Open Source Telephony Journal

VMwareVMware recently released version 3 of their Fusion product for the Mac.  For those who don't know, VMware is a software maker specializing in virtualization products that run on Windows, Linux, and the Mac.  Many OS's (most?) including Linux and PBX distros are installable as a VMware 'virtual machine', allowing it to run safely sandboxed on your existing hardware.  For those wanting to get started with Asterisk or any flavor of Linux, this is an excellent way to get started without dedicating hardware and creates an ideal learning environment.  Using saved virtual machine do-overs called 'snapshots', one can never truly hose their virtual machine as you can take it back to a clean state.  A perfect environment to practice and learn.

One issue with VMware is the necessity to install a customized driver set called 'VMware Tools', optimizing the performance of the virtual machine.  Without it, the clock might lose time, the display won't be able to run at optimal size and resolution, etc.  It's very important to get the tools package installed.  Installing Tools on a Windows guest OS is easy, but unfortunately it's a bit tricky for Linux guest OS's.  Below are the instructions for installing tools with a CentOS guest OS.  Most popular prepackaged Asterisk PBX distros use CentOS as a base, and for the record I prefer PBX-in-a-Flash.  Time to get started.......

1. Startup the guest OS (CentOS in this case) and logon as root.  Then click 'install vmware tools' from the Virtual Machine dropdown in the console menu.  This initiates a download of the Tools package in a place where the guest OS can get to it- in most cases the virtual CDRom drive

2. Now, mount the cd-rom drive in an empty folder executing these lines one at a time in the guest OS:

cd /media
mkdir cdrom
mount /dev/cdrom /media/cdrom
cd /media/cdrom

3. Copy the .tar.gz file to /tmp & extract- the tools versions change often, so find and fill in the correct file name.

cp VMware-Tools.xxxxxxxxx.tar.gz /tmp

cd /tmp
tar xvfz VMware-Tools.xxxxxxxxx.tar.gz
cd /tmp/vmware-tools-distrib

4. Run the installation:

./vmware-install.pl

Leave all questions at the defaults (keep pressing enter).  When finished, restart the guest OS, and you're done!