov 16th, 2005 by lalo

Is it possible to use the vmware player to mount real hard drive ntfs partitions inside a virtual machine?

Posted at 6:09 pm on Nov 17th, 2005 by kim

i just found out how to install the video driver..
all you have to do is, open the virtual player.. within the virtual os which is win xp, grab the .iso files from the installer, extract that .iso file, open and grab the driver from there..

Posted at 9:04 pm on Nov 17th, 2005 by miyo

wow! this is free?!?! man i tried it with my windows 98 CD and it worked like a charm! thanks!

Posted at 5:56 pm on Nov 18th, 2005 by miscblogger

this is a very “light article”; as of making vm portable…why would you want that? You could do this though: a flash drive it is a DRIVE after all, once is mounted (plugged in) will act as a regular drive so if you will install VMplayer on that drive and set the paths to be read from flash drive, it will work, remember that you also need to have the vmx image there; you might be able to force a persistent install on the flash drive, or to use a second flash drive on a different bus. If you want it to be both usable as boot option you’ll need to additionally create a bootable partition on that drive have a script that will point to the image file, if any of you needs more help in figuring it out give me you email and I will sent you the details or maybe the files that you need for booting up from usb.

Posted at 12:27 pm on Nov 22nd, 2005 by whizARD

hey, whizard, i’m interested in the usb thing. I want to boot from a usb flash drive and be able to use the emulator with the same drive to boot windows, without having to have two installations, i.e. i want to have the emulator use the flash drive, or windows to use the virtual drive.

Posted at 11:08 pm on Nov 27th, 2005 by ay

If you’re running VMware Player under WinXP and need to install the guest image from several different .iso files, I found the following trick worked great.

Create a hardlink from command prompt:
fsutil hardlink create C:SUSE_10.0.iso C:SUSE-10.0-CD-OSS-i386-GM-CD1.iso

Edit the .vmx file:
ide1:0.fileName = “C:SUSE_10.0.iso”
ide1:0.deviceType = “cdrom-image”

Start installation.

Create hardlink to 2nd CD from command prompt:
del C:SUSE_10.0.iso
fsutil hardlink create C:SUSE_10.0.iso C:SUSE-10.0-CD-OSS-i386-GM-CD2.iso

The installation now proceeds on CD2.

Posted at 3:57 pm on Nov 29th, 2005 by skohrs

I’m stumped. I can get an iso to work, like freedos.iso, but I can’t seem to boot from a physical cdrom I always get an error message . I’m trying to set up win98 which #61 beamer says he got to work. What am I doing wrong???

Posted at 3:55 am on Nov 30th, 2005 by dommy

wow thats cool i have created a VM with MS-DOS 7.1 .

Posted at 3:57 pm on Dec 1st, 2005 by C!$C0^211

Hey guys, take a look at this: http://public.planetmirror.com/pub/vmware/. There’s a lot of official VMWare related stuff. There’s also VMWare Tools for Windows as an iso named “windows.iso”! Check it out!

Posted at 7:48 pm on Dec 2nd, 2005 by dario

VmPlayer complain if you use qemu-img’s vmdk files as virtual SCSI disks. To get rid of this, I’ve hacked a bit QEMU 0.7.2 and introduced the “vmdks” disk format. How to use it?
Go to http://www.ro.kde.org/ftparea/work/qemu-vmdks/
and start reading README.txt for instructions. It’s very easy.

Posted at 5:36 pm on Dec 6th, 2005 by Claudiu Costin

I’ve put together a basic Ubuntu server appliance VM (sans services). It’s stripped down to run with 128MB of memory with a max of 1GB disk usage (550MB initally). The only packages installed past the base server system are the kernel-headers and build-essential metapackages. I figured anyone who uses this would appreciate it.

if you have bittorrent:
http://lee.colleton.net/bt/btdownload.php?type=torrent&file=UbuntuServerAppliance.zip.torrent

if you don’t:
http://lee.colleton.net/bt/btdownload.php?file=UbuntuServerAppliance.zip.torrent

Posted at 2:58 am on Dec 12th, 2005 by lee colleton

A few cross-os vmware images:
http://www.thoughtpolice.co.uk/vmware/

Posted at 5:02 am on Dec 14th, 2005 by simonb

How-to Boot from your regular cdrom drive.
Just point it to the drive letter of your cdrom player and make shore there are no conflicting lines in the rest of the file.

- – - – - – - – - >-8
ide0:1.present = “TRUE”
ide0:1.fileName = “d:”
ide0:1.deviceType = “cdrom-raw”
ide0:1.autodetect = “FALSE”

Posted at 9:55 am on Dec 16th, 2005 by Pay

hi guys,
i can’t install winxp. dsl, kubuntu works but not winxp. i get to the point where you have to choose between “F3″,”R” and “Enter” for installation. then i get an error message that no hd is installed.
here my conf file. i install via cd.

ide0:0.present = “TRUE”
ide0:0.filename = “winxp.vmdk”
#ide0:0.mode = “independent-nonpersistent”
#snapshot.action = “autoRevert”
#snapshot.disabled = “TRUE”
ide1:0.present = “TRUE”
#ide1:0.fileName = “dsl-2.0.iso”
#ide1:0.deviceType = “cdrom-image”
ide1:0.deviceType = “cdrom-raw”
ide1:0.startConnected = “TRUE”
ide1:0.autodetect = “TRUE”

i created the vmdk file via qemu-img create -f vmdk winxp.vmdk 2G.
host is kubuntu 5.10.
any ideas?

Posted at 7:31 pm on Dec 17th, 2005 by mike

hi mike, in the virtual BIOS, tab “advanced”, of the vmwareplayer you have to set the ide-controler on “both” instead of “secondary”. Now your IDE-drive is recognized by the Windows-Setup

Posted at 4:30 pm on Dec 19th, 2005 by Wildling

This is a great hack. I successfully installed a nice clean WinXPSP2 as a guest to my rather cluttered XP host. This allowed me to install my development environment (Visual Studio 2005) in its entirety with no conflicts. VS2005 would not even get past the .net framework install on the host. Very nice!

The only thing I have not figured out is how to get around the 30 day activation period for this virtual install of Windows XP. Copying my host “wpa.dbl” to the guest/system32 directory did not solve the problem.

I also installed Mandriva 2006 with all the bells and whistles from DVD-R. The only issue I had was with the video. The workaround is easy though. Accept the VmWare graphics driver and the generic monitor during Mandriva install. The Mandriva grub bootloader provides a pick of “no fb” (no video frame buffer) on startup. The display is fine with this selected.

The Mandriva OS connected to an ftp site and successfully downloaded and installed all the latest package updates. Impressive and fast.

I really like running Linux on an XP box in this manner. I do not have to mess with grub/lilo on the host C:drive to allow dual boot. It is just there. You can have as many Linux OSes as you like. You are only limited by available disk space. I’m using a second 300GB hard drive to create all these VMDKs. And, I really like being able to remove an OS by simply deleting the guest VMDK folder.

Posted at 5:54 pm on Dec 20th, 2005 by Gary

Thanks for all info. I ran across the VM Player yesterday, and in doing a bit of research I ran across this page.

Using the VMXwizard helped alot too. In under 24 hours since first bumping across all this I have managed to get both my XP boxes running Linux, the next trick is to reconfigure my dual boot box to linux only and then getting XP up in it.

I would have been forever in tinkering through all this on my own.

Posted at 9:51 pm on Dec 31st, 2005 by Jim

Posted at 4:10 pm on Jan 1st, 2006 by ew

ok, so I did this a long time ago and made the default 2G disk image…. but I’d like it to be larger now that I’m actually using it. I’ve installed XP Pro on the image… How can I increase the size of the disk image non-destructively? I know Workstation supports this, but Player doesn’t seem to… (right?)

Thanks. :)

Posted at 3:56 am on Jan 5th, 2006 by agf

Mac Operating systems can be run on windows/linux with PearPC http://pearpc.sourceforge.net/

Posted at 3:43 pm on Jan 10th, 2006 by Simon

agf,
I was able to install winXP sp2 with all the bells and whistles. it automagically grew the disk to 10gb (virtually) and physically it’s taking up about 5gb on the host.

Posted at 6:02 pm on Jan 30th, 2006 by phpnewb

After faffing about with qemu for two days (no kqemu support, compiled sources had kqemu but qemu wouldn’t use it, argh!)I followed the instructions given and now have Windows 2000 SP4 running a dream. Thank you, thank you!

Posted at 6:07 pm on Feb 12th, 2006 by Jeremy

Hi there! One Problem with the Player: VMware Workstation changes the hosts display resolution when required, for example when full-screening a dos console on windows. does anyone know a way to force Player to do the same? This would definitly rock.

Posted at 8:05 pm on Feb 12th, 2006 by scherbenreich

I did not need to go through all these steps to install W2K VM.

All I have to do was to run vmplayer and inserted 4 the set up floppies then the win2k CD

I needed to download the VMware evaluation copy in tgz format and grep the windows.iso to install the mouse deiver and video driver.

Posted at 10:50 pm on Feb 12th, 2006 by Alex

No hack required. Download the free beta1 Vmware Server(registration required) at http://www.vmware.com/products/server/
Create an VM there and play it on vmplayer or just use VMware server.

Download evaluation 30 day version of VMware workstation.http://www.vmware.com/download/ws/eval.html
Create VM’s and later run on vmplayer.

Posted at 8:51 pm on Mar 1st, 2006 by Jack Doey

is there any tool for freedos to clone the hard disk on a network?
i need a tool to copy files on network using freedos.so is there any tool available.

Posted at 4:44 am on Mar 8th, 2006 by saurabh khandelwal

to 100

I would use a Linux Live CD to clone a HDD personally, but you can try this program “PC Inspector Clone Maxx”
http://www.snapfiles.com/get/pciclone.html

Homepage is at:
http://www.pcinspector.de/clone-maxx/uk/welcome.htm

Posted at 10:16 pm on Mar 8th, 2006 by Icpic

How do you specify a floppy image for VMWare Player and what format should the image be in?

I tried a FreeDOS image and some Win98 boot disk image from bootdisk.com (*.img) and tried this in the vmx file:

floppy0.present=”true”
floppy0.filename=”fdos1440.img”
floppy0.deviceType = “floppy image”

Also tried renaming to fdos1440.flp but in either case, VMWare player can’t load the floppy image. Am I missing something? Seems no one cares about floppy images these days, only ISO CD images.

Posted at 4:31 pm on Mar 18th, 2006 by david luu

I was able to create a boot diskette via “Virtual Floppy Drive 2.1″ Refer to http://chitchat.at.infoseek.co.jp/vmware/vfd.html

Add tto the VMX file:
floppy0.present = “TRUE”
floppy0.fileName = “BootDiskette.vfd”
floppy0.fileType = “file”
floppy0.startConnected = “TRUE”

Posted at 12:37 pm on Mar 19th, 2006 by Gary s

Thanks Guys! We deal a bit w/ virtualization at my job, and this was the next best thing to installing a Technet version of M$ Virtual PC. Got a XP sp2 install running great, and cant wait to get home and fill up that 10G partition with linux images instead of worrying with dual booting.

Posted at 4:43 pm on Mar 21st, 2006 by archmagi1

ok, this is cool! Just started reading this topic but ended up creating a Junction Link (ref: http://www.rekenwonder.com/linkmagic.htm ) to another drive to map my “C:Program Files” folder. It was fun trying to get it working. Could not move some .dll files, so plugged the HDD to another computer and removed the .dll files and the remaining directories to make the “C:Program Files” empty and linkmagic did the magic and now I have my “C:Program Files” on a completely new HDD on a new partition making my computer load programs much faster than ever.
Thanks a lot!

Posted at 1:29 am on Mar 23rd, 2006 by xia

I booted Fedora Core 4, but now do not have any network connectivity through my VMWare image.

Anybody knows how to add networking to the image?

Posted at 4:35 pm on Mar 24th, 2006 by Ravi

I’m surprised there hasn’t been more posted here since VMware released free VMServer beta2 and anounced forever FREE .. plus the Appliance Competition never came up here .. ISOlinux has been too much fun with these beta test . I need a nickel for every distro I try .. I’d be rich :)
Try FreeNAS as well .. loads of functionality for the really aggessive hypppper vvvm geeksster to dable wwith there .. I’m still suffering from no vmtools installed in my VMs as you typically will haaaave to re-compile your kernel to get reeeeal driver supportt innnstead of the haphazard standard/default settings that occur using non-standard builds.
I am remotttte ddesktoping into a system using client console from VMMMServer uusing a SlaxSssserver5.1 distro and asside from tthe dddoublee typing thing thaat seems to happen periodically this is even better tthan GSX performancee and versaaaatiliity.
Have fun all .. I’m going to sit at a reeal machine and play some free Americas Army Ops :) l8r

Posted at 12:57 am on Apr 17th, 2006 by MadNav

How do I boot from a USB Disk that has Flashlinux installed on it – the USB disk is bootable – just hate restarting everytime to swap between XP and linux?

Posted at 7:14 am on Apr 24th, 2006 by hns

when i install win xp sp2 ill get a error message that there is no hard disk selected ,… what to do how to install xp n one more thing i am not able to connect to internet when i run live lunix cds on vm as it always says unable to bridge or vm0 is down

Posted at 12:44 pm on May 1st, 2006 by samy

this doesn’t work. When I hit escape it doesn’t go to the freedos menu. how can i get this to work?

Posted at 7:40 pm on May 8th, 2006 by Hoovey

I wrote on my blog an easy way to get a VM up and running with windows as the guest, and got VMware Tools installed. It seems as if VMWARE player was coded to make use of the Tools very well. You’ll see what I mean if you install it right. I can drag and drop from VM to my desktop and share the clipboard amongst other numerous things. The site is http://kirkmeister.com/blog/index.php/2006/05/08/windows-2k-on-vmware-player/

Basically you use VMXwizard to make the disks, a VMWare Workstation Eval version to extract the VMware Tools packages, comes as an .iso, and the VMware player to run the whole shebang. The article is pretty long so check it out for more info.

Posted at 10:40 pm on May 10th, 2006 by Jeffrey

Well done to many of you who got round using VMware Player. A great hack into vmx, but I’ve found a better solution.

Try using the unofficial VMX Builder to create virtual machines in VMware Player. It gives additional configuration options that cannot be found even in Workstation. It is available at http://petruska.stardock.net/Software/VMware.html, where other VMware utilities, including Disk Mount and Virtual Diskfactory can be downloaded. To install all these, be sure to install all the core utilities, at the top page of that site.

WARNING: Some software on site is still in beta. Use at your own risk!

Posted at 7:50 am on Jun 23rd, 2006 by gruffy

Another way of doing this is DLing Windows Virtual Server (which is free from Microsoft) creating your machines in that and then opening them with VMWare Player, which’ll convert them to it’s native format).

Posted at 7:44 pm on Jul 19th, 2006 by thewyzewun

I just created a video tutorial to create virtual machines for VMware Player using easyvmx.

http://www.blindhog.net/virtualization-vmware-player-and-easyvmx-free-virtual-machines/

Enjoy!

Posted at 11:04 pm on Apr 9th, 2007 by blindhog

Actually, you can use Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 to create a VM HDD and then use free VMWare converter to convert the VM :-)

Posted at 7:26 am on Sep 2nd, 2007 by Ilya.Rde

VMWare Workstation Trial can do everything on vm-images (even after expiration) but cannot run them, while VMWare Player can only run them.

Use a combination of both. Create and edit virtual machines with VMWare Workstation Trial and run them using VMWare Player

Posted at 1:39 pm on Jan 7th, 2008 by Ethical Hacker

use thinstall if you want portable vmware player. use vmware server to make the virtual machines

Posted at 10:54 pm on Mar 9th, 2008 by vokuheila

I need to try bootable cd/dvd images(ISO)before burning to phsicak media.Can VMware player be used for this if yes how?Please guide!

Posted at 7:58 am on Aug 9th, 2008 by Darryl

How-to: VMware player modification

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