$ cat /dev/brain > /dev/blog

Installing VMware server on Fedora Core 5

If you only need to run VMware images (e.g. provided by your professor), you might want to try out the free VMware Player software. Works great (after applying the VMware any-any patch and compiling your own kernel modules [remember to have the kernel-devel package installed]).

If you decide to create your own virtual machine, e.g. to run a Windows OS inside a sandbox within your safe FC5 environment, VMware offers a VMware Server Beta free of charge. You just have to register and will get a serial number sent to your e-mail address.

Install as you like (you can install the provided RPM files using rpm -ivh ... or untar/un-gzip the tar.gz archives) and run the configuration scripts provided with the packages. A good installation guide can be found on VMware Support website.

After the installation and a reboot I had trouble connecting to the server. I found this hint on the VMware forum and -surprise- the error is caused by SELinux (I’m really thinking about simply disabling it!)

Run these commands (as root) to configure SELinux properly:
# find /usr/lib/vmware -name '*.so*' -exec chcon -t texrel_shlib_t {} \;
# rm /var/run/vmware/vmware-serverd.PID

Now you should be able to connect again to your VMware server.