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Creating VMWare Images

  • 08-01-2007 5:14pm
    #1
    damnyanks
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 4,276 ✭✭✭


    Howdy,

    I'm in my final year of a software eng degree. Like most comp students I do a big final year project.

    I'd like to make a VMWare(Or any virtual PC software) based image of a Linux and Windows envirnment with my software installed on it. The main reason for this is as a testing env. and eventually to be used when demoing the application removing any possible threat of something odd happening if run on a different computer.

    Does anyone know any resources / websites etc. that I can research to complete such a task?

    Basically it just needs to be a bog standard Win XP Pro image with my software installed and a Bog standard Linux(Any dist) with my software on it.

    Thanks for any help


Comments

  • #2
    aidan_walsh
    Closed Accounts Posts: 17,208 ✭✭✭✭aidan_walsh


    Download and install VMWare Server. You'll need to register to get a license key, but other than that its completely free (as in beer).

    Open the VMWare Server Console. Assuming that you are running on the same machine you installed in, connect to the Local host.

    Click into File > New > Virtual Machine. This will open up a wizard that will guide you though the guts of creating the virtual environment. There are a lot of options, and the wizard will give you the best default set up based on what you specify. You can always very simply change these settings afterwards anyway.

    Once the file system image has been created (in C:\Virtual Machines by default) you can decide how you want to handle network and media connections.

    For networks, you have a number of options - bridging the VM straight to the network with its own IP, NAT-ing it off the host computers IP (easiest if you're behind any proxies, etc I would imagine), or just having a local loop network where the guest OS can only connect to itself.

    With both floppy disks and disc drives, you can either map to an ISO file on your computer, or to one of your physical devices.

    Once you have these mapped however you want, you can just install the OS as though you were working off any other machine. Pop the disc in the drive, and boot the VM. If there is nothing installed and the disc\ISO is an autorun, it will work as you would expect and launch the OS installer.

    Then, when thats installed and ready, for your own ease you might install VMWare Tools to the guest OS, which will allow you to transition between guest and host OS without having to use any specific keyboard combinations to change over, just glide from one to the other.

    You can also check out pre-built VMs through VMWare's Appliance Marketplace, where you can get free "download and run" machines.


  • #3
    Khannie
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 37,485 ✭✭✭✭Khannie


    There are lots of preconfigured linux images out there, but for windows, you'll need to do an install on the virtual machine.

    For the linux one, I'd recommend getting the ubuntu server install (username and password are both ubuntu....it caught me :)) and doing sudo apt-get install xfce-desktop, then startx. That will give you a nice lightweight desktop environment. Alternatively sudo apt-get install gnome-desktop will give you a more feature rich one.

    Another option is to install linux and run the latest super-fresh linux kernel (2.6.20) which has a nice feature called KVM (Kernel Virtual Machine iirc). This allows you to run virtual machines at delicious speeds (approaching running the actual OS).


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