Looking for a virtual environment

I would like to try installing Ubuntu in a virtual environment on my PC here - previous attempts to dual boot with it have failed, and I thought this might allow me to use it on a PC that I'm working on all the time, that has a reasonably high spec and will give me a chance to see what I can do with a linux OS without it affecting the rest of my system. While I have it on this old laptop (and everyone is no doubt bored rigid with the networking problems :D ), tbh I can't really see me using that machine now that I have a newer, much higher spec dual core toshiba laptop.

I was recommended VM Ware, but it looks so complicated, even deciding what to download! After registering, I received this email:

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Attached to this email are two license files that you will need during the installation of VMware Lab Manager and VMware ESX Server 3.0.1. Please follow the instructions for each product below.

VMware Lab Manager 2.4 Beta
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Please copy the LabManager.lic file to the server where you will be installing the VMware Lab Manager software. During the installation process, you will be asked to point to the Lab Manager license file.

VMware ESX Server 3.01
======================
You can skip this step if you already have ESX 3.0.1 servers up and running that you will be using with VMware Lab Manager. You should use this license file only if you need to set up new ESX 3.0.1 servers for the duration of the beta program. The ESX 3.0.l license file included in this email is host-based and should not be used with a license server. After installing ESX 3.0.1, point the Virtual Infrastructure client on each ESX 3.0.1 machine to this license file.

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My head is spinning after all that - does there not exist somewhere, a fairly easy was of setting up a virtual environment to install an OS on like Ubuntu where I can operate within a sandboxed environment? If I download VM Ware, what exactly do I download and install?

You probably want the Workstation...(and get the workstation version for whatever OS you are using)...once you get the software installed you can go about creating a new virtual machine and telling it what OS you are going to install...

http://www.vmware.com/download/ws/

nebulus: I would prefer the workstation, however, only the server and player are free? http://www.vmware.com/products/free_virtualization.html

I do know that you can use the vmware player and download a virtual appliance. They have ubuntu 6.06 availble in a vmware appliance. They have a whole bunch of different vmware appliances available. Just download and run.

http://www.vmware.com/searchngl/sear...vmtn_appliance

http://www.vmware.com/vmtn/appliances/

If you want to create your own images, you'll need either the server or workstation version. After you install the server, it is pretty straight forward. You setup your virtual hardware profile and install just like you would on any other box. I prefer to use .iso images because it's faster than a cd/dvd. You can mount the .iso as a virtual cd rom when creating your hardware profile.

As someone who works for VMware and uses it daily, I'd humbly suggest the VMware server. This would allow you to play with a variety of virtual machines at the same time. ESX is an enterprise level virtualization OS and runs bare-bones on hardware (it kicks ass to put it mildly). Workstation has long been the defacto standard for developer usage and Player is the newer, single appliance product (can run off a USB key if you want).

Ahh, well you can try them all for free (trial version), which I thought is all Moira was wanting to do, so I didn't concern myself with whether one of the end products was free or not.

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Originally Posted by nebulus200

Ahh, well you can try them all for free (trial version), which I thought is all Moira was wanting to do, so I didn't concern myself with whether one of the end products was free or not.

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Yes you can but ESX is rather hardware specific and wouldn't be beneficial since you would replace the whole OS with it. Workstation would be fine but there is more power in VMware Server, IMO.

i'm sorry to butt-in but what exactly is the "player"

what does it do?

EDIT

Is it like you somehow have preconfigured virtual machine that you just drop into the "player" and it will run it?

If that's the case how do I make Windows virtual machine ... what do you actualy run .. is it like *.iso

Yeah I wondered that .... anyway, I registered for the Server and I'm downloading it as we speak. I asked for and got 3 keys. I'm now downloading Ubuntu from the link phishphreek80 gave (thank you!) and will give this a go when I get a chance.

Many thanks.

EDIT OK, I don't get this. The VMWare installed fine, but did tell me that IIS wasn't enabled (which I don't want). I don't see this being an obstacle though. I downloaded the virtual Ubuntu file and extracted it to the desktop. However creating a new virtual machine and browsing for the files just came up blank - they didn't have an extension VMWare was looking for. I then tried to put a normal Ubuntu disk into my PC and it came up offering to run from the CD.

The new virtual machine was looking for an OS it wasn't finding, either on one of my many ubuntu images on the PC, the virtual thing I'd downloaded, or the contents of the CD. Where do I go from here?

Moira ... It's a good thing you brought this up because I was about do the same thing (to play Starcraft in Ubuntu) and came up w/ the same problem

... I guess the question is how the hell you create "virtual machine" I don't see any extensions that vmware would understand either... am i missing front-end of some kind...

Make sure that you create the VM using the Interface. That will be available as an additionally download from the site (the remote console is seperate from server itself). You would log into the server locally, and select Create New Virtual Machine. You can point the virtual CDRom to the physical one you have or an ISO to do the installation. Make sure you have Connect at Power on selected.

Might want to check out http://www.vmware.com/support/pubs/server_pubs.html and look for the following guides:

- Guest Operating System Installation Guide
- VMware server Administration Guide

;)

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It's a good thing you brought this up because I was about do the same thing (to play Starcraft in Ubuntu) and came up w/ the same problem

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AFAIK, VMWare of any sort doesn't support DirectX. This might have changed since I last looked, but I doubt it. A good solution for this is Cedega by Transgaming. You have to pay for it though. You can take a look at Cedega here
Cheers,
cgkanchi

Many thanks, I'll check that out tomorrow. I've just come back from a work night out and don't feel much in the mood for creating virtual machines right this moment :) but I'll have a go later!

Surely VMWare must support DirectX? I thought the whole idea was to enable people to run something like linux on a windows environment?

I seem to have achieved some success - it created a virtual machine and this is the current screen shot. Does this appear correct so far? I added the Ubuntu iso file to the Virtual Machines folder on the C drive.

http://tinyurl.com/y7udpc

Hey Moira, I'm talking about the Linux version of VMWare here, the one that allows you to run Windows on Linux rather than the other way round...

Cheers,
cgkanchi

I've had mostly bad results with DirectX on VMWare. On some really old games, it worked fine (CIV II, CIV III (great travel games) and on anything recent it was bad (Civ IV, BF2, AA, Oblivion, etc) (by bad I mean doesn't work, ditto for GoogleEarth). (after some checking it looks like no directX3d support may be the culprit).

I broke down and made a small windows partition and use it exclusively for games b/c of this. Also, just as a fore-warning if you happen to get some stuff working, any game that uses punkbuster is likely to flip out with the virtual hardware and kick/ban you. AFAIK, think you're stuck with either dual-booting or trying things like Cedega or OpenGL ports of DirectX games. Hopefully this will change, gaming is about the only reason I use windows anymore...

Well, I am no expert as I am sure that you are aware, but my understanding of VMWare and the like, is it is Virtual Machine Environment. It allows you to use the same machine (and therefore the same hardware) to run different software environments?

Now, (again my understanding), if you boot Linux in a VME, it is not really aware of any other OS that you might have installed on other environments, any applications they may have or any drivers they may use. This is how it is supposed to work, I would have thought (although that is only the way I have used them).

So, I would think that VME is not the issue, it is probably that your Linux environment is not supporting DirectX? I honestly have absolutely no idea how to resolve that I am afraid :(

The hardware is the same b/c its emulated, not b/c of what system its running on (though some things can pass straight through, like USB and cdrom's, but other stuff like video, network, sound, etc are all AFAIK emulated).

Well, maybe MsMittens would know if what I've done so far is correct. I'll be trying "start the VM machine" of course, but I don't want to do it right now as it's getting late and I'm at work 6.30 am tomorrow :( If it didn't work I'd be annoyed and I know I'd sit up late trying to sort it!

Partial success. Ubuntu installed without issue in VM Ware which is a big step forward. I'm getting told I don't have the VMWare tools installed though, and attempts to install them haven't been successful, even though I've tried using root privileges from a terminal. Does it need the CD in again?

My other issue is I can't get more than the default firefox page. Any attempt to get actual web pages just comes up with "server timed out" (and no, it wasn't this site!).

OK, I now have two problems associated with VMWare and I'm wondering if anyone can help.

The first is that the C drive appears to need defragging, but of course Windows will not defrag ext3 file systems. I'm not sure this necessarily matters because Ubuntu is in its own environment and the fragmented portions of it can't be affecting the rest of my C drive, I wouldn't have said?

Secondly, and more seriously, it's integrated itself with Sygate and is causing the problem of a "one way" network (which can't be helping my networking efforts with Samba and Kubuntu). In other words, I can't see this PC here from the other networked machines until I turn Sygate off. Looking in the options for Local Neighbourhood network in Sygate, I see I now have two VMWare entries, and while I've tried to enable everything to be shared, it's clearly interfering.

Is there a way round this? Because frankly, since I haven't even managed to get Ubuntu to see web pages, I'm wondering if I should just uninstall VMWare.

Edit Since Ubuntu couldn't see web pages even and it was affecting my windows network, that's exactly what I did do, though I kept the virtual machine folder in case I gave it another go, but until I can get round the "one way network" problem, it simply isn't worth it.

Re defragging, I guess I'd have to use a defrag utility in ubuntu to defrag any ext3 file system. Although I've downloaded a trial of Diskeeper Pro which looks quite handy, though I haven't investigated it much yet.