Installing VMware Server on Ubuntu 8.10

I got Ubuntu 8.10 installed the other day on my intel box ......wow what an experience ...I traditionally have been using Red Hat and Fedora Linux but this time around i decided to try some debian flavor and so there I was ready to Lock and Load with my Ubuntu 8.10 .After using it for a while my 1st love i:e Red Hat started calling me again and so all the ingredients where there calling for a nice vmware server installation. I simply downloaded Vmware Server from the official vmware website banked out some cash and obtained it's license.There i was a happy spirit ready to go .I installed gcc and kernel headers matching my running kernel version after which i began my installation of vmware and boy o boy what a pleasant sight it was but suddenly something odd happened and the installation crashed out suddenly despite the matching kernel version and the corresponding gcc .Then i learned this is the common problem faced by many of my friends so i decided to blog it down ..

1. Get vmware server 2.0 form the official vmware site as for my case i had chosen the tar ball above .deb as it world install on both red hat and debian flavous alike then cashed out it's licence.

2.Installed kernel headers which in my case was 2.6.27-7-generic (to do this use synaptic or apt-get )
Note : for finding your running kernel version use the command uname -a

3 Installed gcc matching my kernel i:e the one from which kernel was build.

4. Install other dependences like build-essential xinetd

5.Downloaded a patch needed for getting whole thing work which is available from http://www.insecure.ws/warehouse/vmware-update-2.6.27-5.5.7-2.tar.gz

Now that we have all of the dependencies and archives downloaded we can unpack them. In the same location where you downloaded the .tar.gz files (likely your home folder or Desktop), run the following command: tar -xvf vmware-update*.tar.gz and tar -xvf VMware-server*.tar.gz Installing VMware Server 2.0 + patchWe’ll now start the installation. First we need to install the core vmware application. We’ll then patch the configuration script, and configure the system. cd vmware-server-distrib/ sudo ./vmware-install.pl On my installation I used the defaults until it asked me if I’d like to run the vmware-config.pl configuration script. At this point select [no]. Once this has finished and you’ve quit at the configuration option, use these commands to patch the config: cd ../vmware-update*/ sudo ./runme.pl This script will patch the configuration and then again ask you to run the vmware-config.pl configuration script. This time around select [yes]. On my installation I selected the defaults for the remaining questions and my installation works fine