Brad's Blog

This is a quick summary of the steps to create a new virtual machine for use with VMware Player using QEMU.

Create the hard disk file

To create, instance, a file called hda.vmdk which will be a 10G disk:

qemu-img create -f vmdk hda.vmdk 10G

Create VMware configuration file

Using the following template (this template was found on Lorenzo Ferrara's Web Site), create a configuration file. For easy OS installation from an ISO image, just specify that image as the cdrom ide device.

## VMware Player Configuration File

## This indicates the version of the virtual machine.
## Compatible VMs are the ones created by Workstation 4.x and 5.x, GSX Server
## 3.x, and ACE 1.x.
## Valid entires are 7 and 8. We will use 8.
config.version = "8"

## This seems to indicate the version of the VMware hardware.  Valid values
## are from 0 to 4. But to set value 4 you need to make the configuration 
## file not writable because VMware Player will change it automaticaly to 3.
virtualHW.version = "3"

## This will specify how much ram will be used by VMware Player.
memsize = "128"

## This variables are used to configure the primary master ide channel.
## You must assign to ide0:0.fileName the name of the hard disk image created
## with qemu-img. ide0:0.present = "TRUE" means that the device shoul be 
## connected on system startup.
ide0:0.present = "TRUE"
ide0:0.fileName = "hda.vmdk"
ide0:0.deviceType = "disk"
ide0:0.redo = ""

## No configuration for the primary slave ide channel.
## ide0:1.present = "TRUE"
## Configure the secondary master ide channel.
## This time you want to configure a cdrom.
## This configuration uses the cdrom.iso file as cdrom drive.
## If you want to use your phisical cdrom drive set
##      ide1:0.filename = "auto detect"
##      ide1:0.deviceType = "cdrom-raw"
ide1:0.present = "TRUE"
ide1:0.fileName = "cdrom.iso"
ide1:0.deviceType = "cdrom-image"
ide1:0.autodetect = "TRUE"

## No configuration for the secondary slave ide channel
## ide1:1.present = "TRUE"

## This section configures the floppy drive.
##  change "/dev/fd0" to "A:" if you run VMware Player on Windows.
## You could also use an image of a floppy disk.
floppy0.present = "FALSE"
floppy0.fileName = "/dev/fd0"

## Ethernet configuration.
## Activate on startup and set a nat connection.
ethernet0.present = "TRUE"
ethernet0.connectionType = "nat"
ethernet0.addressType = "generated"
ethernet0.generatedAddress = "00:0c:29:7f:26:09"
ethernet0.generatedAddressOffset = "0"

## Usb configuration.
## Activate usb on system startup.
usb.present = "TRUE"

## This configuration makes VMware Player emulate an es1371 sound card.
sound.present = "TRUE"
sound.virtualDev = "es1371"

## This is just to set tile of the VMware Player window.
displayName = "Virtual OS"

## Here you need to specify the guest os, that is the os that 
## VMware Player  will run. Possible choices are:
##  "dos"
##  "freebsd" ............ generic freebsd distribution
##  "netware6" ........... netware 6
##  "other24xlinux" ...... generic distribution with the linux 2.4.x kernel
##  "other26xlinux ....... generic distribution with the linux 2.6.x kernel
##  "otherlinux" ......... generic distribution with the linux kernel
##  "redhat" ............. red hat linux (fedora?)
##  "solaris10" .......... solaris 10
##  "suse" ............... suse linux
##  "win95" .............. windows 95
##  "win98" .............. windows 98
##  "winme" .............. windows me
##  "winnt" .............. windows nt
##  "winnetstandard" ..... windows server 2003 standard edition
##  "winxphome" .......... windows xp home
##  "winxppro" ........... windows xp professional
guestOS = "otherlinux"

## Set the Non Volatile Random Access Memory file which contains information 
## about BIOS settings.
nvram = "bios.nvram"