Seems to be an easy step to upgrade my local vmware server to the current version. VMWare server 2 changed the administration tool to a web interface like the one from the GSX or ESX server. First step is to uninstall the old vmware server and reboot. The download took a bit longer then before. Nearly 600mb comparing to 150mb for a 1.0.7 server install package for windows. You can change the ports of the administration web interface during installation. I leave this settings to default but changed that the server will not automatically started during windows boot. In the next screen is the possibility to change the default folder of vmware for images. I changed this to my existing folder of vmware server 1.0.6. Like before you have after installation a shortcut to the vmware server in the quicklaunch and on the desktop.

Firefox was a really a pain in the ass as browser for the web interface of beta 1 of vmware server 2. The download page now mention for Beta 2:

Firefox 3 as a supported browser for the management interface.

The icon open https://<hostname>:8333/ui/ as default url. Firefox 3 complains that the ssl certificate is self signed. You must click the link at the bottom to “add the exception” and the “add exception” button. The upcoming dialog request to get the certificate and let you after this download “confirm the security exception”.

Now the login screens ask for the credentials. Good question. The old native admin tool simply ask to login locally without any credentials. During installation where no user created or asked to define. Vmware use the local user database of windows as authentication provider. So define a new local user with admin rights or use a existing one to login.

My main vm image is a ubuntu server 8.04 with just a text console. Vmware use own linux modules for fast networking, folder sharing,… So i tried to upgrade my existing vmware-tools. Just start the vm and click the link to “install vmware tools”. It connects the virtual cdrom to readonly device with the install packages. Enter “mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom” inside the vm to copy install package to the tmp folder. You have to copy the *.tar.gz install package because ubuntu doesn’t work with RPMs like OpenSuse. The extracted folder contains the vmware-tools-install.pl script. Starting the install as root with ./vmware-tools-instal.pl or sudo ./vmware-tools-install.pl produce a error. VMware tools recognise the old kernel modules and stop the installation. The error message prints the name of the modules like vmxnet. So use “modprobe -v vmxnet” to get the path to the *.ko file. Delete it with rm and do this for all mentioned modules. Delete afterwards the old vmware settings by calling “rm -rf /etc/vmware*”. Now you can call the vmware-tools-install script to install successfully the kernel modules. Reboot the vm to use the new modules. Now you can see in the web interface e.g. the ip of the running vm.