|
Gentoo and VMware 4.5
Author: HumanX | Thursday April 22, 2004
Following the installation of Gentoo on one of the workstation systems (see articles in story), I then decided to take Gentoo for a ride in VMware. This test was done with Gentoo running in a Windows 2000 VM Client.
For those of you unfamiliar with VMware, VMware is an emulation package which allows you to run up to 10 operating systems on top of your base o/s. This is a complete package, video, netwok, usb, scsi all working superbly. * VMware (30 day demo available) (see review of VMware)
Gentoo ran rock solid in VMware and was as fast as ever (at least for a VM). The complete installation took about 12 hours with the entire O/S compiled from scratch! VMware is a great utility if you are new to Gentoo as it will help you forgive some of your mistakes, which Gentoo is not so forgiving during installation. I compiled Gento as i686 and that seemed to work fine for those of you who plan to compile Gentoo on your own.
To get Gentoo working within VMware, you need to insure the drive type is configured as IDE and not SCSI which VMware attempts to do (though scsi may work for some). I configured the default VM as "Other Linux Version 2.4". Finally, after installing Gentoo you need to have pciutils installed before installing the VMware Tools. Once you completed the installation, type startx and start having fun with Gentoo and VMware.
VMware gives you the opportunity to play in Linux because of its ability to revert back to a previous boot point! Gentoo can be a tough install, but I assure you it is worth it.
Gentoo Reviews:
Gentoo 1
Gentoo 2
Installation Notes:
1. Download VMware.
2. Load VMware and create a new virtual machine. Make sure the disk is configured as IDE (not scsi), configure enough ram, and enough disk space. Once you configure a VMware drive, it cannot be grown or shrunk. If the drive defaults as scsi (you will see this after the vmware wizard is complete), remove the scsi drive and then add a new device, click hd, and set it for ide.
3. VMware can read ISO's from your hard disk. I downloaded Gentoo and created a device in VMware that was a cdrom set to read from the Gentoo ISO I had stored on the system. * You can do this by clicking the CD device and editing its configurations in vmware.
4. Boot the VM Client and begin the installation process of Gentoo according the the Gentoo manual at http://www.gentoo.org
5. After Gentoo installation reboot the Gentoo in a traditional Linux way either Gentoo will do this or type restart.
6. Mount the VMware tools (In VMwares help files). VMware tools actually becomes a CDRom drive.
7. Before running the vmware install script, type "emerge pci-utils". This is needed by VMware tools.
8. Type "startx"
9. Have a nice day.
|
