Random thoughts, tips & tricks about Slackware-Linux, Lego and Star Wars

Archive for the 'VMware' Category

June 13th, 2009 by Niels Horn in , ,

Last October I wrote some posts about installing older Slackware versions on VMware. I have since sort of abandoned VMware for several reasons:

It might be free for personal use, but it is not Open software
It is a hassle to keep it functioning with every kernel change
The latest versions need PAM, which can be installed on [...]

November 9th, 2008 by Niels Horn in , , |

Last Friday lots up upgrades were released for Slackware-current, including a new kernel, 2.6.27.5Since changing a kernel usually has some consequences, I waited until today, Sunday, to apply all upgrades.As anticipated, my VMware-server stopped working. Normally I run the /usr/bin/vmware-config.pl script to reconfigure VMware and recompile the needed modules for the new kernel.But this time [...]

October 14th, 2008 by Niels Horn in , ,

Well, I finally managed to get a higher resolution in VMware, at least with Slackware 4.0I discovered that VMware-server 1.0.7 still includes the drivers for XFree86 3.* & 4.*
In XFree86 3.* there is a separate "server" for each type of interface: one for monochrome cards (who remembers Hercules?), one for simple VGA, one for SVGA, [...]

October 14th, 2008 by Niels Horn in , , , |

Working with fvwm2 wasn't too much fun… So I started looking for and old Slackware version that had KDE.I found out that my oldest CD with KDE was Slackware 4.0:

As it says on the cover, it comes with KDE 1.1, so this was my new project.According to the cover from the original 4-disc box, we're [...]

October 12th, 2008 by Niels Horn in , ,

After successfully installing Slackware 3.5 and discovering that Slackware 1.1.2 was still available on the internet at sunsite.unc.edu I simply had to try it…
At first I had no luck, as this version does not support the standard VMware network card (PCnet32) and also lacks support for IDE CDRom drives. The VMware emulated SCSI cards (BusLogic [...]

October 11th, 2008 by Niels Horn in , ,

Finally got X working on my Slackware 3.5 installation.Well, not perfectly, but good enough to capture a screen:

I had to configure X by editing XF86Config that's stored in /etc in this version.After some tweaking I got it to work with the basic "generic vga" driver, with a resolution of 640×480. It should work with higher [...]

October 10th, 2008 by Niels Horn in , , |

Last week I found the original Slackware 3.5 CDs that I have. I have several older versions of Slackware in my collection, most of them original CDs.I started using Slackware in 1996, when I bought a book called "Slackware Linux Unleashed" from Sams. It included Slackware 96, which is also known as Slackware 3.1
Since I [...]

October 5th, 2008 by Niels Horn in , , |

Just a quick hint for those having trouble using the 'generic' kernel (as we should always use) when installing Slackware as a guest with VMware.
VMware creates SCSI drives by default when we create a new virtual machine for Linux with a 2.6 kernel, emulating a LSI Logic SCSI controller. The 'huge' kernel that comes with [...]

September 28th, 2008 by Niels Horn in ,

I am a big fan of VMware and virtualization in general.At work we use the professional version to install servers that are only used a couple of hours a week, like systems for testing new releases of software etc.At home I use the free vmware-server-1.0.7 version to test new releases of software, different operating systems, [...]