Tag Archives: ubuntu

Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat) In VMware Fusion

Posted by on October 2, 2010 No comments

I decided to check out Ubuntu 10.10 RC today and I’m pleased to report that installation of the latest version in VMware Fusion (3.1.1) was trivial. I grabbed the install CD, told it to use “easy install” and away it went. Mouse ungrab, drag/drop file sharing, sound, et cetera were all available as soon as the GUI came up after the VMware tools install completed. HGFS was available as well under /mnt/hgfs. If you’re running an older version of VMware you may need to upgrade or grab the latest tools1 to have such a smooth experience.

  1. My version is 8.4.3 ↩

Ubuntu 10.04 in VMWare Fusion

Posted by on February 27, 2010 6 comments

I installed the 10.04 LTS (Lucid Lynx) 64-bit alpha 3 this morning to check out some of the new features. And since I’ve done a few other articles about running Ubuntu in a VM I thought I’d share the experience yet again.

If you’re running VMWare Fusion 3.0+ (or the current release of Workstation 7) then the version of VMWare Tools you have with your software can successfully install with no manual intervention. Simply pick easy install and let VMWare do all the work.

If you’re running an older version you will want to take a look at my Ubuntu 9.10 instructions for help with getting open-vm-tools running for you in 10.04.

I’ll update this article if anything changes (the kernel freeze for Lucid Lynx is not until March 11).

Upgrading Ubuntu Server to 9.10

Posted by on October 29, 2009 No comments

A quick reminder for those who don’t know or have forgotten how to upgrade an Ubuntu server:

sudo apt-get install update-manager-core
sudo do-release-upgrade

Follow the instructions, reboot, and you’re done!

Ubuntu 9.10 Article Updated

Posted by on October 25, 2009 1 comment

I’ve just updated my Ubuntu 9.10 in VMware article with a better process. If you’re looking to install Karmic Koala when it’s released on 10/29 check it out!

Ubuntu 9.10 In VMware – Updated

Posted by on October 5, 2009 20 comments

Update 2: Preliminary 10.04 instructions are available here. No real obstacles for those running the latest Fusion/Workstation.

Update: If you’re using VMware Fusion 3.0 or any VMware Tools version 8.2.3-204229 or better you can follow a drastically simplified process. sudo apt-get install build-essential, choose install VMware Tools from the menu, copy tar to desktop, untar, sudo ./vmware-install.pl and follow the instructions. Simple!

With the release of the Ubuntu 9.10 RC it’s time to revisit installing Ubuntu into a VMware VM. I’m using VMware Fusion 2.0.x, but behavior should be largely the same for any recent VMware release.

First, create a new VM and point the installation disk at your Ubuntu 9.10 ISO. At this time I would not recommend using “easy install”, so uncheck that and continue. If you wish to use the graphical installer you’ll need to increase the RAM allocated to your VM from 512MB to 768MB.1

Now you can boot your VM and follow the graphical installer. Once complete your VM will hopefully reboot properly and ask you if you want to force the CD to disconnect (you do). If this doesn’t occur, force the guest to shut down, disconnect the ISO in the settings, then boot the VM again.

The official VMware Tools do not work properly due to the newer kernel (2.6.31), so we’ll need to build the open-vm-tools for this kernel. Follow the steps below to build them yourself or simply download the AMD64 deb package I have already built for the modules.2

  1. Obtain the build prerequisities3 
    sudo apt-get install open-vm-tools build-essential open-vm-toolbox
  2. Run module assistant to build the modules 
    sudo m-a
  3. Choose select and activate open-vm
    Select open-vm
  4. Click okay, then select build
    Screen shot 2009-10-25 at 12.41.35 PM
    Screen shot 2009-10-25 at 12.37.37 PM
  5. Once it completes it will ask if you want to install. Choose yes, then quit out of m-a and reboot.
  6. After a reboot check to see that the vm modules inserted into the kernel properly. 
    vmware@vmware-desktop:~$ lsmod | grep vm
vmsync                  5104  0 
vmmemctl               10120  0 
vmhgfs                 59080  0 
vmci                   33952  0

If you see the 4 modules listed above then you should have functioning copy/paste, auto-resolution switching, and even shared folders. However, to enable shared folders you’ll need to follow these steps:

  1. Enable shared folders and add a folder in the VM settings4
  2. Run this command:5 
    sudo mount -t vmhgfs -v -o ro .host:/sharedfoldername /path/to/mnt

Let me know in the comments if you have issues or have improvements to the process. Waiting for the official VMware Tools release is boring!

  1. It may not be necessary to increase it a full 256MB, but the 512MB default causes the install to fail as of the release candidate. ↩
  2. If you choose to install the package, you’ll need to do step 1 and then skip to step 6. ↩
  3. open-vm-toolbox is only required for desktops ↩
  4. If you get a message about “Unable to update run-time folder sharing status: The command is not recognized by the Guest OS tools” you can ignore this error. ↩
  5. You can change ro to rw if you want your shared folder to be read/write capable ↩

Upgrading Ubuntu Server 8.10 (Intrepid) to 9.04 (Jaunty)

Posted by on April 26, 2009 No comments

Now that Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope) is out I decided to upgrade a few of my servers from 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex) to the latest release. To upgrade via the command line follow these steps (as root or via sudo):

aptitude update
aptitude safe-upgrade
aptitude install update-manager-core

This will get your system upgraded to the latest packages of 8.10 and install the scripts to move to Jaunty. Be sure you have screen installed as well — Ubuntu does not like having upgrades interrupted so you want to be able to resume if your session is interrupted for any reason.

screen do-release-upgrade

It will download and check a few things and then warn you about operating an upgrade over ssh (along with starting an extra ssh daemon on port 9004). Simply follow the instructions from there and you’ll have a fully upgraded server!1

cat /etc/lsb-release 
DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu
DISTRIB_RELEASE=9.04
DISTRIB_CODENAME=jaunty
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 9.04"
  1. Bear in mind that during the upgrade you will occasionally be asked questions about config files, so don’t try to run this upgrade unattended. ↩