Vmclient

I am playing around with running freebsd in as a vmware client. WIth 5.0 it seems to run out of steam and eventually stop repoding during the install. After searching around I found a few notes on enable i386. Ironically the release notes for free mention how well performance has been improved. Anyone have any suggestions.....ps I gave up on running freebsd as the host.

What part of the install does it stop on?

I found the prob. Actually documented on 5.0 release notes.

Now I am wrestling with getting X to run with a user other than root.

Once I have this fgured out I will post my findings so no one else has to go through this.

/usr/ports/x11/wrapper

Regards, hope this helps

OK...now I am making some headway:

Disclaimer: I'm somewhat of a newbie...about 6 months into learning bsd/*nix. So I won;t be offended at all if others have better solutions....please post them!!!

Here is what I learned so far for installing FreeBSD in as a guest. Current host OS is XP (yes boo hiss hiss).

For freebsd 4.x skip step 1.


1. FreeBSD 5.0 does not work well in vmware. What I did was install 5.0 in expert mode. I installed only the absolute minimum so that I could recompile the kernel.

sysinstall-
chose minimum for packages
rest of options are up to you.

edit the kern file and add:

options CPU_DISABLE_CMPXCHG

rebuild and voila.....now it performs much better. re-enter sysinstall and load it up with whatever packages you want.


---at this point assuming bsd is installed

2. CVSUP the box
3. run portupgrade
4. CFG Xserver (if you want it) You neeed 4.1 or higher for the server. Choose unlisted cards from the card database (assuming using ncurses). In here you'll see vmware...choose it. Do the rest of the cfg as normal. Make sure all resolutions are deselected!!!!!.
5. Install whatever desktop you want (KDE/Gnome/.....).
6. startx

So the trick is.....

I did not install vmwaretools as document on the vmware site. This installs a 3.x x-server and I was unable to get X to start with a user other than root...and yes I tried xwrapper and softlinked it.

Who new there was a vmware driver included with the xserver!!!!!!!!

Once I fully test this out I am going to put together some kindof document. Also I'm still unsuccessful with having free bsd as the host OS and running vmware 2.x. However I was trying with 5.0. I think I'll load up 4.7 and retry. Again will post results.

I think it is very important we all take the time to document the things that take forever to figure out.....the easier it is for newbies the more popular the OS will become.

I agree, but usually you may have to do a lot of tweaking and when you finally get it to work, you don't really feel like repeating the process by writing a book about it

OK...now I am making some headway:

Disclaimer: I'm somewhat of a newbie...about 6 months into learning bsd/*nix. So I won;t be offended at all if others have better solutions....please post them!!!

Here is what I learned so far for installing FreeBSD in as a guest. Current host OS is XP (yes boo hiss hiss).

For freebsd 4.x skip step 1.


1. FreeBSD 5.0 does not work well in vmware. What I did was install 5.0 in expert mode. I installed only the absolute minimum so that I could recompile the kernel.

sysinstall-
chose minimum for packages
rest of options are up to you.

edit the kern file and add:

options CPU_DISABLE_CMPXCHG

rebuild and voila.....now it performs much better. re-enter sysinstall and load it up with whatever packages you want.


---at this point assuming bsd is installed

2. CVSUP the box
3. run portupgrade
4. CFG Xserver (if you want it) You neeed 4.1 or higher for the server. Choose unlisted cards from the card database (assuming using ncurses). In here you'll see vmware...choose it. Do the rest of the cfg as normal. Make sure all resolutions are deselected!!!!!.
5. Install whatever desktop you want (KDE/Gnome/.....).
6. startx

So the trick is.....

I did not install vmwaretools as document on the vmware site. This installs a 3.x x-server and I was unable to get X to start with a user other than root...and yes I tried xwrapper and softlinked it.

Who new there was a vmware driver included with the xserver!!!!!!!!

Once I fully test this out I am going to put together some kindof document. Also I'm still unsuccessful with having free bsd as the host OS and running vmware 2.x. However I was trying with 5.0. I think I'll load up 4.7 and retry. Again will post results.

I think it is very important we all take the time to document the things that take forever to figure out.....the easier it is for newbies the more popular the OS will become.