***UPDATE***
Chris made a very reasonable suggestion to use virtual box instead of VMware. This actually would have been my preference originally since its dead simple to set up. Unfortunately after doing some reading online it appears that in the area of disk performance VMware stomps on virtual box. Since the application for this particular situation is web servers, this is less than ideal.
Thanks for the suggestion though, if I was using this for desktop applications I would completely agree and I would recommend virtual box to anyone who is interested for desktop use. Virtual box for those interested also has the benifit of offering an OSS version.
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Okay, so I don’t really hate VMware in fact its been pretty handy in the past. The problem is that the really cater to Redhat based distros and bite their thumb at debian based distros. They release packages in rpm’s which have scripts in them and they don’t want to run in alien. This means that I really can’t use the RPM’s on ubuntu without a great deal of pain.
Apparently other people have been kind enough in the past to create packages for ubuntu but the last mention of said packages I can find (although the packages themselves don’t seem to exist) on the web is for fiesty fawn. This again seems to leave me out in the cold. I’ve also found some tarballs out there that have everything you need for the modules, etc. Unfortunately they are all version 1.0.5 and I have already installed (and borked) 1.0.6 which apparently leaves remnants even after you uninstall it.
Since we are probably going to run the server on a CentOS (redhat based) server, it shouldn’t be a problem. However I really need to have this virtual machine up and running on my machine as well, for creating servers, troubleshooting, etc. I’ve basically spent the last few hours going through forums and fighting with this infuriating install and I’m pretty much calling it for the day. I will resign myself to shake my fists at the sky and fight this battle another day.
Maybe after I walk away from it and come back the problem will magically come to me, or I’ll just have better luck with someones instructions (that don’t contain broken links or refer to a year old distro)… just walk away…
grumble grumble
btw, if I happen to have attracted the attention of a more geeky reader that thinks they may have a solution to this frustrating issue for me please feel fee to send me an email or post a comment. Have a great holiday weekend everyone.
I’ve been using VirtualBox for my VM needs as of late. Assuming you don’t have a reason you can’t switch away from VMWare products, it’s definitely worth looking into.
It comes with both an open source (GPLv2) and a closed source version (differences here http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Editions ). The closed source license is a Personal Use and Evaluation License, if you want to use it for enterprise usage they ask you contact them.
I haven’t had trouble getting either the Open (from repository) or Closed source (from .deb on site) versions running on Debian, they also have Ubuntu packages (Fedora and Red Hat as well).
The only issues I’ve run into with it so far are occasionally needing to rebuild/reinstall the kerner driver, and I was not able to get bridged networking to work.
So, as long as you’re not tied to VMWare, check it out.