Install VMware Server on Ubuntu

The first step, of course, is to download VMware Server. You’ll want to download the .tar.gz version. This command can be used for a direct download:

wget -c http://download3.vmware.com/software/vmserver/VMware-server-1.0.7-108231.tar.gz

The second step is to install some development tools that we’ll need to get things running. Use the following command or click the package names to install the requirements:

sudo aptitude install build-essential linux-kernel-devel linux-headers-generic xinetd

Installation and Configuration

Let’s unpack the VMware archive that we downloaded and run the VMware installer.

tar xf VMware-server-1.0.7-*.tar.gz
cd vmware-server-distrib
sudo ./vmware-install.pl

The Last Step

If you attempt to run vmware at this point you might notice that it spits out some nasty errors and complains at you. There is one more thing we need to setup.

Basically VMware is missing and complaining about some cairo libraries and gcc. So, the simple fix for this is to point to them by using a symbolic link:

sudo ln -sf /usr/lib/gcc/i486-linux-gnu/4.2.3/libgcc_s.so /usr/lib/vmware/lib/libgcc_s.so.1/libgcc_s.so.1
sudo ln -sf /usr/lib/libpng12.so.0 /usr/lib/vmware/lib/libpng12.so.0/libpng12.so.0

At this point you should be able to launch vmware and enjoy some virtualization goodness. Enjoy!

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