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The following HowTo has been tested on Ubuntu 7.10 using VMWare Server 1.0.3 and Redflag Linux Desktop 6.0.

Downloads

Start with downloading the following components.

Prerequisites:

• Install build-essential (sudo aptitude install build-essential)
• Install the xinetd server (sudo aptitude install xinetd)

VMWare Server:

• VMWare server from http://www.vmware.com/download/server/
• As the canonical commercial repository is not yet available for Ubuntu 7.10, you need the VMWare installation patch from http://knihovny.cvut.cz/ftp/pub/vmware/vmware-any-any-update113.tar.gz

Redflag Linux:

• Redflag Linux 6.0 from ftp://220.194.60.89/pub/redflag/dt6/rf6/RedFlag-dt6-sys.iso
• You might also want to get the Redflag 6.0 Tools disc from ftp://220.194.60.89/pub/redflag/dt6/rf6/RedFlag-dt6-Tool.iso

Installation is easiest when you create a bootable CD image from the Redflag iso files.

VMWare Installation

The following description can also be found in the Ubuntu tutorials.

• Extract all the archives to a directory (tar -zxvf VMware-server* ; tar -zxvf vmware*)
• Run sudo ./vmware-install.pl
• Select all the default options *EXCEPT* do not compile the modules at this point. (Do you want this program to try to build the vmmon module for your system? NO)
• Apply the patch by running sudo ./runme.pl to build the vmmon module (answer YES to compile the proper modules).

At this point, you are ready to launch the VMWare server by typing vmware. Probably, vmware will answer with a message saying that VMWare server is not properly configured. DON’T run the config script as indicated in the message, but remove the folder /etc/vmware/not-configured (sudo rm -rf /etc/vmware/not-configured). Then run vmware.

Redflag Installation in a virtual machine

As I couldn’t find a predefined virtual machine for Redflag, I had to create one by myself. The installation on a external hard disk failed twice, so I decided to first install it on my main hard disk and then copy the virtual machine to the external one:

• Start vmware
• Choose ‘create a new virtual machine’
• Choose the operating system that will run in the machine (I chose RedHat Linux because it’s somehow related to Redflag, but I guess any Linux option should work).
• Memory: Minimal memory requirement is 256M, I created a 500M virtual machine to be on the safe side.
• Disk: Although Redflag Linux should be able to run on a disk of size 5GB, my first installation was disrupted with a size of 10GB because the installation process was running out of space. With 15GB everything ran smoothly.
• Complete the creation of the new virtual machine.

Now you can start installing Redflag on the newly created virtual machine:

• Launch the virtual machine by choosing ‘power on this virtual machine’.
• Type Esc while the machine is loading and choose to boot from CD.
• The CD will then start booting and the installation process begins.

Possible problem:

• Anaconda fails to load. An error message saying exec of anaconda failed: Permission deniedinstall exited abnormally is displayed. This is a known issue with RedHat (which uses anaconda as well), see here.
  • try to launch the CD with the option linux allowcddma
  • if it doesn’t work (didn’t for me either), try linux ide=nodma which worked for me.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 5th, 2007 at 9:17 pm and is filed under asia, china, academic, computing, open source, redflag, howto.