VMWare player, manual configuration and customization

Here is what to put in the VMware .vmx file:

## Valid entires are 7 and 8. We will use 8.

config.version = "8"



## This seems to indicate the version of the VMware hardware.  Valid values

## are from 0 to 4. But to set value 4 you need to make the configuration

## file not writable because VMware Player will change it automaticaly to 3.

virtualHW.version = "3"



## This will specify how much ram will be used by VMware Player.

memsize = "256"



## This variables are used to configure the primary master ide channel.

## You must assign to ide0:0.fileName the name of the hard disk image created

## with qemu-img. ide0:0.present = "TRUE" means that the device shoul be

## connected on system startup.

ide0:0.present = "TRUE"

ide0:0.fileName = "hda.vmdk"

ide0:0.deviceType = "disk"

ide0:0.redo = ""



## No configuration for the primary slave ide channel.

## ide0:1.present = "TRUE"

## Configure the secondary master ide channel.

## This time you want to configure a cdrom.

## This configuration uses the cdrom.iso file as cdrom drive.

## If you want to use your phisical cdrom drive set

##      ide1:0.filename = "auto detect"

##      ide1:0.deviceType = "cdrom-raw"

ide1:0.present = "TRUE"

ide1:0.fileName = "slax.iso"

ide1:0.deviceType = "cdrom-image"

ide1:0.autodetect = "TRUE"



## No configuration for the secondary slave ide channel

## ide1:1.present = "TRUE"



## This section configures the floppy drive.

##  change "/dev/fd0" to "A:" if you run VMware Player on Windows.

## You could also use an image of a floppy disk.

floppy0.present = "FALSE"

floppy0.fileName = "A:"



## Ethernet configuration.

## Activate on startup and set a nat connection.

# ethernet0.virtualDev = "e1000"

ethernet0.present = "TRUE"

ethernet0.connectionType = "nat"

ethernet0.addressType = "generated"



## Usb configuration.

## Activate usb on system startup.

usb.present = "TRUE"



## This configuration makes VMware Player emulate an es1371 sound card.

sound.present = "TRUE"

sound.virtualDev = "es1371"



## This is just to set tile of the VMware Player window.

displayName = "SLAX"



## Here you need to specify the guest os, that is the os that

## VMware Player  will run. Possible choices are:

# guestOS = "winVista" # Windows Vista (experimental)

# guestOS = "longhorn" # Windows Longhorn (experimental)

# guestOS = "winNetBusiness" # Windows 2003 Small Business Server

# guestOS = "winNetEnterprise" # Windows 2003 Enterprise Server

# guestOS = "winNetStandard" # Windows 2003 Server

# guestOS = "winNetWeb" # Windows 2003 Web Server Edition

# guestOS = "winXPPro" # Windows XP Professional Edition

# guestOS = "winXPHome" # Windows XP Home Edition

# guestOS = "win2000AdvServ" # Windows 2000 Advanced Server

# guestOS = "win2000Serv" # Windows 2000 Server

# guestOS = "win2000Pro" # Windows 2000 Professional

# guestOS = "winNT" # Windows NT

# guestOS = "winMe" # Windows Me

# guestOS = "win98" # Windows 98

# guestOS = "win95" # Windows 95

# guestOS = "win31" # Windows 3.1 / Windows 3.11

# guestOS = "windows" # Other Windows

# guestOS = "winVista-64" # Windows Vista x64 Edition (experimental)

# guestOS = "longhorn-64" # Windows Longhorn x64 Edition (experimental)

# guestOS = "winNetEnterprise-64" # Windows 2003 Enterprise Server x64 Edition

# guestOS = "winNetStandard-64" # Windows 2003 Server x64 Edition

# guestOS = "winXPPro-64" # Windows XP Professional x64 Edition

# guestOS = "ubuntu" # Ubuntu Linux

# guestOS = "redhat" # Red Hat Linux

# guestOS = "rhel4" # Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4

# guestOS = "rhel3" # Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3

# guestOS = "rhel2" # Red Hat Enterprise Linux 2

# guestOS = "suse" # SuSE Linux

# guestOS = "sles" # SuSE Linux Enterprise Server

# guestOS = "mandrake" # Mandrake Linux

# guestOS = "nld9" # Novell Linux Desktop 9

# guestOS = "sjds" # Sun Java Desktop System

# guestOS = "turbolinux" # Turbo Linux

# guestOS = "other26xlinux" # Other Linux on a 2.6.x kernel

# guestOS = "other24xlinux" # Other Linux on a 2.4.x kernel

# guestOS = "linux" # Other Linux

# guestOS = "ubuntu-64" # Ubuntu Linux 64-bit

# guestOS = "rhel4-64" # Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 64-bit

# guestOS = "rhel3-64" # Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 64-bit

# guestOS = "sles-64" # SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 64-bit

# guestOS = "suse-64" # SuSE Linux 64-bit

# guestOS = "other26xlinux-64" # Other Linux 2.6.x 64-bit

# guestOS = "other24xlinux-64" # Other Linux 2.4.x 64-bit

# guestOS = "otherlinux-64" # Other Linux 64-bit

# guestOS = "solaris10-64" # Solaris 10 64-bit

# guestOS = "solaris10" # Solaris 10

# guestOS = "solaris9" # Solaris 9

# guestOS = "solaris8" # Solaris 8

# guestOS = "solaris7" # Solaris 7

# guestOS = "solaris6" # Solaris 6

# guestOS = "solaris" # Other Solaris

# guestOS = "netware6" # Netware 6.x

# guestOS = "netware5" # Netware 5.x

# guestOS = "netware4" # Netware 4.x

# guestOS = "netware" # Other Netware

# guestOS = "freeBSD-64" # FreeBSD 64-bit

# guestOS = "freeBSD" # FreeBSD

# guestOS = "darwin" # Apple Darwin (unsupported)

# guestOS = "other" # Other OS

# guestOS = "other-64" # Other 64-bit OS

guestOS = "linux"



## Set the Non Volatile Random Access Memory file which contains information

## about BIOS settings.

nvram = "bios.nvram"

In this sample file the ISO CD named slax.iso will be booted.
The VMWare player will display SLAX as its main window. And we will be attaching a hard harddrive image called hda.vmdk to the virtual machine.

Note: You can tweak most settings to adjust them to your purposes. I've also found that i like the Intel NIC emulation preferable, but it's a matter of taste or choice. To enable it:

ethernet0.virtualDev = "e1000"

Save the above file in an empty directory, and in this case we could name it slax.vmx.

Now we need to create an harddrive image, for which we will use a tool from the QEMU to create the vmdk file. It exists for different operating systems, so pick your weapon. It's just a file and can be copied. Here we will use the windows program qemu-img.exe to create a 2GB disk:

d:\vmware\qemu-img.exe create -f vmdk hda.vmdk 2GB

Cave eat: If you are running your vmdk disk from FAT32 partitions, VMWare player refuses to use larger than 4GB vmdk files. And by larger is meant, you can't create a 4GB image with the aforementioned method, but you can create a 4095M sized disk image.

Copy the created file to the same directory where you placed the .vmx file, and run it.

With the .vmx and .vmdk file, you now have a running customized VMware player configuration.

In some instantiations of xorg one might need to configure the X11/xorg.conf Monitor so we can use higher resolutions:

Section "Monitor"

	Identifier	"Monitor0"

	VendorName	"VMWare"

	ModelName	"VMX"

	HorizSync	1.0 - 10000.0

	VertRefresh	1.0 - 10000.0

EndSection

Information obtained from:

HowTo create VMX configuration files and VMDK disks with qemu-img

VMWare player Monitor, X11 resolution