[KLUG Members] VMWare 5.5 Stability

[zdennis]

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greenproc wrote:
> 
> zdennis wrote:
> 
>>I am looking into utilizing VMWare for our developers whom run linux as a host operating system to be able to utilize VMWare 5.5
>>to have windows installed. We currently have two developers utilizing the 30 day workstation trial. One user is running Debian
>>Unstable/Testing hybrid and it works great. The other is running the same but on a 64-bit machine (although running in 32-bit
>>compatibility mode) and he has been able to get TinyFeather Linux to install in the VMWare Workstation, but Windows continually
>>gets stuck at different points during the installation.
>>
>>Anyone here vouch for VMWare on debian as a host for Windows 2000, Windows XP ? Any known issues and known workarounds ? Any other
>>distro's that you run as a host that work great?
> 
> 
> Can't vouch for VMWare Workstation, but Server (beta) has worked very well for me under Debian/stable under i386.  The only problem with being
> under Debian at the time (beta1) is an incompatability in the 64bit perl libraries -- which won't prevent you from running a 64 bit host, but it
> will prevent you from using the console on the 64 bit host to connect/manage guests from the host's console -- not a problem for "production"
> where you would be running the console on 32 bit clients, but it is a problem for connecting to a guest from the host for 64 bit hosts.  You may
> wish to try the server beta, and the perl problem may now be fixed (on beta2).  I have used Win2000 and Fedora5 guests.
> 
> Which different points does Windows get stuck at on the 64-bit machine you spoke of?  I have found that SuSE works very well as a host OS for
> VMWare.  The main issues I have run into are regarding compiling the vmware kernel modules, and having incomplete/incompatable build
> environments -- any host OS that VMWare ships pre-compiled kernel modules for is likely to have less issues.
> 

The kernel is a custom (pretty close to stock though) SMP kernel. The VMWare workstation will actually crash an intermittenment
points between any guest. We have tried with Gentoo, TinyFeather and Windows XP. Sometimes it's 30 seconds in, sometimes its' 20
minutes in. It doesn't seem to matter if you're doing anything in the workstation or if it's just idle.

The following kernel option is passed in when the system boots up:
    disable_timer_pin_1

Any insight is greatly appreciated. Thanks,

Zach
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