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Enabling VNC as a pseudo-KVM with VMWare Server

Major Hayden — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 01:28:59 +0000

Mac users feel a little left out when it comes to VMWare Server clients. There's one for Windows and Linux, but Mac users are out of luck. Sure, you can VNC into a Linux box, use X forwarding, or use RDC to access a Windows box, but a real Mac client would really be helpful.

However, I stumbled upon some documentation that will allow you to VNC to a VMWare Server VM's main screen. It's equivalent to having a network KVM connected to the VM so you can have out-of-band management. With VMWare server 2.x, you can enable it by following these steps:

Step 1. Create a new VM in VMWare Server, but don't start the VM.

Step 2. SSH to the server and find your VM's .vmx file. Normally, you can find the file in a location like /var/lib/vmware/[vmname]/[vmname].vmx.

Step 3. Add the following lines to the end of the .vmx file:

RemoteDisplay.vnc.enabled = "TRUE"
RemoteDisplay.vnc.password = "vncpassword"
RemoteDisplay.vnc.port = "5900"

Step 4. Change the VNC port and password to values that suit your environment and then start the VM.

DUH! Don't set two VM's to use the same vnc port, but that should go without saying.

Enabling VNC as a pseudo-KVM with VMWare Server is a post from: Major Hayden's Racker Hacker blog.

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Listing of VMWare configuration parameters

Major Hayden — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 17:09:54 +0000

For a recent project, I needed to automatically provision VM's for testing. I wanted to make the .vmx files on the fly with the exact configuration required, but I couldn't find documentation for the options that are allowed in the .vmx files. Luckily, a fellow named Ulli Hankeln has made an impressive list available on his site.

The listings contain tons of options that I wasn't aware of, and it also provides hints on which ones you shouldn't adjust.

Listing of VMWare configuration parameters is a post from: Major Hayden's Racker Hacker blog.

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CentOS/RHEL x86_64 + VMWare: Use of uninitialized value in string

Major Hayden — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 17:06:20 +0000

I was working with a CentOS 5 x86_64 installation running VMWare server last week when I stumbled upon this error:

Use of uninitialized value in string eq at /usr/lib64/perl5/site_perl/5.8.8/x86_64-linux-thread-multi/VMware/VmPerl.pm line 114.

You can run the vmware-cmd application with this error (it's not a fatal error) and keep going with your normal business. However, if you want to remove the error, comment out lines 114 and 115 in the Perl module referenced by the error:

die "Perl API Version does not match dynamic library version."
    unless (version() eq $VERSION);

Commenting out these lines does not affect the VMWare server in any way.

CentOS/RHEL x86_64 + VMWare: Use of uninitialized value in string is a post from: Major Hayden's Racker Hacker blog.

Thanks for following the blog via the RSS feed. Please don't copy my posts or quote portions of them without attribution.