VMware (http://www.vmware.com) is a company specialized in virtualization technology, providing software to run an operating system (guest) inside another (host). A few months ago VMware released VMware Player, a free virtual machine player which you can use to run prebuilt virtual OSs.

System

Host (the actual OS): Ubuntu Dapper Drake (build 20060323) You can download prereleases of Ubuntu from http://cdimage.ubuntu.com

Guest (the virtual OS we are going to install): Underground Desktop (022) Download from http://www.ludos.org

VMware Player Installation

Download the tar.gz version of VMware Player from here: http://www.vmware.com/download/player/

Install the Ubuntu kernel headers matching your running kernel: sudo apt-get install linux-headers-`uname -r`

Also install packages needed to compile the vmware kernel modules: sudo apt-get install gcc make

Uncompress the VMware Player somewhere, and change to the new directory: tar xvzf VMware-player-1.0.1-19317.tar.gz cd vmware-player-distrib

Now install it:

sudo ./vmware-install.pl

The installer will ask questions about the configuration, just accept the default answers (press ENTER). You'll also be shown license conditions, read them then press q and enter yes if you accept them.

Now VMware Player should be installed. Let's try and install a guest OS.

Install guest OS

Create a new directory to hold the stuff you need for you guest OS:

mkdir  ~/GUEST
cd  ~/GUEST

Now you need a virtual hard disk in vmware format. Qemu, another emulator, provides a way to create it. So install the qemu package (you must enable the Ubuntu universe repository):

sudo apt-get install qemu

Now let's create a 8 GB disk image, which will be used by the guest OS:

qemu-img create -f vmdk hd.vmdk 8G

Then, create a virtual machine configuration file and call it vm.vmx.

#!/usr/bin/vmplayer

config.version = "8"
virtualHW.version = "3"
guestOS = "other26xlinux"
memsize = "320"
MemAllowAutoScaleDown = "FALSE"
MemTrimRate = "-1"
uuid.action = "create"
hints.hideAll = "TRUE"
tools.syncTime = "TRUE"
usb.present = "TRUE"
usb.generic.autoconnect = "FALSE"
sound.present = "TRUE"
sound.virtualdev = "es1371"
isolation.tools.hgfs.disable = "FALSE"
isolation.tools.dnd.disable = "TRUE"
isolation.tools.copy.enable = "TRUE"
isolation.tools.paste.enabled = "TRUE"
ethernet0.present = "TRUE"
ethernet0.virtualDev = "vlance"
ethernet0.connectionType = "nat"
ethernet0.addressType = "generated"
ethernet0.generatedAddress = "00:0c:29:2e:30:2d"
ethernet0.generatedAddressOffset = "0"
floppy0.present = "TRUE"
floppy0.startConnected = "FALSE"
floppy0.autodetect = "TRUE"
ide1:0.present = "TRUE"
ide1:0.deviceType = "cdrom-image"
ide1:0.startConnected = "TRUE"
ide1:0.fileName = "underground_022.iso"
displayName = "UNDERGROUND"
ide1:0.autodetect = "TRUE"
ide0:0.present = "TRUE"
ide0:0.fileName = "hd.vmdk"
ide0:0.mode = "persistent"
ide0:0.startConnected = "TRUE"
ide0:0.writeThrough = "TRUE"
ide0:0.redo = ""
uuid.location = "56 4d 5d 61 35 03 9a 16-0d b2 b6 b2 92 2e 30 2d"
uuid.bios = "56 4d 5d 61 35 03 9a 16-0d b2 b6 b2 92 2e 30 2d"

In this file, change:

memsize = "320"

Also, change the two lines:

ide1:0.fileName = "underground_022.iso"
displayName = "UNDERGROUND"

so that they show the ISO image you are using to install your guest OS, and its name. In this case, we downloaded Underground Desktop, a linux distribution I build myself, and placed the ISO image of the installation CD in ~/GUEST, together with vm.vmx and hd.vmdk.

Now run the player:

vmplayer vm.vmx

The virtual machine will boot from the CD image and the installation will start. Now just follow the installation steps, then reboot. Your guest OS is now ready.

You may want to change the line:

ide1:0.deviceType = "cdrom-image"

to:

ide1:0.deviceType = "cdrom-raw"

and the line:

ide1:0.fileName = "underground_022.iso"

to:

ide1:0.fileName = "auto-detect"