[content-discuss] Preliminary Draft for VMware Article Update

[Bill Rushmore]

Below is a preliminary write up for the update to the VMware article.  
At this point I am looking for technical reviews.  In particular if 
there are any issues or topics that I might have missed that should be 
addressed.

My thought is that I could publish this as a stop gap and then do a 
complete rewrite of the original article. 

Bill
rushmores.net

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    Installing OpenSolaris on VMware -- Addendum



Much has changed since the original version of this article was written 
from about a year and a half ago. Today Solaris is now officially 
supported as a guest operating system in VMware. But more importantly 
there are distributions based on OpenSolaris that offer prebuilt VM 
images. So if you are someone that just wants to give a OpenSolaris 
distribution a try then things could not be easier. Just download the 
Solaris or the Solaris Developer Edition images from here 
<http://developers.sun.com/solaris/downloads/solaris_apps/index.jsp%20> 
and for a VM image of NexentaOS go here 
<http://www.gnusolaris.org/gswiki/Download>. All the work of getting 
things working under VMware has been already done you. One other thing 
of note is that there is a free VM player from VMware 
<http://www.vmware.com/products/player/> so you don't even have to buy 
anything! Also free is VMware server which used to be called GSX. For 
some people this might all they might need.


If you plan on doing any serious development work with OpenSolaris then 
most likely you want to install it yourself on VMware Workstation. One 
warning that should be mentioned. At the time of writing the latest 
builds of OpenSolaris does not appear to boot on VMware ESX. The last 
build that I know of that still works is build 57. This is problem is 
being addressed by the Sun Engineers so hopefully by the time you read 
this it will be working. If not you will can still use VMware 
Workstation, Player, or Server.


As for installing OpenSolaris on VMware there really isn't anything 
special. You can just follow the instructions that come with VMware for 
Solaris 10. In Workstation select Help->Guest Operating System Install 
Guide. If you are not interested in installing the VMware tools you are 
done. However, if you plan on doing much interaction with the desktop 
then for you probably will want to install the tools. However, since 
VMware only supports Solaris it will have a problem with the 
installation. Here is a hack to trick the tools installer:


1. Install VMware tools as you normally would but say no to run 
vmware-config-tools.pl at the end of the install.

2. As root cd into /usr/lib/vmware-tools/configurator/XOrg

3. Create this sym link: ln -s 7.0 7.1

4. Now run vmware-config-tools.pl

5. At some point it will asks where to put the modules, enter this: 
/usr/X11/lib/modules

6. Do not let it create a xorg.conf file, the one created by the script 
has errors and will leave you with no X.


One more thing to note from the original article, the OpenSolaris 
installation program has gone through drastic changes. It is much easier 
now. And nothing in particular unique to VMware for the install.

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