Installation on VMWare Workstation for Windows

From openSUSE

This is not an installation guide as such, just a quick timesaving tip in case you have to use a certain piece of virtualisation software other than Xen, on a certain OS other than Linux. It's also useful if you are trying the above without a working CD/DVD drive on the VMWare host, as in my case.

Preparation

You will need:

1) openSuse CD or DVD .iso(s)
2) One virtual machine prepared for OS installation in VMWare Workstation. Consult VMWare documentation for details of the procedures required for this.
3) Optical drive virtualisation software (I used Daemon Tools)

Launch .iso from Optical Drive Virtualiser

The trick is to use an optical drive virtualiser to mount the .iso image. This saves burning the .iso to CD/DVD, and makes it possible to install without a working CD/DVD drive. Faced with the prospect of installing without an optical drive, I feared a long night ahead. Then I tried it this way, and it was so easy I laughed.

1. Start the virtual machine. If nothing has been installed yet, it will appear to stall on a black screen, this is OK.
2. Mount the first .iso with optical drive virtualiser. In Daemon Tools, right click on the taskbar icon and click Mount. Browse for and select the .iso.
3. If using .iso's for CD installation you will have to unmount / mount images when prompted.

The installation routine will now run within the VMWare virtual machine. I dare say it will work in Linux as well, but I couldn't get VMWare to work on my Suse 9.2 Pro box and I don't know of an optical drive virtualiser for Linux (I haven't looked).

I am not sure why you need to mount the ISO by means of operating system (emulation) instead of specifying it directly for VMWare (innotek VirtualBox at least works this way), but under Linux you can mount a ISO with the normal loop mount like "mount /tmp/suse.iso /cdrom -t iso9660 -o loop" --Bernd

Notice:on some machine,a black screen may stop user from finishing installation. This is a problem of vmwware virtual video card, you can try a VNC installation instead.