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Windows XP on Debian with VMWare

24 Aug, 2007

There are two really good tutorials on VMWare and Debain. The first describes how to install VMWare on Debian and the second describes how to create a Windows XP image.

You need a serial number but the basic commands to set it up are:

tar zxfv VMware-server-1.0.2-39867.tar.gz
cd vmware-server-distrib/
sudo apt-get install linux-headers-`uname -r` libx11-6 libx11-dev x-window-system-core
sudo apt-get install x-window-system xspecs libxtst6 psmisc build-essential
sudo ./vmware-install.pl
rm -fr vmware-server-distrib/
rm -f VMware-server*.tar.gz

A new icon will appear in the Applications->System Tools menu called VMWare Server Console.

You then need to do this to fix a bug which causes VMWare to crash when you browse for images:

cd /usr/lib/vmware/lib/libgcc_s.so.1/
sudo mv libgcc_s.so.1 libgcc_s.so.1.old
sudo ln -sf /lib/libgcc_s.so.1
cd /usr/lib/vmware/lib/libpng12.so.0
sudo mv libpng12.so.0 libpng12.so.0.old
sudo ln -sf /usr/lib/libpng12.so.0</code>

If you want sound working in Windows XP you need to add a sound card to the virtual device. Start VMWare from the console with superuser privileges:

sudo vmware &

When you have browsed to open the Windows XP image, click the Edit virtual machine settings button then in the dialog which appears click the Add... button underneath the list of devices. Choose a sound adapter and finish the wizard which appears. When you next start the Windows XP image you should have sound.

Now, if only I could get VMware running at the same time as Xen...