Tag: VMware

“Undefined Monitor” X Windows Error After Installing VMWare Tools

After installing VMWare tools you may get the error

Undefined Monitor "vmware"

when trying to start X Windows. To fix this error do the following:

1. Open up the X Windows configuration file in a text editor such as vi. The X Windows configuration file is named xorg.conf and is normally located in the directory /etc/X11/.

vi /etc/X11/xorg.conf

2. Add the following lines to the bottom of the xorg.conf file:

Section "Monitor"
   Identifier "vmware"
EndSection

3. Save the configuration file and then try to start X Windows again. It should now start without any errors.

VMWare Infrastructure

How to Install VMWare Tools in CentOS 5

Install software needed by VMware Tools

1. Install packages to build the kernel modules

yum install gcc kernel-devel

2. Check the running kernel matches the kernel headers

uname -r             # running kernel
rpm -q kernel-devel  # installed kernel headers

3. If the two versions do not match, run

yum -y upgrade kernel kernel-devel
reboot

4. Find out where the kernel headers are (you may need this later)

ls -d /usr/src/kernels/$(uname -r)*/include

Prepare and install VMware Tools

1. From VMware Workstation: go to VM> Install VMware Tools

2. From the VM: mount the virtual cd drive

mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/

3. Extract VMware Tools to /tmp/

tar -C /tmp -zxvf /mnt/VMwareTools-5.5.3-34685.tar.gz

4. Unmount the virtual cd drive

umount /mnt

5. Now run the installer

cd /tmp/vmware-tools-distrib
./vmware-install.pl

6. When asked Do you want to run vmware-config-tools.pl?, answer “Yes”.

VMWare Infrastructure

VMWare – FreeBSD 6 Guest Error “calcru: runtime went backwards from…”

When you install the VMware tools in a FreeBSD 6.0 guest OS in VMware Server Beta, you get the following error message in the console every few seconds:

calcru: runtime went backwards from 10542602 usec to 10542600 usec for pid 13924

FIX 1:

sysctl kern.timecounter.hardware=TSC

FIX 2: Add the following line to /boot/loader.conf

kern.hz=200

VMware – Increase Virtual Disk Size

Sometimes you create a VMware image and later realize that you should have made the drive size larger. Fortunately in VMWare Workstation you can change the size of a disk with a simple command line program. But the command only makes your drive bigger not the actual partition the operating system resides on. It is possible to get around this problem without purchasing a product like Partition Magic. There is a free program from the OpenSource and Linux world called “QTParted”. So the first thing you need to do is resize the drive by issuing the VMware command line to resize the disk (in this case to 10Gb):

vmware-vdiskmanager -x 10GB myDisk.vmdk

Then you set the VMware session to boot off a Knoppix ISO CD image. Then run QTParted. Select the Windows Drive partition with the right mouse button and chose reseize, set the new size, and then commit the change. Your disk’s OS partition has now been increased with all data intact.