VMWare Server 1.0x on Kubuntu 9.04

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I just updated my Hardy Kubuntu system to Jaunty 9.04 – everything went pretty smooth, except for getting my VMWare server installation to work again.   For various reasons, I use VMWare server 1.0 (mostly because I need to boot a windows partition which is not supported under VMWare server 2, plus the web interface sucks).  So, I was able to do the system update fine, and the first time I tried to start VMWare, it figured out there was a new kernel version and asked to recompile all the modules.  The configuration process went fine, but when I wen to start vmware, I would get the following error:

/usr/lib/vmware/bin/vmware: symbol lookup error: /usr/lib/libgio-2.0.so.0: undefined symbol: g_thread_gettime

Really annoying!  So, after some googling, came across a few Ubuntu forum threads where peopel were running into the same error, except they were running 8.10 64 bit systems.  Figured their fix was worth a shot, and lo-and-behold, it worked.  Here’s the process I followed:

Step 1: Download the latest 1.09 version
You can find it here.  Download and run the install script.  However, when it asks you to run the configuration, select ‘no’.  The installer will then quit.

Step 2: Download and install kernel patch
You can find the patch here.  Now, un-tar and run the installer script ‘runme.pl’ as sudo.  Now, when the patch asks you to run the configuration for VMWare server, select ‘yes’ and continue.  The configuration script should compile and install all the modules (though I ran into quite a few warnings).  Now, if you tried to run VMWare, you’d still get the ‘g_thread_gettime’ error, so, you need to start VMWare in a special way.

Step 3: Start VMWare
Now, to finally get everything running, you’ll need to run this command:

VMWARE_USE_SHIPPED_GTK="force" vmware

This will tell VMWare to use the correct version of the GIO lib and thus will get you running with no problems.

Update: Step 4
The final step, which I discovered after a few days, is to reset the defaul keyboard mapping for VMWare.  You’ll need to do this if you notice your arrow or function keys are not responding correctly.  To fix this, simply enter the following command into the terminal:

echo xkeymap.nokeycodeMap = true > ~/.vmware/config

VirtualBox vs. VMWare Server on Linux

For the last year I’ve been trying to get virtualization of a Windows Partition working on Linux.  The goal is to be able to use Linux as my primary desktop OS, while still having Windows available for the MS Apps I need for work (read Outlook).  The two main desktop apps that are freely available for this setup are VirtualBox, an open source solution by Sun, and VMware Server.  I tested both of these on a Core2 Duo 2 GHz system with 3 GB of RAM and an 80 GB hard disk divided into 3 partitions.  Windows XP Pro was installed on the first partition and Ubuntu running KDE 4.2 was installed on the other two.

VirtualBox
VirtualBox is now at version 2.1.2 and is a very solid app.  Sun provides an open source version and a freely available closed source binary for Windows, OS X and Linux.  The GUI is very solid and integrates well with KDE, due to the QT interface implementation.  The closed source binary has some features that are not available in the open source version, though they are getting migrated as the codebase grows (running a virtual machine from a physical partition, called rawdisk mode, used to only be available in the closed source version).

Setting up virtual box is relatively easy as most distributions have package available from the VirtualBox download page.  To get VirtualBox running with an installed version of windows, I found this pretty excellent guide.  The only problem I had was with the windows bootloader: I couldn’t get the open source iso to work, so I had to download a copy from a windows XP cd, as I didn’t have one handy.

Impressions
Using virtual box is very straightforward.  Setting up the machine and all the settings was straightforward.  There are very useful hints at the bottom of each tab in the settings pane which makes choosing options to enable particularly easy.  Once I had the machine booting into Windows, I installed the guest additions and rebooted.  The VirtualBox Guest Additions are a set of drivers and apps that make integration with the host OS seamless – i.e. you can move your mouse between the client and the host desktops.

Once I started using the virtualized OS, I ran into problems.  First, Windows was really slow.  To the point of being unusable.  Startup took about 10 minutes from boot to fully loaded, and opening an app was a time consuming task.  I turned off all the eye candy, which helped opening menus and such, but the overall speed and responsiveness was lacking.  Part of the appeal of VirtualBox is the ability to go into ‘Seamless Mode’ a la Parallels on the Mac.  Unfortunately, this never worked for me (but I also didn’t wait around for 20 minutes to see if it would work eventually).

I like VirtualBox, I really do, but its just too slow to be a functional, every day virtualization solution.  Combine that with some obvious inadequecies, like supporting only one processor and very rudimentary 3D acceleration support, and it doesn’t seem ready for prime time to me.  But, I plan on tracking the progress the Sun team is able to make and am definitely willing to give it another shot in the future.

VMware Server
VMware Server is a desktop/server virtualization solution from VMware.  The current version is 2.0, however this review will look at version 1.0.8 because the 2.0 version does not support rawdisk mode any longer.  Getting the older version working was a little bit of a challenge, given my kernel is newer (2.6.27-11) than the last one supported by the 1.0.8 release.  I followed this guide for getting the older version working on Ubuntu 8.10.  This guide will help to set up VMware to work with a physical disk and existing windows install.

Following the instructions was very simple, and I had everything up and running in about an hour, including download/install time.  The options for setting up a rawdisk VMDK in VMware were much more powerful than in VB, for example one could choose the number of processors to emulate on the client.

Impressions
Overall, VMware server is definitely not as pretty as VirtualBox – definitely not built as a desktop centered application.  However, the app is rock solid and wickedly fast.  Boot time was about half what VB was, and applications were reasonably responsive.

The guest additions were easy to install and gave the same basic features as VirtualBox, except the seamless mode.  I did run into a problem with the client software clock getting way out of sync with the hardware clock, either going to fast or two slow.  An easy fix was turning on the option to keep the two automatically synchronized in the guest additions control panel.

Conclusions
VMware came out ahead for my particular setup, which admittidly is not one most users will have.  As I wasn’t testing the traditional VM setup (having a completely ’soft’ install rather than running an OS of an existing partition), its hard to draw any broad conclusions, but for this use case, VMware is definitely the choice to go with.

Update: Check out my post here on how to get VMWare server 1.0x working on Ubuntu 9.0.