03.21.08

VMWare 6 on Gentoo

Posted in Linux, SAnToS, Technology at 1:00 pm by Todd

This week I finally got VMWare Workstation 6 installed on my Gentoo (x86_64) laptop. I need it for several reasons:
  1. I couldn’t convince my HP laptop to dual-boot with Windows Vista.
  2. At times I need to test software that is Windows only.
  3. Some of our software must have the ability to run in Windows; which means I need to have Windows available to test and troubleshoot.
  4. Recently, I needed the ability to test x86 code and I didn’t want to “muddy the waters” using x86_64 compatibility.
  5. In the short-term, I would like to start testing software in a clean environment which doesn’t mess up my daily work. What better way than in a VM.

So I purchased VMWare Workstation and followed the Gentoo installation instructions using emerge. I had to modify my package.keywords file since the 6.0 version of vmware-workstation was masked (~amd64). I simply added the following to the /etc/portage/package.keywords file:

app-emulation/vmware-workstation ~amd64 app-emulation/vmware-modules ~amd64
dev-cpp/libsexymm ~amd64
x11-libs/libview ~amd64

Before portage could finish the install, I had to download the tarball from the VMWare site (and put that tarball in /usr/portage/distfiles). I also had to add a USE flag to my /etc/make.conf (accessibility) and re-emerge several packages (emerge -auD --newuse world). Once the installation was complete, I ran through the VMWare configuration script and it was almost ready to roll. The last thing I had to do was start VMWare using the following flag: VMWARE_USE_SHIPPED_GTK=yes (I found that fix mentioned here). When I don’t use that flag I get the following:

tcw@bluecloud ~ $ vmware /opt/vmware/workstation/lib/bin/vmware: symbol lookup error: /opt/vmware/workstation/lib/lib/libvmwareui.so.0/libvmwareui.so.0: undefined symbol: _ZThn24_N4view10FieldEntry17delete_text_vfuncEii

Now I get to fight Windows XP and Windows Vista to get them installed in their own virtual machine. I will also probably install Ubuntu and possibly a desktop install of OpenBSD (I am an OpenBSD-fan-boy).

2 Comments

  1. jhushman said,

    March 24, 2008 at 11:46 pm

    right after step 5 you should have checked out parallels.. they are much better in my opinion

  2. Todd said,

    March 25, 2008 at 8:29 am

    Thanks for the tip, I had never heard of Parallels being available on the PC. I have Mac people around me that talk about so (incorrectly) assumed that it was a Mac-only thing. Guess I will have to check it out.