Here I’m, back again with a new blog.
There’s been a while since my latest one but I’m now back.
Here’s a very simple argument with just few tricks: Install VMWare Player on Gentoo, nothing strange but on Gentoo amd64 there are few little exceptions.
If you want to have a clean gentoo installation on your desktop client you tend to keep your /etc/portage/package.keywords file shortest as possible. I prefer to install only stable packages and nothing masked by the arch, sometimes you need to unmask packages.
VMWare Player on amd64 is not masked, you can find the package unmasked and freely available; but if you try to install it on a recently updated installation you’ll run into troubles or installation errors (like me). Even more, if you’d like to have a quite recent/updated version of the client because you need to deal with VMWare Server (v1 & 2) installations you at least need to use Player v2 (2.5 even better, v3/4 available on ubuntu is awesome but on gentoo you don’t have them yet).
Here’s what I’ve done:
unmasked vmplayer by adding these lines on /etc/package.keywords
# VMWare Fixes
app-emulation/vmware-modules ~amd64
app-emulation/vmware-player ~amd64
This allows you to have vmware-player v2.5.4.xxx (available at the moment of writing) installed on your desktop with common modules and utilities. Please keep in mind you need to have a configured kernel with this flag turned on:
CONFIG_MMU=y
Then update your config files with etc-update script
Finally configure WM Player with gentoo command
emerge --config vmware-player
Do not use VMWare original config utility like in the past. After these operations just start it and you’re set. If you’ve already read my previous blogs you already know you can use Player to have direct access to a VMWare Server installation (run/play/stop but not manage VMs), check these:
Access remote VMWare Server 2 without the web interface
VMWare Server 2 thoughts
Accessing VMWare Server v2 with VSphere client
Hope it helps
Andrea (Ben) Benini
