Setting up VMware Workstation

From openSUSE

Current revision

Introduction

VMware Workstation is a very popular proprietary virtual machine suite. There are other alternatives such as VirtualBox and QEMU (both open source software) which, unfortunately, are not as a feature rich as a VMware Workstation. This article explains how to install VMware Workstation 6.5.0 on openSUSE 11.0, 11.1 and 11.2. It may work on older/newer versions.

Installing required packages

Before beginning the installation of VMware Workstation 6.5.0, you have to install the following packages:

• gcc
• make
• kernel-source
• kernel-syms
• linux-kernel-headers (this is probably already installed)
• 11.2
  • kernel-desktop-devel (If you are using kernel-desktop)

There are different ways of installing packages on openSUSE. For instance, you can use YaST or zypper.

Using YaST

Go to YaST -> Software Management. Search for the packages you need (one at a time) and select them by clicking on the checkbox.

Using zypper

Open the terminal, type the following as the root user:

• 11.0 and 11.1

zypper in gcc make kernel-source kernel-syms linux-kernel-headers

• 11.2

zypper in gcc make kernel-source kernel-syms linux-kernel-headers kernel-desktop-devel

Starting the VMware installer

Once you have installed the aforementioned packages, you can proceed to run the installer. Before doing so, make it executable;

Note: this is an example, replace the version number with the one you have.

chmod +x VMware-Workstation-6.5.0-118166.i386.bundle

Then type (as root):

./VMware-Workstation-6.5.0-118166.i386.bundle

Running VMware Workstation

To run VMware Workstation on openSUSE, you can either click on the VMware Workstation icon or run it from a terminal.

from a Menu entry

There are two ways of doing running VMware Workstation from a menu entry;

• Click on the lizard, type vmware and click on VMware Workstation

OR

• go to lizard -> Applications -> System -> More Programs -> VMware Workstation

from a Terminal

vmware

If you get an error "/usr/bin/vmware line 31: xxxxxx Sementation fault"

Then:

Login as root in a terminal

Then:

mv /usr/lib/vmware/modules/binary /usr/lib/vmware/modules/binary_old

Then:

vmware

After a kernel update

After your kernel has been updated, you must recompile the kernel modules. Up to VMware 6.0, run /usr/bin/vmware-config.pl. Since VMware 6.5, just start 'vmware' as root and without any arguments. VMware will detect that the kernel modules have to be rebuild and will do so automatically. After VMware has been started, you can close it and start it again as a normal user.

Uninstalling VMware Workstation

vmware-uninstall

See Also

• Setting up VMware Server 2 on openSUSE 11.0, 11.1 [plus enabling USB support]
• If you see segfaults on startup of vmware / kernel modules missing