It’s been a while since I have had VMware Player. I have been using Virtualbox instead, but I have a client who wants a machine worked on that is already a VMware machine. It doesn’t make sense to convert it to Virtualbox, do the work, and convert it back afterward.
So, my notes on installing VMware Player…
I already have the kernel headers and such installed. Just in case you don’t, you should run this command to install the required packages:
sudo apt-get install build-essential linux-headers-$(uname -r) dkms
Next, I downloaded VMware Player from the website. Make sure to match your system, 32-bit or 64-bit. Note that you cannot run a 64-bit machine on a 32-bit host.
It should download something like VMware-Player-7.0.0-2305329.x86_64.bundle. I had to launch it from the terminal with:
sudo sh VMware-Player-7.0.0-2305329.x86_64.bundle
It walks through an installation wizard:
- Agree to the license — VMware Player EULA
- Agree to the license — OVF Tool EULA
- Check for product updates? Yes or No (doesn’t matter)
- Send statistics? Yes or No (doesn’t matter)
- VMware License Key (this is optional)
- Installing
When I clicked on the first machine, it let me know about a VMware Workstation version, but I just want to work with a single existing machine so I clicked “Skip this version”. Also, another dialog asked for either an email address or a product key.
Next, it prompted me about downloading the VMware tools. My machine already had the tools installed, but I didn’t think it was bad to have them on the host just in case, so I agreed to download them.