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.

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).

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!

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!

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
   
4. Click okay, then select build
   
   
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!

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"

Update 10/26/09 Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) is about to be released, so check out the new guide for that version.

Update 4/25/09 Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope) final was released a few days ago so I grabbed it and rebuilt my VM. I don’t recommend using the “easy install” option at this time, so uncheck that and run through the Ubuntu installer by hand. There are only 7 steps and you can leave everything default if you want. Once installed you can follow the instructions below (including the vmmouse install) to get it all up and running.

Update 4/21/09: RC is now out and to get mouse ungrab working you can simply run this command:

aptitude install xserver-xorg-input-vmmouse

Be sure to aptitude update to get the latest package lists. I’ll do a new post when Ubuntu 9.04 is released in a few days. Be sure to check the comments of this post for other takes on getting this working properly!

Now that Ubuntu 9.04 has gone into beta I decided to build up a quick VM for random testing purposes.  Installation is very straightforward: simply download the x86 or AMD64 CD image and install. However, since this is a beta things are in heavy flux — I would highly recommend upgrading to the latest packages before installing the VMware Tools since several bugs (like the infinitely multiplying window when mounting the VMWare Tools image) have been fixed.

Select “Install VMware Tools” from the Virtual Machine menu and then copy the tar to your Ubuntu desktop.  Running the vmware-install.pl as superuser will net you a mostly functional system, but drag/drop files and mouse ungrab will not work.¹

To get VMHGFS working (drag/drop file sharing), you will need to follow these instructions:

1. Navigate to vmware-tools-distrib/lib/modules/source and untar vmhgfs.tar.  Inside the vmhgfs-only directory that is created there is a file called page.c.
2. Edit this file and do the following²

   -    page = __grab_cache_page(mapping, index);
   +    page = grab_cache_page_write_begin(mapping, index, flags);

3. Move the vmhgfs.tar file to vmhgfs-old.tar and create a new tar with the modified file

   tar cvf vmhgfs.tar vmhgfs-only

4. Run the vmware-install.pl script (as superuser)

At this time I haven’t managed to get mouse ungrab working, but let me know if you figure out a way! The vmmouse driver for X.org is available via apt-get install xserver-xorg-input-vmmouse, but does not appear to work any better than the one that comes with VMware Tools 7.9.3. Hopefully a driver compatible with X.org 7.5 shows up soon.