Vitra Desk

Installing openSUSE on VMware Workstation

As previously discussed, I decided to install openSUSE 11.1, a popular distribution with an excellent reputation and a strong user community on VMware Workstation 6.5.

1. I started by downloading openSUSE-11.1-KDE4-LiveCD-i686.iso from http://software.opensuse.org/.

2. I created a VMware Workstation virtual machine with the following settings:

• OS: Linux, SUSE Linux
• RAM: 512 Mb
• Disk space: 8 Gb
• Disk type: SCSI
• Sound card: Auto detect
• USB: Auto detect
• Network adapter: NAT
• Processors: 2

The installer offered me a number of options: I chose “openSUSE Live” and was quickly welcomed by a beautiful desktop. Since my intention was to create a virtual openSUSE computer, I clicked on the Install icon, which resulted in a warning about my computer having less that 1 GB of memory; perhaps foolishly, I decided to ignore it.

I was then taken by a friendly install wizard through a number of screens where I accepted all the default settings, ignored the complaints about the strength of my chosen password and confirmed I wished the install to take place.
After a few minutes, I was asked to restart the computer (or the virtual machine in my case). A lot of activity took place on my screen for the next 3 minutes or so but I was not asked to do anything apart from removing the ISO CD.

Finally, I was prompted for my credentials. On login, the internet seemed to work fine but I was notified the playback was not working properly for my particular soundcard.
However, I was impressed I could move freely my mouse in and out of the VM even though I had not yet installed the VMware Tools.

3. I took a snapshot of the virtual machine and started installing the tools.

VMware Workstation mounted the tools; I opened a Konsole as root and entered

# rpm – i /media/VMware\ Tools/VMwareTools-7.8.4-126130.i386.rpm

before running vmware-install.pl.

After a number of questions about where I intended to copy the various Tools components (I accepted the proposed locations), I was told to run /usr/bin/vmware-config-tools.pl.
I obediently did but was then notified I had no C compiler installed.

After familiarising myself with the openSUSE package management strategy, I tried

# yast -i gcc

which worked fine.

So I tried /usr/bin/vmware-config-tools.pl again, this time to get a cryptic message about a number of modules that needed removing. Where to find these was not indicated but after a little while, I managed to find them in /lib/modules/2.6.27.7-9-default/updates/.

I therefore deleted the offending modules and gave another go to /usr/bin/vmware-config-tools.pl. Only to to be told I needed make installed:

# yast -i make

I ran /usr/bin/vmware-config-tools.pl for the fourth time and got a warning on my version of gcc which I ignored (getting a little tired here!).
I then had to try and guess where the kernel headers were hiding (/usr/include/ was the right answer) before being rudely told the directory of kernel headers (version 2.6.27) did not match my running kernel (2.6.27.7-9-default).

Unsurprisingly, YaST did not have the faintest about kernel-headers-2.6.27.7-9-default.
So, as a last-ditch effort, I asked YaST2 to install whatever linux-source package it could find in its repositories, which happened to be 2.6.27.7-9.1-i586.
To my surprise and relief, everything went well and completed successfully when I ran /usr/bin/vmware-config-tools.pl one last time.

In summary, the installation of openSUSE itself was very easy and resulted in a system pretty much ready to use, with the exception of the sound device, still not working correctly.
However, the VMware Tools proved a bit too convoluted to install for my liking. Granted, this is not an openSUSE problem, rather a VMWare-Worstation-on-openSUSE problem but not the nicest introduction to the system regardless.